[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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