Criminal Trial
Background:
The background of the relationship between OJ Simpson, and Nicole is, at first they were just friends who first met while Nicole was a waitress. When they first met she was also 17 years of age. OJ Simpson at the time had met Nicole while he was still married to a woman named Marguerite. Marguerite and OJ Simpson divorced after their child Aaren drowned in the family's swimming pool a month before her second birthday. Nicole and OJ Simpson got married in 1985 after a couple years of secretly dating. During their Marriage Nicole endured domestic violence from her husband, so she said. OJ Simpson denies ever physically beating her. In 1989 Nicole had pressed charges against OJ Simpson for domestic abuse. They separated and later filed for divorce in 1992.
The Investigation:
On June 12th, 1994 roughly around 10:00pm that Sunday night a male came through the back entrance of Nicole’s condominium. When the altercation broke out it is assumed that the murder slashed Nicole’s neck and then proceeded to stab her in the neck and head an estimated 30 times. The bodies of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman were found outside stabbed to death outside of her condominium in Los Angeles' Brentwood area.
Alan Park was a limousine chauffeur for the Simpson household. Alan Park was ordered to accompany OJ Simpson starting at his house but was late the day that Nicole Brown was murdered (late by roughly 30 minutes). Park had observed a man corresponding the description of OJ Simpson walking to the Simpson residence (black person, six-feet, and 200 pounds). Alan Park had called OJ but he didn’t answer. A few minutes later he saw OJ, and described him as a “Sweaty Mess”. OJ claimed he over slept and just showered.
The Pro...
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... disorganized, the investigators and prosecutors failed to prove that OJ was guilty. Police had mishandled evidence which was very crucial in the trial. And had only one credible witness that was at the scene but didn’t see OJ`s face at all. In the Civil trial I observed that there was more justice. Though OJ was not going to serve jail time, they were awarded 33.5 million dollars in punitive damages. In the civil trial there had to be a 50% probability that OJ committed the crime, which was proven in the civil court by the plaintiffs. Lastly in the custody trial between Nicole Browns parents and OJ Simpson, the browns family couldn’t prove that OJ was an unfit father without them using the evidence that he killed Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman. The judge was not allowed to permit the criminal evidence. This resulted in the Browns family losing the custody battle.
They found Casey Anthony, who was charged with first degree murder of her 3-year-old, not guilty. While she was not guilty of murder, she was convicted on counts four through seven for false information given to the police. The judge sentenced her to one year in county jail for each one of the four counts, but she was released 10 days after she received 1043 days credit. If I was part of the jury I would have said she was guilty of murdering her daughter. Even if she did not kill her, she is still part of the reason why she died. Casey neglected her child either way and did not report the crime to the police until someone else did. I am shocked that the visual evidence did not convince the jury that she was guilty. From the strand of hair in the trunk that matched the past child’s hair, to the extensive research on chloroform found on all web browsers, it was very evident that she did or was at least part of murdering her
The Casey Anthony trial has been arguably the most controversial case since the trial of O.J. Simpson and has been speculated over ever since the verdict had been given in July of 2011. It was decided by a jury of her peers that Anthony was not guilty of murder, for the death of her daughter Caylee. Many believe that Anthony should have been found guilty however, very little Americans actually comprehend the justice system.
A few days after the discovery of the bodies, the police department had convinced O.J. to give himself up to them. However, O.J. never showed at the precinct. After some time, police put out an APB on O.J. and his white Ford Bronco. And APB stands for “all point bulletin”. An APB is basically a warning to police officers to look for a certain person or vehicle that is known to be wanted or is of interest to the police department. After the APB had been sent out, Simpsons friend and lawyer read aloud a note found in O.J.’s house. Police took this as a suicide note because of what was stated in the letter. However, later that day, Simpson ...
On June 12th, 1994, Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman’s bodies were found Nicole’s condominium; the victims had been stabbed to death. The identity of the murderer was unknown up until O.J was suspected to be a suspect. When accused, he was in another state, and was forced to fly back. (Aaseng 1996)
During the time that O.J was on trial for the murders of Nicole and Ronald, everyone who was following the hearing had a deep sense of fear and pity. They were fearing that the man they once adored and aspired to be like was actually capable of committing such an inconspicuous crime. Also, due to the accusations of the murder, the viewers were also feeling in the sense of pity, in both sadness and disappointment. The acts that O.J Simpson was accused of caused the audience to feel disappointed in his actions, as well as sadness towards his family. The accusations developed about O.J left people who didn’t even personally know him in tears. People were so sad about his downfall. The accusation led to the fact that O.J left his family with no mother and technically no father, as he’d be spending time in prison. Furthermore, since he was found not guilty, there was a large part of the audience that felt a sense of release and emotion, and some felt bad that he was ever accused of this, but rather he just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Due to the fact that O.J and Nicole were separated for a couple years before she died, Nicole had made new friendships, and there was no proof that someone new that she met could have caused this crime and tried to frame Simpson, due to his past accused abuse
The number of sexually abused children is five times what it was in 2012. Jerry Sandusky has contributed to this statistic. Jerry Sandusky was the head coach of the Pennsylvania State Football team (Penn. State). He has a wife and a few children, some adopted from his charity organization, the second mile, but this did not stop him from committing the crimes he did. Jerry Sandusky was convicted of raping ten innocent children, some of which he met through his charity. This earned him thirty-sixty years behind bars. There are issues from this case that are similar to some issues in the play, Twelve Angry Men. Ultimately, throughout both cases the jury was faced with difficult decisions. In both cases the verdict took a long time and a lot of thinking. But, in the end both came out with the right resolution. Sandusky’s reputation of being the guy everyone looked up to made the overall decision of the jury, in this case, inordinately difficult.
On the night of the deaths, Fuhrman went to O.J. Simpson’s house and supposedly unveiled a glove that he believed took part in the murders. When the evidence of the glove was presented in court, Simpson was asked to put it on and unexpectedly the glove didn’t fit. People then began to believe that Mark was setting Simpson up and was trying to frame him.
The New York Times bestseller book titled Reasonable Doubts: The Criminal Justice System and the O.J. Simpson Case examines the O.J. Simpson criminal trial of the mid-1990s. The author, Alan M. Dershowitz, relates the Simpson case to the broad functions and perspectives of the American criminal justice system as a whole. A Harvard law school teacher at the time and one of the most renowned legal minds in the country, Dershowitz served as one of O.J. Simpson’s twelve defense lawyers during the trial. Dershowitz utilizes the Simpson case to illustrate how today’s criminal justice system operates and relates it to the misperceptions of the public. Many outside spectators of the case firmly believed that Simpson committed the crimes for which he was charged for. Therefore, much of the public was simply dumbfounded when Simpson was acquitted. Dershowitz attempts to explain why the jury acquitted Simpson by examining the entire American criminal justice system as a whole.
My opinion about this case is that O.J. Simpson is guilty. The defence tries to say there was all this conspiracy to frame O.J. but I don't think they proved any of this happened. The defence said Furhman was a racist but this does not prove that Simpson didn't commit the crime. They say the blood samples were contaminated but I don't think every single one was. The prosecution proved he was an abuser and I think something finally snapped inside him and he killed Nicole and Goldman. The gloves the killer wore were the same type O.J. wears. When they say O.J. tried on the gloves and they didn't fit I think he tightened his hand up so the gloves would be hard to put on. The shoeprints at the crime scene were the same style and size he wears. Bloody clothes or a murder weapon have never been found but neither has the missing laundry bags from O.J.'s hotel room. I have to wonder why O.J. lead the police on a big chase if he is so darn innocent. My opinion is that O.J. Simpson would have been found guilty a long time ago if it wasn't for all the publicity surrounding the case and the fact that he's famous.
Patty Hearst was a normal 19 year old girl, living in an apartment with her fiance and attending university in Berkeley, California, until one day her life, and the lives of everyone around her changed forever. On the evening of February 4, 1974, some members of the left-wing radical group called the Symbionese Liberation Army barged into Hearst’s home armed with guns, and beat up her fiance before kidnapping Hearst and bringing her to their house where she was kept blindfolded in a closet for 59 days. While locked in the closet, Patty Hearst was verbally and sexually abused and she was denied the use of even a toilet or toothbrush if she didn’t tell them that she agreed with the group’s ideas and beliefs. It is believed that while being locked in the closet like this, Patty was being brainwashed by the SLA and that she may have even developed Stockholm Syndrome, a condition in which a person who was kidnapped starts to empathise with their captor, and even starts defending them. This is how the Symbionese Liberation Army convinced Patty Hearst to join their group. They released an audio tape to the public in which Patty Hearst said she was changing her name to Tania and that she had decided to join the SLA. She then helped the SLA rob a bank and steal an ammunition belt from a sports store. After this, she started travelling around the country with two members of the SLA named John and Emily Harris, to try avoid being captured by the police. During this time, the police found a house where some members of the SLA were hiding out. Attempts to make the SLA members surrender ended up in a massive gunfight, ultimately ending up in the deaths of 6 SLA members. The FBI eventually found and arrested Patty Hearst on September 18, 1975. T...
It was the night of June 12, 1994, a woman and her long time male friend are murdered in cold blood. The victims, Nicole Brown Simpson, her neck cut so savagely it was almost severed from her body and Ronald Goldman, stabbed repeatedly, nearly 30 times. The accused, her ex-husband and football star, Orenthan James Simpson, better known as O.J. Simpson. During the trial, a trial that consisted of 150 witnesses, lasted 133 days and cost in the ball park of 15 million dollars, there were many questions asked and even more questions left unanswered (Douglas).
The evidence discovered during the investigation suggested to the police that OJ Simpson may have had something to do with this murder and they obtained an arrest warrant. The investigators believed that they “knew” OJ Simpson committed the murders. His lawyers and him were informed of the arrest warrant and agreed to a specified time when OJ would turn himself into authorities. Investigators are later admonished, by the defense, on how they handled the crime scene.
Things only got worse when it was alleged that he transported and planted one the gloves on the Simpson estate, and the defendants legal team stating the officer wanted to frame Simpson because he was black and he disliked blacks an considering the jury was made up of mostly minorities this helped O.JSimpson even more.(2015) The key to winning a case apart from collecting evidence there must be a clear way to paint a picture that the people of the jury can understand whether or not you done the crime one must be convincing. Even though Simpson’s blood was on majority of the evidence collected it was argued that he was framed along with the contamination of evidence even if he had done it his team used all the weaknesses exposed by police involved in the case to paint a picture of innocence to the jury which proves perception of wrongdoing as persuasive to a jury as actual wrongdoing. I am sure with O.J Simpson being acquitted of the charges left a bad taste in the mouth of both police and some people in the legal field. There were too many mistakes made by the people that were tasked with the duty of collecting evidence and also in the department of how the evidence was handled but there are many lessons to be learned in every mistake the obvious one would be to not make the same ones
According to A Novel Approach to Politics “Questions about the very nature of reality seem to be common in fiction of all sorts.” Especially, The Boondocks, a fictional cartoon, uses satire to describe real events that happen in society. The episode I tuned into was “The Trial of R. Kelly”, which explained how R. Kelly won his trial and the views of the people about his case. In the episode, the people outside the court house showed different cognitive frameworks of how they view R. Kelly situation. In other words, the media made sense of the reality of R. Kelly situation in different ways because of the media wanted to select certain information. In this paper, I will explain how the media exemplified mediated reality and agreement reality in the “The Trial of R. Kelly” episode of The Boondocks.
Fairchild, H. & Cowan, G (1997). Journal of Social Issues. The O.J. Simpson Trial: Challenges to Science and Society.