Dec 06 2008
What Happens in Vegas Doesn’t Stay in Vegas: Thoughts on the OTHER O.J. Simpson Verdict
The Juice is no longer loose!
With regard to the recent sentencing of retired killer O.J. Simpson, I’m just going to come right out and say the guy had it coming. I’m not going to say that Simpson got what he deserved because he clearly didn’t. After all, if he really got what he deserved, the man would be sitting on death row right now.
As everyone except 12 clueless L.A. jurors knows, the former football star and movie actor brutally murdered his ex-wife and her boyfriend way back in ’94. Despite the overwhelming evidence that Simpson was guilty of the crime, he was acquitted on Oct. 3, 1995. After spending the next twelve years living the good life, he decided to spice things up a bit by committing another crime. For some reason, however, Simpson didn’t think he could get away with knocking off a few more people who really got on his nerves, so he opted for something a little less theatrical – armed robbery.
On the night of Sept. 13, 2007, Simpson and a gang of thugs broke into the hotel room of one Bruce Romong and stole sports memorabilia at gunpoint. He was arrested three days later and admitted taking the items, but claimed that they had actually been stolen from him and that he “just wanted to get my stuff back.” Even if this is true, surely there was a better way to reclaim his property. Here’s a crazy notion: Go to the police, idiot!
Simpson apparently reasoned that if he could get off for a serious crime like murder, then obtaining an acquittal for something as unimportant as armed robbery would be a piece of cake. Unfortunately for him, armed robbery is one of the few things that are not allowed in Sin City. On Oct. 3, 2008, Simpson was found guilty on 12 counts relating to robbery, kidnapping, coercion, and conspiracy. Intriguingly, the verdict came exactly 13 years to the day after he was found not guilty of the murder charge. Simpson was sentenced yesterday to a minimum of 15 years in prison and will not be eligible for parole until 2017. He could also serve a maximum of 33 years in the Big House.
I was raised to believe that 13 was an unlucky number, but I’m not so sure now. At least in this case, 13 is a wonderful number indeed.
One of my fellow bloggers posted an article yesterday which said that, while he believed Simpson was guilty of murder, he thought the penalty the man received for the Vegas robbery might be too harsh. I disagree. Given the things that went on in that hotel room, Simpson’s punishment is more than fair – and I’m not just saying that because the guy walked on homicide charges 13 years ago, thanks to 12 angry numbskulls.
According to various news sources, Simpson nearly broke down in tears as he delivered a lame apology to the judge who handed down his sentence; this was followed by a five-minute speech that reeked of self-pity. What tripe. If the man had any decency, he would get down on his knees and thank God for continuing his pathetic life and the 13 years of freedom he clearly didn’t deserve.
Everyone does NOT know that Simpson was guilty of those murders. I certainly don’t know. I wasn’t there. And the police really screwed it up with their usual incompetence. So, saying that he belongs on death row or dead is a little ridiculous.
Whether you believe Simpson guilty of those murders or not, that has nothing to do with this “crime.” 33 years is an insane sentence for a crime in which no one was killed or injured. I am not arguing here that Simpson was in the right. I am only arguing that there are real murderers who get much less time. The American “justice” system is a joke around the world. A mother here in Kansas City who let her daughter die after her boyfriend kicked her daughter in the head, stood by while he cut off her daughter’s head and hid the body while throwing the head in the garbage recently got 25 years. Probably she’ll be out on parole in a few years. So this sentence is bullshit.
Thing is, he’s parole-eligible in five years, and only received a 16 year sentence for 10 charges including kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon. So it’s not as if he’s getting the book thrown at him as hard as it could have…had the judge wanted to make this a payback situation, she could have ran every sentence consecutive instead of concurrent.
@ Old Fart- Sir, you need to read the actual verdict. Simpson wasn’t sentenced to 33 years; while that is the maximum he could receive, it won’t happen for several reasons.
1) 33 year maximum means 22 in terms of time served at the very most.
2) The 33 years is just that…maximum. The minimum is 16, which he’ll most likely get.
3) Eligible for parole in 5 years, and subsequently every 2-5 if he’s denied the first time.
4) If the counts had ran consecutive, he would have received 57 years max, but didn’t.
If you’re being a Juice-pologist, that’s fine, but don’t pretend like you know how the justice system works. A 25 year sentence for aiding/abetting a murder is the maximum sentence allowed by law. Were she tried as a co-conspirator, which she wasn’t, it could have been more, but the burden of proof lied with the State.
“So this sentence is bullshit.”
No, Oldfart, that other sentence is bullshit. As far as I’m concerned, that mother should have gotten at least 50 years in jail and maybe like 35 before parole. That’s pretty sick. And yes, our justice system is VERY screwed up. The fact that Simpson walked to begin with back in ‘95 is proof of that.
Of course, I wasn’t there when Nicole and Ron were killed, but I believe he did the murders and though you may not like or agree with what I state in my piece, let me remind it is, after all, an opinion article, not a news article.
“Thing is, he’s parole-eligible in five years, and only received a 16 year sentence for 10 charges including kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon.”
Huh? Did this happen just recently. My understanding was that he got a max. 33 years and min. 9 years before being eligible for parole.
“Everyone does NOT know that Simpson was guilty of those murders. I certainly don’t know. I wasn’t there. And the police really screwed it up with their usual incompetence.”
You’re a f**king idiot. Enough said.
James Bond apparently believes in mob justice. No I don’t know that Simpson was guilty of the murders of his wife and her boyfriend because THE POLICE AND DA DID NOT PROVE IT! And, neither do you know, you fucking idiot.
threedegrees: I have had no time to read the actual verdict. I only know what I “heard” on TV. Thanks for clarifying the sentence. However, it doesn’t change much and it says even less about the American Justice system. Police are unable, because of double jeopardy, to try a criminal twice on the same crime if they screw up the first time. Consequently, they charge said criminal with every crime they can find. Take the kidnapping charge. Explain that one. What kind of robbery does not involve coercion? This theory of “creative charging” pervades police society in America. Thus a man who (apparently) shoots another man in the head one time with one bullet from one gun gets charged with several counts of attempted murder, murder, felonious assault, involuntary manslaughter, blah blah blah. This gives the jury, who apparently doesn’t know any better, the chance to find the plaintiff guilty on any number of charges and overwhelms defense attorneys. Simpson and his buddies were guilty of one crime: armed robbery. All the rest is police state bullshit.
According to legal expert Toni MOrrison, all available evidence points to a frame-up of Simpson by the racist LA police.
Btw, I will concede that I do find the kidnapping charge odd in light of what i have read about the incident in Vegas. Who exactly was being kidnapped here?
I have seen that used recently in almost all kinds of armed robbery. I don’t know the basis for it. But it doesn’t surprise me. It falls right in line with police and DAs using conspiracy charges originally designed to charge and convict high level mafioso against ordinary citizens and police using drug laws designed to fight high level dealers with millions of dollars to spend for defenses by confiscating their assets to steal cars from young kids caught with marijuana.
“No I don’t know that Simpson was guilty of the murders of his wife and her boyfriend because THE POLICE AND DA DID NOT PROVE IT!”
He could have confessed, and you still would say he was framed.
Oldfart says…
“Everyone does NOT know that Simpson was guilty of those murders. I certainly don?t know. I wasn?t there. And the police really screwed it up with their usual incompetence. So, saying that he belongs on death row or dead is a little ridiculous.”
I agree. I do work in the criminal justice system and I know which cases get bound up to District Court and which cases, generally, get dismissed through negotiations. I’m responsible for entering said sentencing. I guess what? Since we can only sentence on misdemeanors at the justice court level, felonies are bound up to district court. There are set, standard sentencing, however, it is left up to the judge’s discretion. This case should have been dismissed last October. What a joke!!
1) Kidnapping? Really?
2) Guns? (that’s a first). Half the witnesses said he didn’t know there was a gun and ALL of them said he didn’t HAVE a gun.
3) Arrogant? The judge said she didn’t know if he was arrogant or ignorant. Now that the trial is over, she said she has figured out; he’s both. Who’s really the arrogant one here. And to boot, totally unprofessional.
And last, but not least - The Goldmans. Exactly why were they there and who should care what they think or how they feel. This case had NOTHING to do with them. What opportunist. I hope when his attorneys appeal the sentence, they see how ridiculous these trumped up charges are and end up throwing the whole thing out! There is plenty of heinous crimes to be tried and this isn’t one of them. All this “circus” proved is that mob justice is alive and kicking.
LisaLV,
The Goldmans were there because he still owes them a boatload of money from their civil judgement against him. However strange it may seem to you, they subscribe to the opinion that LA justice miscarried 13 years ago and he should have been in jail.
As to that, I agree with Oldfart. The LA DA’s office never proved their case.
I was on a jury in a trial here in MD some 12 - 15 years ago. A hispanic man was charged with assault for hitting his wife. He was up for ten to 20 years in prison if convicted.
The ADA that presented the case was a young fool that, among other things, never presented hospital records to prove her allegation that she was injured enough to go the the ER.
Yeah, there was enough evidence to show that he had received a gold chain from his girlfriend and had flaunted it in front of his wife.
But there wasn’t squat to prove that he had struck her - he denied it.
After five hours - four of it trying to convince an idiot that he couldn’t vote guilty just because “I know his type, he did it”, we returned a vote of not guilty.
Did he hit her? Maybe, they certainly had a row about the chain. A neighbor even testified as to the volume of the argument.
But the ADA never PROVED that he ever laid a hand on her, and that was the crux of the case.
That is the point of the justice system. I don’t care how the media makes it look.
Yeah, a DA can indict a ham sandwich if he wants, everybody knows that.
But the media can make it look like that sandwich is guilty of genocide if THEY want. The reality of what that DA can prove in court is another story altogether.
As far as the Goldmans and the Browns(??) go, I think there is something terribly wrong about a civil law based on hearsay and other non-evidence that can be used to destroy a man’s (or woman’s) life just because…… Perhaps Simpson was guilty - it was not proven. How does that give the Goldman’s and the Browns just cause for suing him to bankruptcy? Such a thing could happen to anyone who is found not guilty and who is disliked by members of a victim’s family. By the time Simpson had been found innocent thanks to police incompetence and his “dream team”, he was pretty much broke and could not afford to defend himself in a civil case, something the Browns and Goldmans took full advantage of.
I am not a lawyer and don’t know just how much less evidential the civil cases are. Maybe one could explain.
James Bond: You further prove your assholeness……If he had confessed, he would have been guilty and there would only have been a hearing for sentencing. I would maintain that, on the other hand, he would have been guilty in your mind NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENED. Even if someone else confessed. You people are like that.
Oldfart, the difference between civil and criminal law and the standard of evidence is that in criminal law, the State must prove its case BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT, but in the civil courts, the standard is only by a preponderance of the evidence. Reasonable doubt is a higher standard.
That is why the State can try a criminal case and fail, but the same case can be tried with the same evidence in a civil case and win.
So, yeah, a civil jury saw that same evidence and called it a win for the Goldman family.
As for his being broke, over the ensuing 13 years, the press has repeatedly reported that OJ has found lots of legal ways to hide and squirrel away millions of bucks to keep them away from being taken under that judgement.
So I don’t blame them for being interested.
I wonder if the Goldmans will send OJ any care packages while he’s incarcerated.
Yeah, but they’d probably include summons’ for further court actions to take more of his money!
“Everyone does NOT know that Simpson was guilty of those murders. I certainly don’t know. I wasn’t there.”
You are an absolute retard.
What more evidence do you want, you idiot?
No wonder they say that liberals are retards who have nothing better to do than defend murderers and the ACLU (American Communist Lunatics Union).
Go **** yourself and do us a favor.
Ah yes. James Bond shows the old southern mentality there. James, you are not an American, you do not believe in the Constitution, you do not believe in the Bill of Rights (part of the Constitution). You believe in mob justice so long as it’s YOUR mob. You don’t really belong in this country. You and your evangelical hate-and-fear-everything-that-isn’t-us little band of sadly out of date (and out of power) mental midgets. You don’t deserve the conservative brand, you don’t even deserve the neo-con brand. You don’t deserve the self-proclaimed “values” brand. You do deserve to be isolated from the rest of humanity on a little continent somewhere where you can ply your belief in the hatred of God on each other.
James,
I will not rant like Oldfart, but you’re wrong.
I don’t care if OJ killed his wife on national TV in front of 2 billion people. Our system is designed to protect the innocent, and in so doing, the guilty get the benefit of that protection too. It is required in order for it to work. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be the innocent one that gets thrown in the slammer in the absence of that protection!
In OJ’s case, the police screwed up, the prosecutor screwed up and the courts screwed up. How the hell can we depend upon the system to work when it doesn’t? OJ got off because the DA’s office just flat could not convince a jury that he was guilty.
You weren’t in that jury box, I wasn’t in that jury box, and Oldfart wasn’t there, either. (good thing, too, we’d have killed each other if we had been there together!) So how can you say that EVERYBODY knew he was guilty? If a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich, the press can pronounce it guilty.
No, we DON’T know that he was guilty. All we know is that it looked like it from where we were sitting, but WE weren’t sitting in the jury box.
So back off and stop being so hateful. It does not help foster a decent discussion. Use reason and evidence, instead, it works better than personal attacks. I know for a fact that if you hit Oldfart over the head with real evidence, he’ll shut up.
(not for long, of course…)
This has been a very interesting discussion.
I’m not a legal expert and I was real young when the trial happened so i don’t remember that much of it, so this comment is NOT meant as an observation on the legal hullabaloo of 13 years ago. That being said, you’ve gotta admit that writing that book a few years back (the one called “If I Did It”) was an awfully strange action for a guy who was “innocent.”
Political Animal makes a good point. Seriously, if you actually defend the “system” to the core and argue that Simpson was not guilty, I have to not only question your sense but your ethical integrity as well.
Yes, you can say and preach the “innocent until proven guilty” thing as long as you want, but anyone with a brain would conclude that the murder case was not normalcy and that the rich bastard got away with it.
I did not, if you carefully read my post, argue that he didn’t commit the act. My post was about the legality of his acquittal, which was real. I couldn’t care less, for the purposes of this discussion, about whether he was wrongly acquitted. I DID note that the cops, the DA and the Courts screwed up, didn’t I though?
My point is that criminal cases are hard. They are multi-layered things in which many different people get involved, and where there are so many points at which things can get buggered up that it is a miracle that we ever get it right.
I sat on a jury in an assault case once, read about it in my post above. Did the guy REALLY hit his wife?
I DON’T KNOW, and I sat on that jury. That is why we let him go. He may have, but it was his word against hers, and she needed real proof to show that she wasn’t lying. He didn’t need to prove squat to get off. That’s just the way our system works. It ain’t fair to the victim sometimes, but it is designed to keep from sending the innocent to jail, even if it fails at that too.
My point is that since the cops buggered the investigation into the murders, and the DA’s office let it get turned into a circus, while the judge sat back and let THAT get worse, all you and I have is what the press told us. That is, as you should very well know, not worth spit on a warm hearth.
So, no, I DON’T know that OJ killed his wife and her boyfriend. He may have, but since the cops never try to go back and revisit murders where the courts prove them wrong, we’ll never know if there was anybody else with the motive to do it, will we?
In the meantime, back off a bit on the certainty you seem to have. You may think he was guilty all you want. but in our legal system, he beat the rap, and that is that. NOBODY EVER PROVED HE WAS GUILTY.
Period, end of story.
Edit:
An additional note about the designation of guilty/not guilty/innocent thing.
You will note that most jurisdictions use the designations of guilty or NOT guilty.
I had this explained in a law class in college way back when - the term guilty, of course, is self-explanatory.
But the term “not guilty” is used instead of “innocent” because from a legal standpoint, one can never reach an ironclad conclusion that a person is truly innocent. It actually reflects the legal fact that a court’s job is to decide whether the Prosecutor has proven his case that the accused is guilty or “not”. Hence the term “not guilty”. It is NOT the court’s job to decide innocence.
It goes to the root of our legal system, which is an arm of the government. It reflects the government’s power, given and delineated in the Constitution, to keep the peace and enforce its laws. In our system, as opposed to other systems elsewhere, the accused is assumed innocent until PROVEN guilty. That means that the DA has to present a case in which he proves according to the standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the accused is guilty.
On the other side, the accused only has to refute the State’s case. Nobody, legally, has to PROVE their innocence, they only have to refute the State’s case, which results in a finding of not guilty.
This means that yes, sometimes guilty parties get off, because either the cops, the DA, the courts, or some combination of those three, screwed up and failed to either find or present enough evidence of the accused’ guilt.
But don’t blame the guilty party - nobody wants to go to jail. Blame the cops, or the DA’s office for bungling the investigation. Sometimes the courts behave badly in letting a case get to the level of circus, but that’s rare.
Until our system gets to the point where we are willing to go back to cases that show that the cops got it wrong and reopen those cases, we will never know whether any individual is truly guilty or not.
And there it remains.
Proving your innocence is equivalent to proving a negative which is a very difficult proposition whether it be a fact of nature (unicorns don’t exist) or a fact of evidence (I had a knife but I didn’t use it). If the state assumed you guilty (as some still do), it would be very difficult to prove you were not.
R - I don’t quite understand why we would have killed each other had we been sitting on the jury. We both are interested in the evidence and the truth. I doubt we would have argued at all.
True, but with JB in the mix…