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O.J.'s effect on America is far worse than his effect on his alma mater. His trial revealed schisms in American racial relations that pulled the veneer of California moderation, in concert with the horrendous Rodney King beating and subsequent black reaction to its aftermath.
O.J.'s "brothers" found him "not guilty." Millions of white Americans, good people without racist tendencies, uttered the N-word, some for the only time in their lives, when this happened. Blacks cheered. The Age of Aquarius was dead.
O.J. was free but forced to live with himself. The case against him was solid and public opinion has never really changed. Virtually everybody thinks he is guilty, even blacks who liked the verdict not because justice was served in the killing of two people, but because it represented a bizarre "payback" for white repression; the kind O.J. had no intimate knowledge of. He had skated through life on ego, talent, football dedication and charm, coming of age at a time when white America was ready to love the kind of black man that he was.
For all of the people convinced of Simpson's guilt, a portion are not so sure of his guilt that they would recommend the death penalty. His case left just a tiny window of "reasonable doubt." If by some slim chance the jury got it right, then O.J. is a man who has been badly wronged, for the things that made him "Juice" were indeed taken from him. He is to this day a vilified character, for not only was the crime exposed, but every peccadillo, large or small, was made tabloid fodder.
But this “reasonable doubt” is not reasonable among those who took the time to study the case: to read books by Vannatter and Lange; Clark and Darden; by Mark Fuhrman, Vincent Bugliosi and Gerry Spence. There are no books by any of the defense attorneys spelling out how O.J. was innocent. Some, like Bailey and Dershowitz, did write about the case, but mainly they just laid out the successful strategies they employed. This is entirely different from “proving” their client was innocent, which is also different from being “not guilty.”
It seems that all that O.J. Simpson touched turned to feces. To be associated with him, to do business with him, to be tarred by association with him, for the most part ruined the lives of those involved. It certainly was the worst thing that could have happened to Nicole Brown, the Brown family, and the Goldman family.
Robert Kardashian’s reputation was besmirched, and then he died young. Johnnie Cochran may have been a big hero in the black community, but he is generally viewed as being something in between an evil man and a tool of evil itself. F. Lee Bailey, after a long, successful legal career, is viewed not for his great triumphs, but for bellowing the N-word like Ben Chapman trying to get Jackie Robinson’s goat. O.J.’s attorney in the years since the trial, Yale Galantner, has seen his reputation take a big hit, too. Kris Kardashian may be fabulously wealthy, but what she and her family did in prostituting themselves on Keeping Up With the Kardashians leaves most decent people feeling like they need a shower after watching a few minutes of it. Faye Resnick is a caricature of cosmeticized, plastic Los Angeles. Al Cowlings cannot show his face in public. Kato Kaelin is a laughing stock. O.J.’s old girlfriends, like Paula Barbieri, were viewed as fallen women
Marcia Clark and Chris Darden are like survivors of an exorcism; they have seen evil up close and it haunts them to this day. Robert Shapiro seems to have rehabilitated himself a bit, succeeding with LegalZoom.com. The best move he ever made was in ceding lead counsel status to Cochran, making him a less visible face of the greatest legal fiasco of the century.
Phil Vannatter and Tom Lange disappeared into the woodwork. The smartest thing Lance Ito ever did was making no attempt to remind anybody he presided over the “trial of century.” Mark Fuhrman has achieved a certain amount of vindication, but he will never truly overcome his racist past.
There are no winners in The People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson. Only casualties or, at best, survivors.
Freed from his jail cell in downtown Los Angeles, O.J. somehow seemed to believe he could use his charm to get back in the good graces of the American public. Whoever was advising him did him no favors. The first thing he did was “write” an ill-advised “book” called I Want to Tell You: My Response to Your Letters, Your Messages, Your Questions (Little Brown, 1995). This was a series of his answers to a selection from among the many, many letters he received while in jail.
Many of the letters were racist, either written by white racists or black racists, each with their own axes to grind. They represented how far the country had fallen, what a sham it was to think whites and blacks had much in common. Much of them were selected in self-serving manner in order to give O.J. a platform. He answered the letters from the perspective of a wrongfully accused black man brought low in the white man’s world. The book’s proceeds did not go to battered women’s shelters, but to O.J. ‘s legal defense fund. To buy I Want to Tell You was to pay Johnnie Cochran’s salary. It was disgusting.
Then there was Judith Regan. A highly successful publisher in New York City, her company, Regan Books (an imprint of HarperCollins) specialized in controversial content, often with a slightly conservative bent. What she was thinking is anybody’s guess, but she contracted O.J. Simpson and a ghostwriter named Pablo Fenjves to write a book called O.J. Simpson: If I Did It: Here’s How It Happened. O.J. put forth a hypothetical analysis of the murders, lacing it with conspiracy theories and shady alibis meant to dissuade readers from believing in his guilt.
O.J. invented a fictitious character named “Charlie” who, apparently had he chosen to kill his ex-wife, would have been his partner in crime. Laced with foul language, it was a poorly constructed attempt at crime novelization, reminding nobody of Raymond Chandler or Elroy Leonard.
The book was officially announced in The National Enquirer (of course) in October 2006, with a planned release date of November 30, just in time for the post-Thanksgiving Christmas buying season. Regan created a deal with Fox News to promote it along with interviews and a special program. Reaction was immediately negative from all sides. Denise Brown excoriated Regan. There was great concern for the Simpson children being exposed to the case again 12 years after the murders. The public was urged to boycott the book by the Goldman family.
The idea that O.J. would profit from the book infuriated people no end. It was speculated that his profits would be hidden in offshore accounts. There is no doubt it would have sold well, with tremendous interest and curiosity attached to it, but public reaction was so bad that the book had to be canceled. Denise Brown said the Browns and Goldmans were offered “millions” to stay silent about the Fox special and the book’s publication.
The interview was actually taped, but never aired. It was speculated that it was only a matter of time before it would appear on the Internet. Some 400,000 physical copies were actually printed, and while they were supposedly destroyed or hidden away, some do exist. A PDF file of the book was also leaked at Rapidshare.com, and it can also be downloaded at onemansblog.com/2007/06/21/ojs-confession-book-if-i-did-it-leaked-heres-how-to-get-it/.
It was the end for Regan, who was already awash in bad publicity from an affair with Bernard Kerik, the married Commissioner of the New York Police Department. Once a regular on Fox News, she is nary a blip on the screen today; another casualty of association with O.J. Simpson.
But in 1997, the Goldmans had successfully sued O.J. in civil court, establishing his responsibility in the deaths of their son and Nicole. O.J. was ordered to pay $33.5 million. For 12 years they failed to get to any of his assets.
He had successfully managed to hide most of his money and income, which consisted in part, of his NFL pension. He made money through memorabilia and autograph sales. He sold his 1968 Heisman Trophy for $50,000. He owed money to the IRS but managed to skate by without paying it. The money from If I Did It was not likely to approach $33.5 million, but he might have made a substantial amount. The Goldmans denied O.J. this money. Then, in a strange twist, they were granted
rights to the book, re-publishing it. Written as a “first person” account “by” O.J. of how he actually killed Nicole and Ron, it was re-titled If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer. The word “If” was almost invisible inside a huge “I” making it appear to read, I Did It in blood-red letters. Fenjves cooperated and Dominick Dunne wrote the afterword.
The Goldmans had a falling out with the Browns over the book. Denise Brown was very vocal in her objections, but there is no evidence they were motivated by greed. They wanted to make O.J. pay in some way, which in their mind he had not done.
O.J. occasionally made the news. In the early 2000s he was involved in a “road rage” case, and in 2004 granted an interview with Greta Van Susteren on Fox News, marking the one-decade anniversary of the tragedy. It was grotesque. Van Susteren had to agree not to ask any questions pertinent to his guilt. But O.J., who seemed to be on speed, went into overdrive, talking through questions in a rapid-fire manner, babbling about his kids, mundane activities, golf, and other non-entities.
By and large, he played golf and partied. He still had a coterie of loyalists and enough money to live an easy life. He left the spotlight of Los Angeles for the relative anonymity of south Florida. Women continued to make themselves available top him. It was a travesty of justice and salt in the wound to the victims’ families.
But in 2007, one of the strangest twists of fate ever occurred. What happened made many believe in karmic justice, that “what goes around comes around.” For O.J., whether he believes it or not, it was a blessing, a chance to pay, at least in part, for his sins in this world, because if he must pay for in the next, there will be no mercy.
In September of 2007 O.J. learned that a group of men were in possession of his memorabilia, which was still very valuable. These men had the memorabilia in their room at the Palace Station hotel-casino in Las Vegas. O.J. led a group of men up to the room to “get my s—t.” One of the men had a gun, which apparently he brandished. Whether O.J. knew ahead of time that a gun would be involved has never been satisfactorily answered. The men did not break and enter into the room, so his physical recovery of items, if proven to actually be his property, was not a crime. But the existence of a drawn gun changed everything.
Law enforcement came down hard on O.J. The other men pleaded out. The prosecution used them to turn against O.J. The motivation was obvious: make Simpson pay now for what he had not paid for after 1995. In 2008 he was convicted and sentenced to 33 years in prison. Of course the harshness of the sentence was due to the perception that O.J. got away with murder. In 2012, O.J. was back in court, asking his sentence be overturned on the grounds that Galantner – just the latest to have his reputation sullied by association with O.J. Simpson – had not provided an adequate defense. The court granted O.J. some parole, and it remains possible that he could be set free by 2017. If so, counting the year he spent in jail after the murders until his October 1995 acquittal, he will have spent 10 years incarcerated. This is less than most murderers, but it remains some semblance of justice at last. He turns 67 in 2014.
If O.J. did it and has a conscience, if he believes in God, then he must deal with what he did spiritually. His confessions and "repentance" must be genuine. Judgment will be His will, nobody elses. If he is a socio-path not "burdened" by a guilty mind, then he simply avoided another tackler and was running for daylight, at least until 2007. Where his "eternal end zone" will be is God's business.
Social justice
In August of 1985, a young black high school football player from West Covina, California named Al Martin arrived at USC's pre-season training camp. After a week or so being put through the paces in the oppressive, smoggy heat of late summer, he decided he was not up to being a Trojan. Martin dropped out of the program and never actually entered school as a student.
He signed a professional baseball contract and in 1992 made it to the Major Leagues as a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates. For several years he was a promising young outfielder. Conducting an interview one day, he told the media that he had played football for USC in a game against Michigan in 1986. The story was not challenged until years later, when somebody noticed that USC did not play Michigan in 1986. They played them in the 1989 and 1990 Rose Bowls, but their media guide contained no mention of Al Martin playing in those games, or any games ever, at USC.
In 2000, Martin brought a woman to Las Vegas, Nevada, where after a drunken night they were “married.” Martin was already married, so that made it an act of bigamy. When the woman insisted that they were in fact married, Martin became enraged. He produced a gun and allegedly stuck it in her mouth, shouting, “I'll O.J. you.”