Yes bro I watched the trial pretty closely. I'm an attorney and was practicing in Los Angeles at the time. As you can imagine, there was a lot of discussion about the trial among attorneys. I know and have worked with some prominent criminal defense attorneys in the area, and several of my friends from law school are deputy DAs. All of these lawyers, even the black ones, were convinced that OJ was guilty.
I think I'm pretty good at evaluating evidence and what it proves and doesn't prove, and I'm also pretty good at separating persuasive evidence from speculation and congecture.
I still find it hard to understand how anyone who closely followed the actual evidence wouldn't come to the conclusion of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Let's understand what "guilt beyond a reasonable doubt" means. It means that a jury may believe that a defendant probably is guilty, they could be almost certain of his guilt, but maybe there is some sliver of doubt. Personally, I had no doubt whatsoever that OJ was guilty.
What I believe happened is that the DA was foolish enough to choose downtown Los Angeles for the trial. The jury pool there is largely minorities, and includes a lot of people that have been treated very unfairly by some of the bad apples in the LAPD. Remember that this all occured in the wake of the Rodney King beating, the acquittals of the officers who beat him, and the riots.
OJ Simpson was more than just a hero to these jurors, which is what he was to me before the murders, he was more like a God. They couldn't bear to convict him. But they needed some reason to let him off, something to label "reasonable doubt", even if it was totally implausible. Well, Johnny Cochran and the rest of the dream team did a good job of giving them that reason in the face of overwhelming evidence of guilt. I don't think they are "bad lawyers", I think they are excellent lawyers. They did exactly what they get paid to do - zealously protect the interests of their clients.
Maybe the result shows how much the thinking of people is influenced by their race and experiences in life. I wonder if my opinions would have been different if I was a black man. I hope not.
I guess I shouldn't criticize you for reaching a different conclusion than I did, but I can't help myself, because dammit, your conclusion is wrong.
Remember that a civil jury in Santa Monica unanimously found that OJ had committed both murders and hit him with a multi million dollar judgment based on the what they described as overwhelming evidence against him. I had several court appearances at that courthouse during the trial and I sat in on it several times.
I felt like the criminal verdict was sort of a "payback" for the acquittals of the officers in the King beating. I think that is sad. Two wrongs don't make a right.