Wizblog

O.J. and the War on Terror

What does the Simpson case have to do with the War on Terror? Cato's Timothy Lynch says the idea that military tribunals should be used for terror suspects because the civil criminal justice system is "broken", is based on a "myth" that resulted in part from the Simpson case. Lynch says that's not why Simpson is a free man today:

The source of the myth is not simply Simpson's acquittal. The myth stems from the wrong-headed conclusion that defense attorney Johnnie Cochran so bedazzled and angered the Simpson jury with stirring rhetoric and emotional racial appeals that the jurors either lost sight of the facts or, worse, acquitted Simpson even though they may have suspected -- or known -- that he was guilty. In truth, Simpson walked because the government prosecutors -- Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden -- were incompetent.

How incompetent? Three examples:

First, after the nationally televised slow-speed chase, the police recovered a "To Whom It May Concern" note written by Simpson's own hand after he was charged with the murder, but before he was arrested. Defense attorney Robert Shapiro said he had little doubt that it was a suicide note. But an innocent person would very likely be outraged about being charged with a murder and eager to find the real killer. Prosecutors never presented the note to the jury.

Second, after the chase, the police also recovered several key pieces of incriminating evidence, but the prosecutors failed to use them during the trial. Officers found a fake mustache, a fake goatee, and, most damning, a receipt that showed the items were purchased two weeks before the murders -- yet the prosecutors never asked jurors to consider why Simpson would need the elements of a disguise just prior to the murder of his wife and Ron Goldman.

Third, detectives tape-recorded an interview with Simpson just a day after the murders. Simpson, asked about a wound on his hand, admitted that he had cut himself the previous night and that instead of immediately applying a bandage, he dripped blood around his estate. When a detective asked him the cause of the cut, Simpson's reply -- again, on audiotape -- was, "I have no idea, man." Unbelievably, the jury never heard this audiotape or his bizarre admission that he was bleeding all over the place right around the time of his wife's murder. Instead, prosecutors took weeks to present DNA evidence -- and then, in response to the defense claim of a police frame-up, offered up a lame, "Yes, racist cops exist in the LAPD, but this case is not a frame-up."

His point is that we conservatives complain when incompetent or ineffective government programs are simply given more money to work with instead of being abolished or reduced. We should hold government prosecutors to the same standard. More prosecutorial "power" is not what they need!

It is thus ironic that many conservatives have been citing the failed prosecution of O.J. Simpson as a reason to expand the prosecutorial powers of the government and to dilute the constitutional rights of people who are accused of crime.