Our judicial "system" is a massive failure independent of OJ. Anybody who has worked in the system knows that it's a farce. Jury trials are horrible. I've had judges MUMBLE through the parts about "presumed innocent" and then clearly articulate, "beyond reasonable doubt does not mean to a mathematical certainty." It's insane that jury's typically can't take notes or take evidence into the deliberation room. Ridiculous.
OJ's case is a fine example.
The DA decided to try the case in downtown L.A., rather than in Santa Monica, where the crime occurred.
In Santa Monica, you get a mostly or all white jury and OJ burns.
Instead, they got a jury with 8 blacks and 1 white in L.A.
O.J. was a national hero to the black community. He was acquitted the day the jury was selected. The rest was just a farce. A black icon killed a white woman and her Jewish boyfriend. There was no way that a jury of 8 black L.A. residents was going to convict him. No way. That's the ugly truth. It's not about justice or the constitution. They knew he did it. They knew the evidence was there. They just weren't going to convict one of their own.
But hey, if that bothers you, then consider the flip side of that coin. Thousands upon thousands of innocent black men have been convicted by white juries over the last hundred years or so. It's the collateral damage in our system. Most juries I've seen apply a "yeah, he probably did it," standard rather than a, "beyond a reasonable doubt standard." Believe me, you won't be likely to get it until you have the extreme misfortune of being in it.
In our jurisdiction, the PDs don't try murder cases. Nope. They get farmed out to private JDs who can't charge more than 10 grand without permission from a judge. Just to keep that in perspective, at 200 an hour, with no other costs, that's 50 hours. For a murder trial. Insane.
