Double Standard: Robert Blake and OJ Simpson
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R_Meyer — 15 years ago(June 23, 2010 07:00 PM)
A family member is a NY City police detective with over 25 years on the job including about 10 with a Manhattan homicide unit.
He told me, in cases where the person being tried is a high-profile person, jurors are likely to follow the rules of evidence very closely. They know their verdict is likely to be closely scrutinized afterwards in the media. If there is only circumstanial evidence presented jurors may conclude that provides reasonable doubt and find "Not Guilty."
He's a pretty cool guy and a pretty smart cop and I think he's probably right. Both prosecutions OJ and Robert Blake had major evidence problems that the prosecutors could not overcome.
That's the way our system works. That it's better that a few guilty persons go free then make it so easy to convict that many innocent persons get convicted.
[edited once for clarity] -
sweetpeanance — 15 years ago(June 27, 2010 01:41 AM)
I believe your family member missed some major points in cases involving celebrities. 1st, many people do not answer the jury pool questionaire honestly in an effort to get on the jury. 2nd, once on the jury, they become star struck and can not get past the public persona that the celebrity had (in their eyes) before the case in question. 3rd, many people have a bias in favor of celebrities & thus it is hard to find 12 people who would all be able to see it possible that a person they thought they knew, &/or knew from a character they played &/or their on screen persona, would be capable of murdering someone. To be able to do that would require to accept the fact that one's own judgement is flawed, so the juror decides that they were right about the person all along. Even in the infamous case of Lizzy Borden, she got off because people of the day did not think a woman capable of committing such a brutal murder. Additionally, the prosecution in that case had their "OJ gloves moment," when they presented the skulls of Mr. and Mrs. Borden as evidence that a hatchet blade they found in the house fit the wounds. This further repulsed the jury & Lizzy was found to be not guilty. 4th, celebrities have the means to hire high priced lawyers. Everyone knows that our judicial systems provides people with as much justice as they can afford. All of these factors stack the deck against the prosecution from the start as a conviction requires a unanimous decision & anything less than that will result in a hung jury at best. However, the court of public opinion is a tougher nut to crack. Lizzy Borden, as OJ Simpson and Robert Blake, et. al. after her, was believed to be guilty by the public and was treated as such in the end. They never get their "good name" back just because they "beat the system."
I believe your family member puts too much emphasis on how much weight the jurors place on procedural matters in a trial. Furthermore, most cases involve circumstantial evidence. Rarely are there eye witnesses, and even they eye witnesses are flawed often times. Contrary to it's name, circumstantial evidence is much stronger in reality. I believe it has more to do with the fact that people think they know celebrities from what they see on the screen & they have a difficult time accepting the fact that they might not have known them at all! -
R_Meyer — 15 years ago(July 22, 2010 06:29 PM)
[edited once for spelling]
My family member, the NYPD detective, told me it's not
just
celebrities. Note in my original message he said
high profile
not
celebrity
.
He says, based on working dozens of murder cases, when police are a) unable to recover the murder weapon, b) the defendant doesn't confess or make incriminating statements and c) there are no witnesses
and
..the person tried is not a low life or a career criminal type, getting a conviction can be tough.
At least in New York, nowadays the average juror is fairly sophisticated. They don't like sentencing someone to serve decades in prison when the evidence against them is all circumstantial. They know the pitfalls.
In cases like Blake and Simpson, common sense may tell you, "
They did it
." But if there's no smoking gun many jurors will not convict based on woulda coulda. Unless it's some street skell with a Legal Aid lawyer. (There's your 'double-standard.')
I asked him did he ever have to arrest someone he didn't think was guilty? He said yes. That there were times as an investigator when the higherups decided, "Let's indict," based on evidence he'd gathered. Evidence that left him with doubts that the person indicted, tried and convicted was actually guilty. What may be clear evidence of guilt to an ADA may not be to him and his partner. They may see things the DA's office doesn't see. But in many cases they may never really know to a certainty if a person is really guilty. They go where the evidence takes them.
The toughest cases are the ones where they get reliable information that so-and-so is the one they're looking for like from an informant they trust but no jury would ever believe and then they can never find evidence adequate to even arrest the person.
He says all the TV shows and movies have spoiled people. In real life "clear guilt" is so5b4metimes very elusive to nail down. -
Prismark10 — 17 years ago(May 20, 2008 02:03 AM)
I will go with R Meyer.
On first glance, you think both men are guilty based on circumstantial evidence. Some years after the OJ trial, we saw documentaries on UK television which showed how flawed the initial police investigation was and the prosecution did not have a watertight case.
When OJ tried that glove on during the trial that was clearly too tight, you could sense that things were beginning to go his way. Of course having a high calibre legal team for both men also helps.
Its that man again!! -
david38091 — 15 years ago(June 29, 2010 07:48 AM)
Getting back to the original poster comment. I agree completely that the reaction to O J Simpson case compared to Robert Blake was a double standard solely based on race. It's a trip how white people are always in denial about the realities of racism particularly in our criminal justice system. Certainly OJ could and should have lived a low profile life after the verdict like Robert Blake but that has nothing to do with the media frenzy and white reaction to the O J Simpson case. If O J Simpson wife and her friend had been black that was murdered it would have been barely covered by the media. It would not have been covered any where near the extent it was by the news media due to the fact the victims were white. When that trial was happening it was non stop live coverage. There also would have been little reaction by whites over the not guilty verdict had the victims been black. The news media and many whites could care less about black on black crime. Many whites including those in the media saw "the black boogie-man" in O J that they didn't see in a white man Robert Blake. That's the reason why our criminal justice system has historically been bias and more likely to sentence a black man to the death penalty than a white man.
http://www.capitalpunishmentincontext.org/issues/race
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/race-and-death-penalty
Our criminal justice system is a disgrace when it comes to equal justice for all. The news media has never covered all Americans equally due to racism and a lack of racial diversity in news rooms. We see today how the media and white America view white victims compared to non white victims. How outraged the white dominated news media gets when there is a missing white woman or child. But barely a mention if it's a non white person.
Let me state I have little sympathy for O J Simpson, he made his own bed in the court of public opinion. But regardless how you feel about him it's a disgrace that a white judge and criminal justice system put him in jail for what most of us would have been founded innocent for in the 2008 robbery and kidnapping case. The judge, the same as the white jury in the 1997 "CIVIL" suit is making him pay for the 1995 murder case he was found innocent for. For those whites who come on here and say they don't care about that proves why our criminal justice system is so racist, you don't care and you control it. -
sweetpeanance — 15 years ago(June 29, 2010 11:06 PM)
1st off, in the case on O.J. Simpson, I believe it became obvious that the jury engaged in jury da0nullification in their verdict as a way of getting back at the system for the definite imbalance that there is in the justice system in this country based upon race. Furthermore, it was also obvious that many jurors lied on the questionaire to get on the jury. Additionally, comparing a rich black man (like O.J.), and the justice they are afforded vs. an average black man is like comparing apples and oranges. The fact of the matter is that, like it or not, O.J. Simpson turned his back on black America long before he committed the murders! He only used the fact that he was black when he could use it as a defense weapon. The LAPD had let O.J. get away with a lot of crap over the years (domestic violence), that would have landed "Jamal Jenkins" in prison each time. So they just decided to get him this time when his ex-wife and her friend were murdered? Former LA District Attorney Gil Garcetti bent over backwards to give O.J. more advantages than he deserved, and certainly more than "Jamal Jenkins" would have gotten. O.J. committed the murders where he lived, in Brentwood (or "whiteyville" if you will). Instead of trying the case in, and drawing the jury pool from the district that O.J. had lived in and committed the murders in, they instead drew from an inner city district as to get more blacks on the jury. Would "Jamal Jenkins" have been afforded that luxary? I doubt it. Additionally, you say O.J. was found "innocent" in the criminal trial. Innocent is not a legal term. Innocent infers that one did not do something. O.J. was found "not-guilty" which means, in the opinion of the jury, the prosecution did not prove it's case beyond a "reasonable doubt." I genuinely believe some of the black jurors believed O.J. would actually reward them financially for their "jury nullification." They certainly tried fairly unsuccessfully to cash in after the case..and more than one said they thought he did it & all but admitted to "jury nullification." I remember seeing O.J. speaking at a black church (I believe it was in Washington, DC) in the days after the verdict & the blacks in the audience were still pouring on the love to O.J. However, O.J. looked about as comfortable as the Grand Imperial Wizzard of the KKK speaking before a meeting of the Black Panthers.LOL Using O.J. as an example of a double standard in our judicial system is a weak example. There is a double standard in our justice system, and certainly all things being equal, a defendant is better off from the get go if he/she is white. However, the color that trumps all is GREEN! Sadly, O.J. and his defense team exploited the real injustice that does exist in our system, and they played black Americans like chumpsmuch like the GOP/Republicans play ignorant white Americans (for the record I'm white.I'm just not played like a chump & try to do what is in my best interests..which is not voting for the Republican agenda). There was way more than enough evidence to convict O.J.! However, with the mindset the jury had, even a video tape that showed O.J. killing Nicole and Ron would not have been enough. Of course Mark Fuhrman would have tampered with the tape to frame O.J.! O.J.'s blood was at the scene of the crime. He had cuts on his hands. Witnesses saw him driving at a high rate of speed from the crime scene. A knife salesman had a rec5b4eipt for a knife that was consistant with the murder weapon that O.J. bought weeks before the murder. O.J. claimed he never owned Bruno Magli shoes (which were the brand of shoes that left foot prints at the murder scene & in O.J.s size), but NBC had footage of a game he did on field reporting which showed him wearing Bruno Magli shoes. A mountain of evidence..but the prosecution didn't prove it's case..LOL And again, O.J. was never found to be INNOCENT.it's NOT-GUILTY!
The fact that Robert Blake got off too did not bring any happiness to white America. I defy you to name one person who is happy and thing Blake didn't do it (aside from the few "fan bots" on here). A number of O.J.'s white friends (even fellow celebrities) stuck by O.J. for a long time. How many people really stuck by Robert Blake (even to this day)? There was also the difference in the victims. One could see that Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman were genuinely innocent victims & people could have sympathy for their murders more easily than for the woman Robert Blake killed (his wife, Bonnie Lee Blakely). In Bonnie Lee Blakely's case, she was a proven grifter who was playing and using people for years. She made the mistake of trapping a nut (Blake) by getting pregnant. Fact of the matter is also that Blake had been out of the limelight for sometime before he committed the murders. O.J. was still very much a public figure. That111c's another difference in the cases. Additionally, O.J. engaged in over kill (a trait that greatly ind -
dcavalli — 15 years ago(July 22, 2010 01:41 AM)
I didn't read every post, but the way I see it: They were both celebrities who were involved in well-publicized murder cases (thanks to cable and then the Internet) and acquitted in the state of California.
One poster mentioned they used their wealth. Certainly, OJ used his money to hire a team of lawyers, and I understand that he may still owe them money.
As for Blake, he quit acting in the mid-1990s, then did three roles in the 1990s. I'm sure he a few dollars saved, but it was probably nowhere near what OJ had (who had endorsements as well).
Michael Jackson was acquitted in California (on child molesting charges) as well.
Maybe it's California. -
activista — 11 years ago(December 22, 2014 03:38 AM)
@sweetpenance
Great post,BSWthe only thing I disagree with is about that Rothlisberger dude thoughno reverse racism because there is no such thing-when white athletes do some shady s***, they don't get demonized to hell and back like the black athletes do. Look at what happened when Micheal Vick got convicted of dogfightingyou'd think the man had killed somebody, the way white folks threw a fit about him having offed some dogsit was so ridiculous and over-the-top. If he'd been a white man and had done the same exact thing, he would not have had all that crazy hate thrown at him right and left. Also look at what Ray Rice is going through (he was wrong as hell for doing what he did to his fiancee-now-wifeshe should have left his behind, as far as I'm concerned.) Luckily, he had the good sense to do his prison time for the crime, and gradually worked his way back into his career, without much hype. And,yeah both O.J. and Blake did it.