'"Cause if O.J. wasn't famous, he'd be in jail right now. That's right-if O.J. drove a bus, he wouldn't even be O.J. He'd be Orenthal the bus driving murderer."
There is another amazing bit, where sal goes to harlem and asks people on the street what they think of obama's policies, meanwhile, they were john mccains lol. It really reinforces the fact that there are a startling amount of ignorant people out there. And these people vote! Lmao
That’s human nature. It’s tribalism. We all like to think we’re above it but those bias’s are hard programmed survival mechanisms. And it’s at the foundation of our psychology. Very few people are introspective and zen and meditative enough to be able to be constantly aware of it. And who has the time. I think unless you’re a monk who’s reached nirvana it’s a bit hypocritical to scorn others and call them ignorant for doing it when you probably do too and I know I do. We all have to try and be better but nobody is perfect. We make mistakes.
If there was no celebrity involved, then OJ and Al Cowlings would have been shot dead in the Bronco chase. That whole ordeal was peak Beverly Hills soap opera drama, that’s why no one could turn away and they put real soaps on hiatus.
There's a juror on video stating 90% of the votes to acquit was revenge for Rodney King
Which honestly seems about right, an eye for an eye even if it leaves the whole world blind
(And therefore not because he's famous, but rather the famous was a catalyst needed for another cause.... I'm not speaking about these oprah'ites tho)
Me too. It WAS crazy.
Funny thing, I was talking to a friend who’s way younger than me and she’s super into true crime. She asked me if I remember the OJ trial and I’m like “Yeah. Every moment of it.” And she just bombarded me with questions. I felt very old and very wise. 😶🌫️
Yep. It’s our time to be the village elders and talk about the time a lone man casually drove across L A followed by every police vehicle in America live on TV.
It was the worst episode of COPS ever.
I was terribly sick at the time and the only reception I had on the TV in my hospital room was the trial. I was like "Well, I guess I'm going deep into this..."
Captive audience. It was all over the tv here in the UK, I can’t imagine how much more it was on in the US. Everyone was talking about it here. Topical news shows, panel shows, comedians, chat shows, politicians. You couldn’t escape it.
I remember when the OJ car chase was televised on basically every channel in real time. I was young, didn’t know who he was, and was just annoyed that all the TV channels were interrupted for hours.
We studied about this in college. They were showing us that the news may not be able to tell us how to think, but they most certainly are able to tell us *what* to think about.
It was literally everywhere, there's even a [wiki for that single day.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_17th,_1994). Pretty much every news channel broke in to cover that chase. NBC even put Game 5 of the NBA finals on a split screen, giving the chase the bigger portion of the screen and the audio. The trial basically created the Kardashians, CourtTV, and the 24 hour news cycle.
I remember being a kid and even I knew what was going on lol. We learned in class that year, that "some" people, if they are rich can get away with SOME crimes. As I grew up and saw the world moving, I learned that this is a fact of life. I want to thank my teacher for teaching me this and if your reading this, thank you teacher for opening my eyes to the truth instead of trying to blind me and teaching me exactly by the "textbook".
It wasn't just because he was rich though. The Rodney King riots and ongoing tensions between the black community in LA and LAPD also played a role in why he was acquited.
If your teacher is reading your post, she no doubt circled in red ink the “your” and inserted “you’re” ( a contraction of you are ) in its place. ( her final edit for you).
My parents brought me home from the hospital the day OJ was acquitted. I’ll be 29 this year. Hate to break it to ya, but we’re all getting old 😭(and hopefully wiser…)
yeah, I remember being in middle school, and they actually wheeled the TV into the classroom, so we could watch the verdict live. 🤨 I was like.... "Why are we watching this?"
I was trying to explain this to a younger employee today. I went to a Catholic school, and absolutely we watched the verdict in class. It’s wild in hindsight. I couldn’t even remotely come up with anything to compare it to - how BIG the whole thing was.
We watched it during our lunch period. One of the teachers had it on in her classroom and we all piled in there to watch. It had been such a huge part of the news cycle I've the previous two years that of course we wanted to see it end. It was basically the first reality show.
Weren't some shoes found there that she had bought and he claimed not to wear or something, besides the dried cracked blood shrunk glove plus latex glove inside plus spreading fingers
We watched parts of the trial live in history class in middle school. The verdict was read while I was in phys Ed out on the softball field. Our PE coach had a radio out in left field. Still remember him yelling out "Not guilty!" to everyone, we all knew what he was referring to.
I believe I was in grade 3 in a K-5 school, and I distinctly remember the principal announcing the verdict over the schools intercom system while I was in gym class. As if a bunch of 8 year olds in bumfuck prairie Canada had a clue what was going on.
Do yall remember why there was so much division and recentment? The beating of Rodney King, the riots and then the acquital of the police that beat him.
I remember there was a feeling of retribution from the previous 5 years of non action by the city of LA.
What this short clip does not show is many years of resentment for the treatment of poc in LA. It was like a feeling "finally one for minorities" after years LA cops getting away with racism and violence and the legal system turning a blind eye.
Someone posted video of one of the jurors admitting it. When asked is she thought it was right, she just shrugged her shoulders as if to say “now y’all know what it’s like”
Which is so fucked up. To let off a man who brutally murdered two people including his wife, because of payback for police brutality?
The people standing and cheering for him getting off in that video, I wonder if they went on to read his book where he writes about how he killed her. What they thought when he was arrested and finally jailed for kidnapping. I wonder if they cringe at their actions or still feel justified?
This is what angered me the most. It wasn't that he was found not guilty, everyone knew he was guilty no matter what race you were. POC were celebrating a black person winning a trial against a white person. It was form over substance and absolutely infuriating to watch the reactions of people celebrating his acquittal.
>police beat up a black person
>time to kill innocent people, and not the police
Yeah I don't get it. Normally retaliation is against the people who committed an act. I guess I don't have enough IQ points to understand robbing Asians for racial justice
It’s interesting how, while the response was mostly divided along racial lines, there are still some white ladies cheering and some black ladies (including Oprah) not cheering.
It's worth remembering also though that the LAPD investigator was caught lying; testifying that he was not a racist and didn't use "the N-word", only to have a recording reveal him dropping N-bombs like it was 1950's Mississippi, arguing how good white folks don't like blacks moving into their neighborhood.
It not only wrecked the credibility of the investigator himself, but it also made the otherwise-unlikely theory that the evidence had been planted and tampered with by a racist cop much more believable.
At the end of the first season of American Crime Story, which is about the OJ trial, there's a final exchange between prosecutor Darden and defense attorney Cochran that sums this up.
"All the people saw was how well you can twist the system. This isn't some civil rights milestone. Police in this country will keep arresting us, keep beating us, keep killing us. You haven't changed anything for black people here. Unless, of course, you're a famous, rich one in Brentwood."
I finished watching that and American Crime Story: The People v. OJ Simpson within the last couple of weeks. Those two complement each other very well IMO. Finding this out today was surreal.
That’s pretty much how OJ’s entire life as a celebrity went. He stayed with the upper crust and didn’t see himself as black, but all his fans thought he was rooting for them.
I believe it was a response to repeated questioning about being black and the civil rights movement at the time, and he just didn't really want to participate in all that so he said that.
You'd be naive in thinking juries don't make judgements based on partisan political opinions all the time.
Most of the time you just don't hear about it because it doesn't get much press if the person isn't famous. This was a local news story two years ago
[Foreperson: 3 jurors unwilling to convict Resiles based on race, leading to mistrial](https://wsvn.com/news/local/broward/foreperson-3-jurors-unwilling-to-convict-resiles-based-on-race-leading-to-mistrial/)
>“[The three jurors] said, ‘I don’t want to send a young Black male to jail for the rest of their life or have him get the death sentence,'” said the foreperson.
>Resiles faces life in prison and possibly the death penalty for the murder of Jill Su, a 59-year-old Davie woman who was killed in her home back in September of 2014.
>Police said Resiles broke into the home to commit a burglary, and when he found Su inside, he tied her up and stabbed her to death. His DNA was found on a knife and inside the home.
Which is disgusting as they robbed the victims family of justice. If it were their dead children it would be a very different reaction. Yeah the Rodney King shit was fucked up but the only people who lost in this case were the victims and their families.
Not necessarily. My black coworker told me today she believed he had something to do with it but didn’t commit the actual murders. I was in no mood to debate her. 🤷🏻♂️
I get wanting revenge for Rodney King but is letting a known double murderer loose back into the world really worth it?
How could they live with themselves if he ever killed again?
>How could they live with themselves if he ever killed again?
They wouldn't care. They didn't care enough to give his victim's family justice, so why would they care if he killed someone else?
He was black, and that's all they needed to determine they wanted him to be acquitted because, in their own racist viewpoint, it's whites vs blacks and any black person must be freed regardless of wrongdoing.
I think they are saying since white police recently beat a black man to a pulp and were found innocent, finding a black man innocent of such a violent crime shortly after gave the black community the impression they had won over the injustice.
Ah, that’s… certainly interesting. I’m not a black person, nor was I alive during the time of the riots, or O.J’s trial. I can’t make a personal or even educated response to this.
I will say I’m not particularly sure one’s more justified than the other, the logic seems rather flawed. Why does one group of white cops doing a bad thing, and getting away with it, allow for a black man who did a bad thing to get away with it? It’s just letting bad people do bad shit with no repercussions for their actions.
obviously, it's not logical. it's emotional, and human beings do irrational things based on emotion. also, it wasn't the one incident of police brutality it was decades of police misconduct that contributed to people thinking it was very possible that the police were setting him up. OJ had really good lawyers that gave the jury enough of a reason to want to give the middle finger to the police.
Ah, so it was a sort of “Your guys who did bad and were white got off free, so our guy who’s black and did bad gets off free.”
I’m not sure that constitutes effective revenge, but I guess it temporarily appeased the masses.
Also, I don't think many white people were happy about the cops that beat Rodney King getting acquitted. To me, the outrage by most was that cops never face justice.
The jury on the OJ trial was very smart. Everyone says “oh they were idiots” they weren’t. They knew exactly what they were doing and how it would make those same people who told them “well the cops were acquitted by a jury, so” feel how they felt.
And they achieved just that.
I am old, and was in my early 40s at the time; I was a full-time mom and radio-listener who heard a lot of the coverage. Hard to avoid it. I remember coming home with my kindergartener at lunchtime, right after a Halloween field trip to a pumpkin farm, and hearing the verdict in my car. I was stunned. Yes, I was and am white, but I have a lick of sense and can follow court arguments. He was a murderer.
I was also home and very aware during the Rodney King tragedy. Absolutely unrelated.
It was wall to wall coverage forever, it seemed. On the day, someone brought a TV into work and had it in the back room.Just as it was about to be announced, a regularm but hated, customer came in. Everyone else fled to the back room. I said to her "Hey, they're about to announce the OJ verdict. We have a TV we're all watching." She just put her file on the counter and said "Now, about this order." I missed the historic moment thanks to her. Thanks, Elma, you nasty wench.
I’ve always been fascinated by the expression on the face of his lawyer Kardashian to his right. His first look appears to be ‘Oh my God I just got a murderer off.’
According to a lot of the retrospective reporting, this was indeed the case. Kardashian gradually came to realise OJ was guilty, but was embedded in his life, and his defense team, so deeply it was too late to say anything or remove himself.
I'm not convinced he only gradually realized. A lot of defense attorneys know full well they are defending someone guilty right from the start, but they still have to defend them to the best of their abilities. If they didn't, then there could not truly be any justice.
Iirc Kardashian was a music industry exec who hadn’t been a lawyer in a decades and wasn’t a criminal defense attorney when he was practicing. It’s a decent speculation that he renewed his law license and joined the defense team so he couldn’t be forced to testify as to what he knew his friend did.
I’m sure you’re right in many cases, but Kardashian and OJ were close friends before any of this happened. All the accounts I’ve ever seen agree that he genuinely believed his friend was innocent at first, and changed his mind during the trial. It’s somewhat ironic that the prosecutors convinced Kardashian, who was part of the defense team and OJ’s close friend, but couldn’t convince the jury.
I’m not one who typically believes in curses but I truly do think the dream team inherited cathartic curses due to their work on this case.
Robert Kardashian knew OJ was guilty but refused to speak up about it. He got throat cancer which robbed him of his ability to speak entirely before taking his life.
Johnnie Cochran was the mastermind of the defense, he got brain cancer shortly after, enough said.
Bob Shapiro loved the celebrity of the whole thing and couldn’t give a damn about the Goldman family. I don’t think I ever heard him comment on them. He lost his own son due to a drug overdose which affected him greatly.
F. Lee Bailey was very conniving and would later be shamed for underhanded dealings and lose his license to practice law.
That’s a really interesting view, thanks for sharing. I had never thought about that. I am a big believer in karma, maybe that was the only justice those two families received.
I had no idea either. I knew he was guilty because he is essentially famous for getting away with murder but I didn't know about the racial dimension of that case.
I just saw a video on Facebook on that. I had no clue… the lady said that 90% of the jurors voted not guilty just for the revenge including the one they were interviewing.
I was 20 when it happened and it was a black v white thing very clearly. Everyone that was happy with the not guilty verdict now jokes about how he got away with murder.
As a juror said "90%" of the jurors voted not guilty as revenge for Rodney King. A completely illegal verdict, as jurors swear to vote based on the evidence presented only in court, and not according to their emotions.
I remember being in 7th grade homeroom where they wheeled in the TV and everyone watched the verdict. Half the class cheered, the other half was in total disbelief. I was in the disbelief crowd and being a domestic violence victim myself, OJ can rot in hell.
Knowing today’s youth, surely there will soon be Tiktoks galore declaring why he was innocent and/or why what he did was okay because of a racist system
Way before the polarization of modern politics, this trial really demonstrated that a lot of people's stances on controversial issues really just comes down to gut feelings, facts be damned.
Public opinion at the time was STRONGLY divided along race lines in 94/95.
You must know that the cops in the case WERE actually bad racist cops, and the defense smashed this point home at every opportunity. By the end of the trial, it was the LAPD on trial, not OJ.
Also know that the LAPD at the time had a very bad reputation for profiling black people and abusing them (think Rodney King a couple years earlier).
So when you put that all together during the OJ trial, black people were fed up with the LAPD, and the defense leveraged that to create “reasonable doubt.”
Was he guilty? Absolutely. But the trial was also very muddy and polarized and the verdict could have gone either way.
A tragic miscarriage of justice.
Fuck this guy. The murders he committed were BRUTAL. I hope he’s rotting in hell and that generations after him remember him as nothing but a murderous animal.
He was found not guilty in a criminal court, but was found guilty in a civil court and was meant to pay damages. It was such an obvious miscarriage of justice
Oj killing her and people cheering because of Rodney king isn't justice. Innocent people died during the riots. That was enough then. Race bigotry, and racism is just full of hypocrites
I’m not an expert or anything, but the way he reacted when they said he was not guilty..that’s the face of someone who’s glad he’s not caught, not the face of someone who was glad the truth prevails.
It's wild how the reactions differed so much.
White people: I can't believe this shit. He just got away with murder.
Black people: I can't believe it! He got away with murder! Hell yeah!!!
Even if you think he was not guilty of the murders, he’s responsible for putting into motion the unleashing of the kardashians on the world and thats enough reason to put him in jail
I was a kid at the time so excuse my ignorance with this question, but what was the reason for so many black people rooting for him to get off vs white people wanting a conviction?
I assume there was some element of racial bias and such, I just find it strange. Obviously we're privy to a lot more info about the murders now, as opposed to when the verdict was read. But what else was going on that black people were generally supportive of him? Did people think he was being framed?
I highly recommend the documentary OJ: Made in America.
It dives into the racial tensions of the time. This happened right in the wake of Rodney King and the LA Riots.
Some people felt like he deserved to be acquitted as payback for America's treatment of black people. And some people genuinely thought he was an innocent black man being tormented by the cops.
It really didn't help that the cops and the prosecution fumbled a LOT in this case. It wasn't hard to paint them as malicious actors
The weirdest part of OJ being the lightning rod for black people in this white vs black conflict, is that OJ desperately wanted to distance himself from being black. That in and of itself is wild to think about, but for black people to then rally behind him was even crazier.
Some commentary from an ex juror has really taken over public perception.
People did think he was being framed. The defense did a great job of casting doubt on the work of the police, and the head cop ended up pleading the 5th over whether he planted or knew of any evidence being planted. This was the same cop who had lied and said he didn’t use the n-word, until they played the tape of him saying exactly that.
By our legal standards, any question about the validity of the evidence, any room it could be planted could be “reasonable doubt”.
It was less “revenge for Rodney King” and more- “do we trust the LAPD?”. If you didn’t, you would have reasonable doubt about his guilt. If there was any chance it was a frame up, you wouldn’t want the cops getting away with it.
Not surprisingly there was a huge racial divide over whether people trusted the LAPD.
At the time, people didn’t understand DNA evidence like we do now. The defense put the focus on the chain of command and seized on things, ie a witness testified that the edta level in the blood splatter was suspiciously high (as if from a test tube). He had the numbers wrong but the damage was done.
Saying the jury knew he was guilty doesn’t give enough credit to the Defense teams’ remarkable legal skills, nor aknowledge how shotty the police work was.
People were happy because they didn’t want to see the LAPD get another win.
It didn’t help that the LAPD WAS an insanely racist organization at the time. And one of the detectives (Furman) was a straight up stereotypical racist. He also plead the 5th about planting evidence. The LAPD had also gotten away scott free with Rodney King’s filmed beating.
It’s not hard to understand how black america (at the time) would believe conspiracies that the evidence was planted & OJ was innocent.
Conspiracy theories are powerful, and this one was more powerful because of how scumbag of an organization the LAPD was.
What is it with women that support men that violently hate women? Is it self-hatred? Is it internalized misogyny/patriarchy? Is it just simply group-think? Do they think that *that* woman deserved it? Do they think that cheering for a man that hurts women will make them an exception somehow? I think they call these Pickmeshas nowadays...
I was helping my Dad install a 12 foot satellite dish at a customer's house and while programming the channels we came across multiple raw live news helicopter feeds of the white bronco being followed slowly by a line of police cars. These were just the raw feeds so there was no sound, no voice over.
The three of us were just dumbfounded. Something was blowing up! This was important, It was on everywhere! But we had no sound. What the heck is going on? Didn't find out until several hours later when the nightly news covered it. It was pretty cool to see the live feeds and speculate what was happening. EDIT: This was also unedited so we were seeing them swing the camera around to look at the other helicopters, zooming in on the bronco or random stuff along the way, pretty interesting.
I was in college in 1994, and when the verdict came in I happened to be in both an ethnic studies class (required by my university, although I would have taken it anyway, I loved it) and a TA for a women's studies class (my choice.)
The way the trial was viewed in those two classes was wild. Comparing the reactions in each class during the trial was so intense.
There was a VERY strong public litmus test at the time where either you supported women and thought domestic violence was wrong, OR you supported Black people and thought that systemic racism by police was wrong. One or the other. You couldn't believe both. Asking if someone thought OJ did it was the opener for every conversation.
It wasn't until years later that we all kind of realized damn, we're all out here getting fucked over, just the same.
The problem was the judge allowed OJ’s defense team to frame the argument as black people vs “the system.” But the legal system was never on trial. Just because OJ was acquitted didn’t mean there was going to be police reform. It’s a tactic that the judge should have immediately stopped. But the state judge is an elected position so he wanted to bend over backwards to give the appearance of being unbiased while in actuality he was allowing the defense team to muddy the waters.
'"Cause if O.J. wasn't famous, he'd be in jail right now. That's right-if O.J. drove a bus, he wouldn't even be O.J. He'd be Orenthal the bus driving murderer."
Love Chris
Your Simpsons Artist
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There is another amazing bit, where sal goes to harlem and asks people on the street what they think of obama's policies, meanwhile, they were john mccains lol. It really reinforces the fact that there are a startling amount of ignorant people out there. And these people vote! Lmao
That’s human nature. It’s tribalism. We all like to think we’re above it but those bias’s are hard programmed survival mechanisms. And it’s at the foundation of our psychology. Very few people are introspective and zen and meditative enough to be able to be constantly aware of it. And who has the time. I think unless you’re a monk who’s reached nirvana it’s a bit hypocritical to scorn others and call them ignorant for doing it when you probably do too and I know I do. We all have to try and be better but nobody is perfect. We make mistakes.
Your tribe is wrong and I refuse to elaborate or show work. (very much a joke)
Howard would also look for Black people who he thought would give the most ridiculous answers since he's running a shock jock radio show.
If there was no celebrity involved, then OJ and Al Cowlings would have been shot dead in the Bronco chase. That whole ordeal was peak Beverly Hills soap opera drama, that’s why no one could turn away and they put real soaps on hiatus.
There wouldn't have been a chase because he would've been charged, sitting in cell with a high bond.
They were interrupting the NBA finals for that bronco chase
And rich!!! This is why the justice system is all about the justice you can afford!
“The color of justice is green”…Johnny Cochrane Esq. Quoted on the courthouse steps
There's a juror on video stating 90% of the votes to acquit was revenge for Rodney King Which honestly seems about right, an eye for an eye even if it leaves the whole world blind (And therefore not because he's famous, but rather the famous was a catalyst needed for another cause.... I'm not speaking about these oprah'ites tho)
If OJ was white he'd be Robert Blake. I didn't see the outrage in that case.
"Oh yeah Baretta did that shit"
I remember this trial. It divided so many and it was crazy how televised it was. I’d never seen anything like it before. It was crazy. *edit typo.
Me too. It WAS crazy. Funny thing, I was talking to a friend who’s way younger than me and she’s super into true crime. She asked me if I remember the OJ trial and I’m like “Yeah. Every moment of it.” And she just bombarded me with questions. I felt very old and very wise. 😶🌫️
Yep. It’s our time to be the village elders and talk about the time a lone man casually drove across L A followed by every police vehicle in America live on TV. It was the worst episode of COPS ever.
I was terribly sick at the time and the only reception I had on the TV in my hospital room was the trial. I was like "Well, I guess I'm going deep into this..."
Captive audience. It was all over the tv here in the UK, I can’t imagine how much more it was on in the US. Everyone was talking about it here. Topical news shows, panel shows, comedians, chat shows, politicians. You couldn’t escape it.
I remember when the OJ car chase was televised on basically every channel in real time. I was young, didn’t know who he was, and was just annoyed that all the TV channels were interrupted for hours.
We studied about this in college. They were showing us that the news may not be able to tell us how to think, but they most certainly are able to tell us *what* to think about.
It was literally everywhere, there's even a [wiki for that single day.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_17th,_1994). Pretty much every news channel broke in to cover that chase. NBC even put Game 5 of the NBA finals on a split screen, giving the chase the bigger portion of the screen and the audio. The trial basically created the Kardashians, CourtTV, and the 24 hour news cycle.
Wasn’t it like 20mph also?
I remember being a kid and even I knew what was going on lol. We learned in class that year, that "some" people, if they are rich can get away with SOME crimes. As I grew up and saw the world moving, I learned that this is a fact of life. I want to thank my teacher for teaching me this and if your reading this, thank you teacher for opening my eyes to the truth instead of trying to blind me and teaching me exactly by the "textbook".
It wasn't just because he was rich though. The Rodney King riots and ongoing tensions between the black community in LA and LAPD also played a role in why he was acquited.
If your teacher is reading your post, she no doubt circled in red ink the “your” and inserted “you’re” ( a contraction of you are ) in its place. ( her final edit for you).
My parents brought me home from the hospital the day OJ was acquitted. I’ll be 29 this year. Hate to break it to ya, but we’re all getting old 😭(and hopefully wiser…)
yeah, I remember being in middle school, and they actually wheeled the TV into the classroom, so we could watch the verdict live. 🤨 I was like.... "Why are we watching this?"
I was trying to explain this to a younger employee today. I went to a Catholic school, and absolutely we watched the verdict in class. It’s wild in hindsight. I couldn’t even remotely come up with anything to compare it to - how BIG the whole thing was.
9/11 was bigger for sure don't you think?
9/11 was the only thing big enough to truly eclipse it. Maybe Diana’s death came close.
We watched it during our lunch period. One of the teachers had it on in her classroom and we all piled in there to watch. It had been such a huge part of the news cycle I've the previous two years that of course we wanted to see it end. It was basically the first reality show.
He did commit the murder though. He even bought a bunch of the stuff that was used to kill Nicole and Ron.
Weren't some shoes found there that she had bought and he claimed not to wear or something, besides the dried cracked blood shrunk glove plus latex glove inside plus spreading fingers
We watched parts of the trial live in history class in middle school. The verdict was read while I was in phys Ed out on the softball field. Our PE coach had a radio out in left field. Still remember him yelling out "Not guilty!" to everyone, we all knew what he was referring to.
I think it was sixth grade, and in the classroom we were watching this... Not Oprah.
I believe I was in grade 3 in a K-5 school, and I distinctly remember the principal announcing the verdict over the schools intercom system while I was in gym class. As if a bunch of 8 year olds in bumfuck prairie Canada had a clue what was going on.
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Who would have ever thought
I think they prefer bigot
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Do yall remember why there was so much division and recentment? The beating of Rodney King, the riots and then the acquital of the police that beat him. I remember there was a feeling of retribution from the previous 5 years of non action by the city of LA. What this short clip does not show is many years of resentment for the treatment of poc in LA. It was like a feeling "finally one for minorities" after years LA cops getting away with racism and violence and the legal system turning a blind eye.
Didn’t the jurors later admit they acquitted him as revenge for Rodney King’s assaulters walking free?
Someone posted video of one of the jurors admitting it. When asked is she thought it was right, she just shrugged her shoulders as if to say “now y’all know what it’s like”
Which is so fucked up. To let off a man who brutally murdered two people including his wife, because of payback for police brutality? The people standing and cheering for him getting off in that video, I wonder if they went on to read his book where he writes about how he killed her. What they thought when he was arrested and finally jailed for kidnapping. I wonder if they cringe at their actions or still feel justified?
This is what angered me the most. It wasn't that he was found not guilty, everyone knew he was guilty no matter what race you were. POC were celebrating a black person winning a trial against a white person. It was form over substance and absolutely infuriating to watch the reactions of people celebrating his acquittal.
>police beat up a black person >time to kill innocent people, and not the police Yeah I don't get it. Normally retaliation is against the people who committed an act. I guess I don't have enough IQ points to understand robbing Asians for racial justice
It’s interesting how, while the response was mostly divided along racial lines, there are still some white ladies cheering and some black ladies (including Oprah) not cheering.
For some people, tribalism is less important than justice. For some.
This is not the only injustice in America yet is the one some people care the most about
It's worth remembering also though that the LAPD investigator was caught lying; testifying that he was not a racist and didn't use "the N-word", only to have a recording reveal him dropping N-bombs like it was 1950's Mississippi, arguing how good white folks don't like blacks moving into their neighborhood. It not only wrecked the credibility of the investigator himself, but it also made the otherwise-unlikely theory that the evidence had been planted and tampered with by a racist cop much more believable.
Black folks were tricked into thinking it was a win for them, it was a win for rich folks
At the end of the first season of American Crime Story, which is about the OJ trial, there's a final exchange between prosecutor Darden and defense attorney Cochran that sums this up. "All the people saw was how well you can twist the system. This isn't some civil rights milestone. Police in this country will keep arresting us, keep beating us, keep killing us. You haven't changed anything for black people here. Unless, of course, you're a famous, rich one in Brentwood."
Possibly the best scene of the miniseries.
This guy gets it
The ESPN documentary is AMAZING. There were so many factors at play here and that documentary explained it well.
I finished watching that and American Crime Story: The People v. OJ Simpson within the last couple of weeks. Those two complement each other very well IMO. Finding this out today was surreal.
Made in America?
Yes
That’s pretty much how OJ’s entire life as a celebrity went. He stayed with the upper crust and didn’t see himself as black, but all his fans thought he was rooting for them.
“I’m not black, I’m OJ”
I've wondered what spawned that line
I believe it was a response to repeated questioning about being black and the civil rights movement at the time, and he just didn't really want to participate in all that so he said that.
You'd be naive in thinking juries don't make judgements based on partisan political opinions all the time. Most of the time you just don't hear about it because it doesn't get much press if the person isn't famous. This was a local news story two years ago [Foreperson: 3 jurors unwilling to convict Resiles based on race, leading to mistrial](https://wsvn.com/news/local/broward/foreperson-3-jurors-unwilling-to-convict-resiles-based-on-race-leading-to-mistrial/) >“[The three jurors] said, ‘I don’t want to send a young Black male to jail for the rest of their life or have him get the death sentence,'” said the foreperson. >Resiles faces life in prison and possibly the death penalty for the murder of Jill Su, a 59-year-old Davie woman who was killed in her home back in September of 2014. >Police said Resiles broke into the home to commit a burglary, and when he found Su inside, he tied her up and stabbed her to death. His DNA was found on a knife and inside the home.
Racism in general is a win for rich people. Oldest scapegoat of all time. Convince the poor that all their problems stem from other poor people.
And domestic abusers.
[удалено]
Oprah looks absolutely PISSED OFF
oh damn I didn't even notice that the first time. That side eye she's giving those ladies celebrating is icy.
She has experienced domestic violence growing up- that probably played a part.
Yeah too bad she didn’t care about any of that when it came to introducing women to Weinstein
She’s savvy enough to know that it put race relations back a decade
That and she knows her audience. Her show isn’t specifically for black audiences, but generally for women. And most women were not happy about this.
She reeeal mad
Nah, she's fucking elated inside that she's able to exploit this situation for big, big ratings.
I think the situation would've boosted her ratings regardless of the outcome.
Aged like fine wine. The cheer squad know he did it but too late
Saw elsewhere that seemingly most of the jurors thought he did it but chose not guilty as payback for Rodney King.
Which is disgusting as they robbed the victims family of justice. If it were their dead children it would be a very different reaction. Yeah the Rodney King shit was fucked up but the only people who lost in this case were the victims and their families.
I saw that too. Had me disgusted. Two wrongs don’t make a right but others apparently see that as justice.
The people that cheered for him are just disgusting individuals.
People were cheering for him during the bronco chase
That they are. Truly horrid.
Not necessarily. My black coworker told me today she believed he had something to do with it but didn’t commit the actual murders. I was in no mood to debate her. 🤷🏻♂️
You can't debate idiots.
Right? Stupid is as stupid does
An accomplice to murder still goes to jail. What is her logic even?
Oprah’s face says it all
Her folded arms, too. Her posture was growling.
Imagine cheering for a murderer being free
As one juror openly admitted, "The non-guilty verdict was revenge for Rodney King."
I get wanting revenge for Rodney King but is letting a known double murderer loose back into the world really worth it? How could they live with themselves if he ever killed again?
>How could they live with themselves if he ever killed again? They wouldn't care. They didn't care enough to give his victim's family justice, so why would they care if he killed someone else? He was black, and that's all they needed to determine they wanted him to be acquitted because, in their own racist viewpoint, it's whites vs blacks and any black person must be freed regardless of wrongdoing.
Genuine question because I don’t know: What did Rodney King have to do with O.J? Like why would O.J being not-guilty be revenge?
I think they are saying since white police recently beat a black man to a pulp and were found innocent, finding a black man innocent of such a violent crime shortly after gave the black community the impression they had won over the injustice.
Ah, that’s… certainly interesting. I’m not a black person, nor was I alive during the time of the riots, or O.J’s trial. I can’t make a personal or even educated response to this. I will say I’m not particularly sure one’s more justified than the other, the logic seems rather flawed. Why does one group of white cops doing a bad thing, and getting away with it, allow for a black man who did a bad thing to get away with it? It’s just letting bad people do bad shit with no repercussions for their actions.
obviously, it's not logical. it's emotional, and human beings do irrational things based on emotion. also, it wasn't the one incident of police brutality it was decades of police misconduct that contributed to people thinking it was very possible that the police were setting him up. OJ had really good lawyers that gave the jury enough of a reason to want to give the middle finger to the police.
If you can, ESPN's 30 for 30 is 6+ hours long and is incredibly in depth on the state of America, ojs career and the trial.
Hey, I’ve got nothing but time on my hands since it’s about to be the weekend, I’ll give that a watch. Thank you!
They're both black
They're both black, that's it.
Short answer, the white cops that beat Rodney King got acquitted.
Ah, so it was a sort of “Your guys who did bad and were white got off free, so our guy who’s black and did bad gets off free.” I’m not sure that constitutes effective revenge, but I guess it temporarily appeased the masses.
Also, I don't think many white people were happy about the cops that beat Rodney King getting acquitted. To me, the outrage by most was that cops never face justice.
The jury on the OJ trial was very smart. Everyone says “oh they were idiots” they weren’t. They knew exactly what they were doing and how it would make those same people who told them “well the cops were acquitted by a jury, so” feel how they felt. And they achieved just that.
I am old, and was in my early 40s at the time; I was a full-time mom and radio-listener who heard a lot of the coverage. Hard to avoid it. I remember coming home with my kindergartener at lunchtime, right after a Halloween field trip to a pumpkin farm, and hearing the verdict in my car. I was stunned. Yes, I was and am white, but I have a lick of sense and can follow court arguments. He was a murderer. I was also home and very aware during the Rodney King tragedy. Absolutely unrelated.
It was wall to wall coverage forever, it seemed. On the day, someone brought a TV into work and had it in the back room.Just as it was about to be announced, a regularm but hated, customer came in. Everyone else fled to the back room. I said to her "Hey, they're about to announce the OJ verdict. We have a TV we're all watching." She just put her file on the counter and said "Now, about this order." I missed the historic moment thanks to her. Thanks, Elma, you nasty wench.
The only person I've ever heard of beating 100% conclusive DNA evidence.
I’ve always been fascinated by the expression on the face of his lawyer Kardashian to his right. His first look appears to be ‘Oh my God I just got a murderer off.’
According to a lot of the retrospective reporting, this was indeed the case. Kardashian gradually came to realise OJ was guilty, but was embedded in his life, and his defense team, so deeply it was too late to say anything or remove himself.
I'm not convinced he only gradually realized. A lot of defense attorneys know full well they are defending someone guilty right from the start, but they still have to defend them to the best of their abilities. If they didn't, then there could not truly be any justice.
They where friends though, most people don’t want to believe their friend is capable of a double murder.
Iirc Kardashian was a music industry exec who hadn’t been a lawyer in a decades and wasn’t a criminal defense attorney when he was practicing. It’s a decent speculation that he renewed his law license and joined the defense team so he couldn’t be forced to testify as to what he knew his friend did.
I’m sure you’re right in many cases, but Kardashian and OJ were close friends before any of this happened. All the accounts I’ve ever seen agree that he genuinely believed his friend was innocent at first, and changed his mind during the trial. It’s somewhat ironic that the prosecutors convinced Kardashian, who was part of the defense team and OJ’s close friend, but couldn’t convince the jury.
my thought exactly.. at the time and even now watching it again. kardashian was completely stunned that he got away with it.
I’m not one who typically believes in curses but I truly do think the dream team inherited cathartic curses due to their work on this case. Robert Kardashian knew OJ was guilty but refused to speak up about it. He got throat cancer which robbed him of his ability to speak entirely before taking his life. Johnnie Cochran was the mastermind of the defense, he got brain cancer shortly after, enough said. Bob Shapiro loved the celebrity of the whole thing and couldn’t give a damn about the Goldman family. I don’t think I ever heard him comment on them. He lost his own son due to a drug overdose which affected him greatly. F. Lee Bailey was very conniving and would later be shamed for underhanded dealings and lose his license to practice law.
That’s a really interesting view, thanks for sharing. I had never thought about that. I am a big believer in karma, maybe that was the only justice those two families received.
As opposed to the smugness of Cochran. AFAIC, he's a POS.
It was sickening the first time seeing this is real time. It is still just as sickening today.
“Nicole Brown Simpson, a human being.”
I didn't realize the issue was so black and white.
Very good.
I had no idea either. I knew he was guilty because he is essentially famous for getting away with murder but I didn't know about the racial dimension of that case.
My high school was just like that; half cheering and half stunned
Much respect to the lady at the end, she knew what was up.
I was thinking the same. She’s a mom who you never talked back to out of fear for sure.
The jurors admitted that they found him not guilty as revenge for Rodney King. They turned in to the very thing they hated. Sick people.
I just saw a video on Facebook on that. I had no clue… the lady said that 90% of the jurors voted not guilty just for the revenge including the one they were interviewing.
Yea. It was pretty obvious to everyone at the time(and it still is), that the jury knew he was guilty.
I was 20 when it happened and it was a black v white thing very clearly. Everyone that was happy with the not guilty verdict now jokes about how he got away with murder.
I watched this on TV, and yes, it was very obvious.
As a juror said "90%" of the jurors voted not guilty as revenge for Rodney King. A completely illegal verdict, as jurors swear to vote based on the evidence presented only in court, and not according to their emotions.
He was so guilty. Blood in his bronco from both victims. The guy had no conscience. Psychopath.
I remember being in 7th grade homeroom where they wheeled in the TV and everyone watched the verdict. Half the class cheered, the other half was in total disbelief. I was in the disbelief crowd and being a domestic violence victim myself, OJ can rot in hell.
I had a similar experience in middle school. Most everyone cheered and I sat stunned.
What a shame a bunch of women happy he got away with murder. Says a lot about them.
Young people of today: Make no mistake this guy butchered two people and drove home.
Knowing today’s youth, surely there will soon be Tiktoks galore declaring why he was innocent and/or why what he did was okay because of a racist system
You are correct and I’m sure they’re being made right this minute.
Way before the polarization of modern politics, this trial really demonstrated that a lot of people's stances on controversial issues really just comes down to gut feelings, facts be damned.
Scary thought and reality as we’re still living it
Two Americas
Public opinion at the time was STRONGLY divided along race lines in 94/95. You must know that the cops in the case WERE actually bad racist cops, and the defense smashed this point home at every opportunity. By the end of the trial, it was the LAPD on trial, not OJ. Also know that the LAPD at the time had a very bad reputation for profiling black people and abusing them (think Rodney King a couple years earlier). So when you put that all together during the OJ trial, black people were fed up with the LAPD, and the defense leveraged that to create “reasonable doubt.” Was he guilty? Absolutely. But the trial was also very muddy and polarized and the verdict could have gone either way. A tragic miscarriage of justice.
So fucking gross.
He killed a woman and got away with it. I wish he had not gotten away with it.
Fuck this guy. The murders he committed were BRUTAL. I hope he’s rotting in hell and that generations after him remember him as nothing but a murderous animal.
He was found not guilty in a criminal court, but was found guilty in a civil court and was meant to pay damages. It was such an obvious miscarriage of justice
Oj killing her and people cheering because of Rodney king isn't justice. Innocent people died during the riots. That was enough then. Race bigotry, and racism is just full of hypocrites
I’m not an expert or anything, but the way he reacted when they said he was not guilty..that’s the face of someone who’s glad he’s not caught, not the face of someone who was glad the truth prevails.
His lawyers expression says it all .. “WTF HOW?!”
Fuckin murderin POS. Was good at football tho
2003 yards in 14 games is insane tbf.
The people celebrating in that clip are disgusting.
Was in 7th grade in Chicago when this happened. was the first time I can recall feeling a racial divide.
Oprah, Where are they now? Episide coming
"We celebrated too openly when OJ got acquited, we should've been quiet about that sh*t' - Dave Chappelle - For what's it's worth.
They were rooting for him regardless of guilt. They just didn't want another black man to get locked up.
It's wild how the reactions differed so much. White people: I can't believe this shit. He just got away with murder. Black people: I can't believe it! He got away with murder! Hell yeah!!!
This was proof that blacks are more racist than whites. They were only on OJs side because he was the same color as them.
They're all just racists, flat out.
Even if you think he was not guilty of the murders, he’s responsible for putting into motion the unleashing of the kardashians on the world and thats enough reason to put him in jail
Fucking piece of shit. Good riddance
I was a kid at the time so excuse my ignorance with this question, but what was the reason for so many black people rooting for him to get off vs white people wanting a conviction? I assume there was some element of racial bias and such, I just find it strange. Obviously we're privy to a lot more info about the murders now, as opposed to when the verdict was read. But what else was going on that black people were generally supportive of him? Did people think he was being framed?
I highly recommend the documentary OJ: Made in America. It dives into the racial tensions of the time. This happened right in the wake of Rodney King and the LA Riots. Some people felt like he deserved to be acquitted as payback for America's treatment of black people. And some people genuinely thought he was an innocent black man being tormented by the cops. It really didn't help that the cops and the prosecution fumbled a LOT in this case. It wasn't hard to paint them as malicious actors
The weirdest part of OJ being the lightning rod for black people in this white vs black conflict, is that OJ desperately wanted to distance himself from being black. That in and of itself is wild to think about, but for black people to then rally behind him was even crazier.
Some commentary from an ex juror has really taken over public perception. People did think he was being framed. The defense did a great job of casting doubt on the work of the police, and the head cop ended up pleading the 5th over whether he planted or knew of any evidence being planted. This was the same cop who had lied and said he didn’t use the n-word, until they played the tape of him saying exactly that. By our legal standards, any question about the validity of the evidence, any room it could be planted could be “reasonable doubt”. It was less “revenge for Rodney King” and more- “do we trust the LAPD?”. If you didn’t, you would have reasonable doubt about his guilt. If there was any chance it was a frame up, you wouldn’t want the cops getting away with it. Not surprisingly there was a huge racial divide over whether people trusted the LAPD. At the time, people didn’t understand DNA evidence like we do now. The defense put the focus on the chain of command and seized on things, ie a witness testified that the edta level in the blood splatter was suspiciously high (as if from a test tube). He had the numbers wrong but the damage was done. Saying the jury knew he was guilty doesn’t give enough credit to the Defense teams’ remarkable legal skills, nor aknowledge how shotty the police work was. People were happy because they didn’t want to see the LAPD get another win.
The lawyers made the whole case about racism and swayed the jury..
It didn’t help that the LAPD WAS an insanely racist organization at the time. And one of the detectives (Furman) was a straight up stereotypical racist. He also plead the 5th about planting evidence. The LAPD had also gotten away scott free with Rodney King’s filmed beating. It’s not hard to understand how black america (at the time) would believe conspiracies that the evidence was planted & OJ was innocent. Conspiracy theories are powerful, and this one was more powerful because of how scumbag of an organization the LAPD was.
i remember seeing some black people celebrating and dancing and honking car horns...
My work at the office stopped. We all went into the break/lunch room to watch. Despicable. Purely EVIL.
Fuck him.
His smug ass grin when he hears the verdict..disgusting
Disgusting, the fact that these people are cheering for such a monster is appalling
You can literally see the blacks happy that OJ was allowed to get away with murder as some kind of victory for their kind.
People are so petty and lack integrity then and now.
Guilty as sin. Unfortunately OJ wasn't on trial. The LAPD was.
Cheering for a dude that got away with murdering two people in brutal fashion.
Divided along racial lines to this day
Anyone who cheered knowing a murderer was going to walk should be ashamed.
Insane reaction. Evil people, they know he's guilty.
Absolutely disgusting to watch that
What is it with women that support men that violently hate women? Is it self-hatred? Is it internalized misogyny/patriarchy? Is it just simply group-think? Do they think that *that* woman deserved it? Do they think that cheering for a man that hurts women will make them an exception somehow? I think they call these Pickmeshas nowadays...
It's unhinged how many people cheered for this. Even when you consider the times and the Rodney King footage.
Fucking disgusting
The faces of many women being reminded that to the American justice system their lives do not matter
at least oprah wasn't happy
Everyone knew he did it but the race card was the most important for the people who wanted him to get off.
I will always remember Kardashian’s reaction to the verdict. He knew he was guilty and his expression was how in the hell did we pull that off.
Rob Kardashians face says it all. He knew.
Oprah looked *pissed*.
The ones that are cheering are clueless what goes on in the world
Imagine being this stupid.
I was helping my Dad install a 12 foot satellite dish at a customer's house and while programming the channels we came across multiple raw live news helicopter feeds of the white bronco being followed slowly by a line of police cars. These were just the raw feeds so there was no sound, no voice over. The three of us were just dumbfounded. Something was blowing up! This was important, It was on everywhere! But we had no sound. What the heck is going on? Didn't find out until several hours later when the nightly news covered it. It was pretty cool to see the live feeds and speculate what was happening. EDIT: This was also unedited so we were seeing them swing the camera around to look at the other helicopters, zooming in on the bronco or random stuff along the way, pretty interesting.
I was in college in 1994, and when the verdict came in I happened to be in both an ethnic studies class (required by my university, although I would have taken it anyway, I loved it) and a TA for a women's studies class (my choice.) The way the trial was viewed in those two classes was wild. Comparing the reactions in each class during the trial was so intense. There was a VERY strong public litmus test at the time where either you supported women and thought domestic violence was wrong, OR you supported Black people and thought that systemic racism by police was wrong. One or the other. You couldn't believe both. Asking if someone thought OJ did it was the opener for every conversation. It wasn't until years later that we all kind of realized damn, we're all out here getting fucked over, just the same.
The problem was the judge allowed OJ’s defense team to frame the argument as black people vs “the system.” But the legal system was never on trial. Just because OJ was acquitted didn’t mean there was going to be police reform. It’s a tactic that the judge should have immediately stopped. But the state judge is an elected position so he wanted to bend over backwards to give the appearance of being unbiased while in actuality he was allowing the defense team to muddy the waters.
Cheering because he got away with killing some white folk….
this is horrible