Let me finish tonight with this.
I imagine — maybe I’m wrong — that some people like me have found their mind bouncing back this week to the OJ Simpson verdict.
I covered that trial of Simpson for double-murder in its entirety. Every night I watched it as it ranged widely to questions of evidence custody to something called “contamination” of blood evidence to what a police officer said in an interview for a movie script to the glove and whether it fit. It went on and on and grabbed the attention of the country.
I thought OJ did it, still do. I believed the prosecution case of Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden.
The jury didn’t. To the surprise of a lot of people, including some sitting right near him, he was acquitted and set free.
Again, I was stunned by the verdict, especially after hearing that it had been arrived at after just two hours.
And I’ve never changed my mind about what happened that night in Los Angeles. When Mr. Simpson got convicted of that other charge I figured it brought with it some compensating justice.
So I don’t hold it against people who don’t like verdicts. My father who was a court reporter in Philadelphia for thirty years told my brothers and me that if you’re guilty get yourself a jury because you can never predict a jury. If you’re innocent, he said, try to get a judge to hear the case. He or she will be your best bet to see the truth of what happened.
So we’re at it again, questioning a jury’s judgment. I always thought that the judgment in the OJ case was really about the bad, old history of the LA police. Hopefully it did some good, that verdict I didn’t share.
Maybe this one will achieve the same in the end: a good result for the future.
Chris Matthews