O.J.: Chapter is not a murder confession

[Herman Munster]

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/16461341.htm

LOS ANGELES - O.J. Simpson says a chapter from his unpublished book that hypothesizes how he would have killed his ex-wife and her friend was created mostly from a ghostwriter's research and is not a confession.

"I'm saying it's a fictional creation," Simpson said Sunday in a telephone interview. "It has so many (factual) holes in it that anybody who knew anything about it would know that I didn't write it."

His comments came as Newsweek published a story for its current issue paraphrasing the chapter, called "The Night in Question," which the magazine said it had obtained from an anonymous source.

Simpson was acquitted of the 1994 murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ron Goldman after a yearlong trial. A civil jury later held him liable for the killings. On Sunday, Simpson again denied killing the couple.

Simpson declined to provide a copy of the chapter to The Associated Press.

"I don't have it," he said. "I shredded everything I had about it, and I thought I shredded it from my memory."

[Kutjara]

1. Out of the mouths of babes.

"It has so many (factual) holes in it that anybody who knew anything about it would know that I didn't write it."

Why is that, Juice? Are you saying that, if you had written it, all the facts of the murder would have been correct? Why would that be? It's almost as if you're saying you have intimate knowledge of exactly how the murder was committed. How could that be?

[WindRavenX]

2. psychopath

NT

[Hosnon]

3. Man it's a shame he was acquitted.

Justice definitely has a price and O.J. bought it.

[Herman Munster]

4. this is the newsweek article in question

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16610772/site/newsweek/

On June 12, 1994, Simpson attends his daughter Sydney's dance recital. He writes that he is in a foul mood after the performance, stewing over the behavior of his ex-wife. He is due to fly to Chicago late that night. But first he races to Nicole's Bundy Drive condominium in Brentwood. He parks in the dark alley behind her condo and dons the knit wool cap and gloves he keeps handy to ward off the chill on the golf course. He also has a knife in the Bronco, protection against L.A. "crazies." He intends to scare her. He enters through a broken back gate—he's told her a "million times" to get the buzzer and latch fixed—and encounters Goldman, who is returning the glasses of Nicole's mother, Juditha. She had left them at Mezzaluna, where the Brown family dined after Sydney's recital and where Goldman is a waiter. Simpson accuses Goldman of planning a sexual encounter with Nicole, which Goldman denies. Nicole tells Simpson to leave him alone. Goldman's fate is sealed when Kato, Nicole's Akita, emerges and gives him a friendly tail wag. "You've been here before," Simpson screams at Goldman.

At Simpson's criminal trial, to explain how one man could have killed two people, the Los Angeles County coroner theorized that Simpson knocked out Nicole, then quickly slit her throat before turning to Goldman. If the book's account is true, the coroner's hypothesis was correct—almost. Simpson writes that his ex-wife came at him like a "banshee." She loses her balance and falls hard, her head cracking against the ground. Goldman assumes a karate stance, further angering Simpson. He dares the younger man to fight. Then, in the book, Simpson pulls back. He writes, "Then something went horribly wrong, and I know what happened, but I can't tell you exactly how."

Simpson writes that when he regains control of himself, he realizes he is drenched in blood and holding a bloody knife. Both Nicole and Goldman are dead. Simpson heads back to the alley but before getting into the Bronco to flee, strips down to his socks. He rolls his bloody clothes and the knife into a small pile. (That's an important detail. The police never recovered those clothes or the murder weapon, but they did find Simpson's socks—with Nicole's blood on them—at the foot of his bed at his Rockingham estate.) As he nears his house, Simpson sees the limo that will take him to the airport for his Chicago trip. He steals onto his estate via a darkened, hidden path that takes him directly behind the guesthouse where Kato Kaelin is living. Simpson describes how he stumbles into an air conditioner for Kaelin's room, making a terrific racket—just as Kaelin told police he had heard.

Simpson's account does diverge from the prosecution's theory of the case in one significant way. In his telling, a second man, a close friend he calls Charlie, is with him during the killings. Charlie is an unwilling accomplice, repeatedly urging Simpson to stop what he is doing. Does "Charlie" really exist? Perhaps. At the time, many wondered if Simpson had help, if not with the actual killings then with getting rid of evidence. The police never found sufficient evidence to charge anyone else. Fred Goldman, Ron's father, thinks the idea of a second man is absurd, but isn't surprised to hear what Simpson has written (he hasn't read it himself). "This is the guy who murdered them—of course he knows what the evidence is and how he did it," Goldman told NEWSWEEK. Denise Brown, Nicole's sister, told me in an e-mail that she agreed with my analysis. "It just goes to show you that he is guilty and that is what I have always said from the beginning ... Know this, though—I won't be reading ."

[Raine]

12. Sounds logical

I bet that is exactly how it was done.

[Dogmudgeon]

5. So, how do we know OJ is guilty?

"Sniff test"
"Gut check."
"I just know."
"Smell Test"
"Everybody knows he did it."
"Common Sense."
"Any idiot knows he did it."
"He's a rich guy, that's enough for me."
"They played the Race Card, that's enough for me."
"Poor Fred Goldman!"
"The Blacks always protect their own."
"He had to have done it."
"The cops wouldn't have lied."
"Come on, you can't believe he's innocent!"
"They played the Race Card."
"Common Sniff Gut Smell Check Test Sense."
"He did it, you asshole! If you don't believe me, I'll beat you up!"

Evidence? We don't need no steenking evidence.

--p!

[Skittles]

6. there was plenty of evidence

for anyone willing to listen

[MonkeyFunk]

7. Unfortunately

much of the evidence was suspect in its provenance, and provided by people later proven to be liars.

[Skittles]

8. there was still enough evidence to convict

I'm a true crime buff and the evidence convinced me

[MonkeyFunk]

10. I believe

he probably did it, but legally, I could not have voted to convict him.

If you accept that at least SOME of the evidence was planted or altered, I don't know how a juror can decide that the OTHER evidence is good. If you know the police involved are crooked, I think you have to disregard ALL of their evidence.

[Skittles]

16. I absolutely disagree

I never bought the planted evidence crap

[Bluebear]

15. I could not get over Van Atter driving all over LA with the blood sample

including being at the crime scene with it.

What a blunder.

[Dogmudgeon]

9. Fruit of a poisoned tree

There's a reason why so much of the evidence against OJ was dismissed or easily refuted -- it was tainted by a pack of amateurish, careerist, narcissistic, media-whore, self-serving clowns, and that should probably include OJ himself. A preponderance of bad evidence is no evidence at all.

And the coup de grace was LA County's decision to skimp on funding the prosecution.

If OJ was "really guilty", the combined efforts of these fools blew what could have been a no-sweat case. As it turned out, nobody knows for sure except OJ.

I'm not happy about how things turned out, myself. Guilty or innocent, there should have been no room for so much speculation. I hope "we" will learn better in the future.

After all, we may have some real "Bush league" perps to try soon.

--p!

[Manifestor_of_Light]

11. that was an overwhelming circumstancial evidence case

Circumstantial evidence is the BEST evidence. It doesn't lie, it follows the rules of physics and biology and chemistry. DNA, blood spatters, autopsy reports, habit, routine, psychological makeup of parties. Eyewitnesses can be notoriously confused.

The cops messed up. The chain of custody of evidence was broken, among other things. I think the prosecution did an excellent job and were unfairly maligned.

As I learned in Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure class:
Did the killer have: 1) Means? 2) Motive? and 3) Opportunity?

[malaise]

19. At the risk of being flamed

I often wonder why there is this obsession with OJ. Like many other persons who the public think is guilty, he was acquitted and cannot be retried. I seriously doubt whether the media would be obsessing over this trial if the victim was his first wife. I was never an OJ fan but he was the darling of MSM. Ii seems to me that the victims' families have always been more preoccupied with money than their children.

If MSM were interested in their own credibility, they would be spending more time interviewing experts about the worst criminals in my lifetime - Bush and Cheney.

:hide:

[Dogmudgeon]

21. I'd hate to be tried on that basis

I don't doubt your sincerity or desire to discern the truth, but your criteria for guilt are weak -- and potentially disastrous.

First, what you learned in class you appear to have misquoted. Means, motive, and opportunity are not the basis for conviction; rather, they are the basis for suspicion. And the spouse is always the initial suspect. Most police departments follow this as doctrine. In addition, most criminalistics courses focus entirely on establishing guilt, missing 50% of the forensic picture.

So OJ would have been the initial suspect under nearly any set of circumstances.

But your first statement, about circumstantial evidence being best, is the most chilling, and I hope you will reconsider it -- not just about OJ, but in general. Although the evidence doesn't lie, by removing the human beings, you don't just remove the source of error, you also remove the ability to make sense of the evidence. All evidence is, and can ever be, is an unorganized data set. The investigators, prosecution and defense make sense of the evidence in the first place. The prosecution typically sees all evidence as proof of guilt, and the defense finds exculpatory explanations. These interpretations are then argued in court. If you ever have an opportunity to take classes in how evidence is assembled into a case (especially a criminal case), you will find it fascinating.

We would all like there to be a way to make legal procedings entirely fact-based and objective, but that's just not going to happen -- alas!

Then, as I also wrote, there is the legal theory of The Fruit of a Poisoned Tree. This is a "theory" in the sense that Evolution is a theory. It is one of the oldest, most thoroughly argued ideas in jurisprudence. When the evidence is corrupt, it not only can not be used, but the defense has excellent reason to call for a mistrial. There were multiple instances of evidence tampering ranging from possible through likely to probable. When the chain of custody is broken, who knows what happens to the evidence? All of the evidence handlers had means, motives, and/or opportunities to corrupt the evidence. There could have been, and should have been, strong disciplinary action taken against many members of that insane clown posse.

So, who else could have wanted to kill Nicole and Ron, and frame OJ? There were plenty of alternative theories. Running afoul of organized criminals (or a not-so-organized criminal with good 'luck') was the one I found most plausible that exonerates OJ, and while the defense mentioned it, it was never adequately investigated.

I completely agree about the prosecution being given an impossible job. Underfunded, understaffed, and dealing with a number of undisciplinable people (like judge Lance Ito), they must have wanted to tear their hair out. If they had been given the tools they required to make the case (and the physical evidence had been secured) then OJ would be in a penitentiary today. On the other hand, they seem to have understood early on that there was no way they could win the case, and decided to try it in the media with Fred Goldman as the lead prosecutor. (And if convincing evidence ever emerges to exonerate OJ, Goldman will have his grief AND guilt to deal with.)

Ultimately, we are dealing with a system of "justice" that becomes a little more broken every day. The result, I fear, will not be beneficial for our democracy. The People v OJ is ultimately a small case; it's the aggregation of such cases that concerns me. Lately, it has culminated in the massive disrespect for due process we see among the Bush Administration and Tony Blair's state apparatus. At some point, someone is going to die for no good reason other than TV and/or political ratings -- if it hasn't happened already.

Two people are dead; either a murderer has been freed, or an innocent man has been defamed; it is now routine to try cases in public, nearly always getting everything wrong.

Consider Richard Jewell, an early suspect in the Olympic park bombing, portrayed as a psychopath for weeks before being ruled out as a suspect; John and Patricia Ramsey, parents of JonBenet; Kimberly Ernest, a Philly murder victim in the late '80s, whose case was botched so badly that it makes the OJ case seem like a model of investigative and prosecutorial decorum (here and here); there are plenty of them, and all of them are now re-tried on The Court Channel. And the newest case, the 15-year-old kidnapping victim held for five years is already being maligned for not having escaped his captor.

In such a society, nobody is really safe, nor can they be confident of their legal system.

--p!

[bananas]

13. The evidence against OJ was almost as solid as the evidence in the Duke lacrosse case.

Fumes, vapor.

[MonkeyFunk]

14. well we don't know that

because the accused in the Duke case haven't been tried. We haven't seen the evidence. We've seen only leaks from both sides trying to bolster their own case.

We SAW the state's evidence against OJ, and we saw how much of it was compromised.

Again, I believe he probably did it (though not 100% convinced). But if I were on the jury, I would've voted exactly the way they did.

[bananas]

20. Too bad Fuhrman wasn't prosecuted for perjury

that might have shed some light on what actually happened.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

17. Hmmm

You had abundant DNA evidence in the Simpson case. Simpson's DNA was found at the victim's townhouse and the victim's DNA was found at Simpson's mansion as well as in his vehicle. You also had the cuts on Simpson hand consistent with a knife cut. You also had evidence of attempted flight- a disguise in Simpson's car and $5,000.00 in cash...

There was no physical evidence in the Duke LaCrosse case to the best of my knowledge...


Also if you belive in the criminal justice system that exonerated him then you have to believe in the civil justice system that found him resonsible.


Since the standard of proof in a criminal case is "beyond a reasonable doubt" and the standard of proof in a criminal case is "more likely than not" that means Simpson's guilt or responsibility is somewhere between 51% and 100%...


Oh, Simpson vowed to find the real killers... Maybe he will discover them lurking at the nineteenth hole...

[Philosoraptor]

18. There will always be those who refuse to believe him guilty.

You can't reach them.

[Rex]

22. This guy just can't handle getting away with murder. Wants to shout

it from the rooftops. Sorry OJ, you had your 5 minutes of notoriety. Next.