My New Book!

My New Book!
My New Book!

Saturday, June 22, 2024

June 22-23, 2024: Kyle Railton on the Simpson Trial

[On June 17th, 1994, O.J. Simpson was arrested by the LAPD. The subsequent trial featured a number of individuals whose stories have a great deal to tell us about America, then, now, and overall, so this week I’ve AmericanStudied a handful of Simpson trial figures. Leading up to this special weekend post from one of my favorite young AmericanStudiers!]

Hey everyone, my name is Kyle Railton and I am an upcoming senior in high school. As you can tell by my last name, I am the son of the legendary professor Ben Railton, and writing for my dad’s blog has been on my bucket list for a while, so it is an honor to get the chance! I have been semi-interested in the O.J. Simpson trial for some time, hearing occasional things about how he was guilty, the lawyers messed up, the gloves, etc., but I only became very invested in the past year, when I began a school project about the case. It was in my American Legal Studies class, and I chose to read The Run of His Life, the book by Jeffery Toobin, which quickly fascinated me about every aspect of the case: the media, lawyers, drama, and especially the defendant–O.J. Simpson.  

As I continued to learn more about the case, a couple of parts of the case bothered me the most. I will preface this by stating that I do believe that O.J. committed the crime, despite the mistakes from the prosecution and the alternate theories proposed by the dream team. Firstly, I believe that the trial did not deliver justice, as America’s justice system is supposed to do, implied by the name. One of the main focuses of the American Legal elective I took this past school year was to study what justice was, and how courts are expected to promote justice through application of the law. However, I saw this entire case, specifically the outcome, as not proper justice, because many external factors influenced the not guilty verdict. For example, the media played a crucial role since the discovery of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, negatively affecting and manipulating perceptions of the trial to the public, even before the jury was selected. Many people saw the police as “mistreating” O.J. Simpson when rather the LAPD had treated O.J. Simpson like royalty many times in the past, and he was close with many officers. Additionally, race was almost certainly a deciding factor in the case, which was exacerbated by the media and constant coverage of the case. While it is obvious that Mark Furhman was extremely racist–a Nazi even–and the LAPD has a horrific history of racial prejudice and police brutality, these facts had nothing to do with O.J. Simpson’s case. As mentioned in Toobin’s book, they were specifically used as the “race card” to get Simpson free. The reason I see this as a massive injustice is because there is lots of racial profiling in the court system and police forces across America, but this case was not an instance of racist police officers framing an African American man. Now, it is completely understandable why many would believe that the LAPD framed O.J., but this use of the “race card” only opens the world up to criticism when actual racist incidents come, as they too often do because then Americans claim that it is just another use of the “race card.” I remember a hilarious quote from a show I watched with my family based on the O.J. trial, which goes something like, “O.J. Simpson is the first defendant to get acquitted because he is Black!” Race has never been a black-and-white subject in America, and while it is unfortunately impossible to change the past and convict O.J. Simpson, it is possible to build and grow as a nation, which starts with learning from the history of America’s complicated justice system. 

[Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Simpson trial figures or stories you’d highlight?]

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