’)Before O.J. Simpson got in trouble with the law, he made it very clear publicly that he was leaving many of his black roots behind. He dropped black slang from his speech patterns, traded in his black wife for a younger blonde model, and then proceeded to be a regular on the golf links. In a vacuum, there’s nothing wrong with those choices – Simpson is free to do and speak and play any way he wishes, but those choices became intriguing for what happened once he got in trouble with the law for the double murder of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson.
O.J. got black again, quick.
As part of his defense strategy from superlawyer Johnnie Cochran, Simpson made clear that his race would be a key element of how he would explain the mountain of evidence against him. Aided by idiot cop Mark Furhman’s racist tirade on an audio tape, the defense team concocted an elaborate plot where the suddenly black again O.J. was on the receiving end of a raw deal from a rogue racist cop simply because he was a noted black celebrity. The strategy worked, and as Simpson was released from LAPD custody they went directly to a black church in Los Angeles to finish painting the picture. When OJ needed sympathy he got real black again.
That’s what Clarence Thomas does. Thomas worked his way up in conservative circles, getting a place at the table for being one of the “good ones” by toeing the right-wing line on issues like affirmative action and the like (ignoring that at some levels Thomas was on the receiving end of these benefits) he made it okay for the right to push him as a trojan horse candidate. Sure, his positions were antithetical to those of the vast majority of black Americans. If Thurgood Marshall were still alive at Thomas’ Supreme Court nomination he would have surely recoiled at the neanderthal positions Thomas held on race. But he was a black guy who spit out the Republican position on things and it wouldn’t have done the Senate well to reject him.
What happened on the way is that Thomas’ sexual harassment of Anita Hill came out, and like OJ when threatened, Thomas got real black real fast. Suddenly the get-along guy was the victim of a Fuhrmanesque “high tech lynching for uppity blacks” when in fact most blacks were in opposition to his nomination and believed Anita Hill. But it was convenient for Thomas, after all these years, to be black once again when it suited him.
And now with the release of his new book, it shows Thomas’ use of convenient blackness. He can, at least in his own mind, flit in-between these two worlds without penalty as it suits him.
The problem is, for most blacks in America, there is not the easy avenue of convenient blackness. Often an upper class black professional is treated the same as a poverty-level black teen. There is no on and off switch, there is no ability to dance along with the larger white world while at the same time becoming black to generate some gussied up “outrage”. Clarence Thomas and OJ Simpson inhabit a world that is fictional to the average black American, but they think in their own narrow minds that this is how it has and should operate.
UPDATE: I made a mistake and said Marshall was not alive during Thomas’ hearings. He was. This does not change the fact that Clarence Thomas is conveniently black when he wants to play the victim or that he makes decisions that hurt black Americans in a way that Thurgood Marshall never would.
He dropped black slang from his speech patterns, traded in his black wife for a younger blonde model, and then proceeded to be a regular on the golf links.
I’m sorry, I never understand comments like this. He “left behind his black roots” because of these behaviors? How on earth are we ever supposed to arrive at a society that doesn’t care about race when the races themselves are so hung up on their own stereotypes? Does somebody have the right to tell you, Oliver, that you “left your black roots behind” because you lust after Jessica Alba more frequently and openly than you do over, say, Gabrielle Union?
Thomas’s angry assertion that lynching is the fate of ‘uppity’ blacks revealed that he didn’t really believe the Republican party line that racism is a thing of the past, and that remedial programs such as affirmative action are unnecessary. Unfortunately, the Dems didn’t call him on the contradiction.
Spider, one gets the idea that you understand perfectly well what Oliver meant, but that you just don’t like it. Black American dialects are not a “stereotype” but a linguistic reality, like other accents and dialects throughout humanity hroughout history on every continent. I would fill in the rest of the blanks but this is Oliver’s blog, not mine; it’s his job to backhand the concern trolls.
Let’s just say that my lust (such as it is) has been consistent, as has my way of speaking, while OJ made a noticeable change once he became a celebrity.
You ahould lighten up on Mark Fuhrman. I followed the Simpson trial closely, even ran a discussion section on Compuserve on the trial.
Cochran’s problem with Fuhrman was that he found the key evidence, OJ’s bloody glove at OJ’s property. If the evidence was real, OJ was a killer, and in fact he was, since he could easily have been convicted with all the other evidence that Fuhrnman did not find.
The only way to get OJ off the hook was to sacrifice Fuhrman, who was a reasonably distinguished detective with no outstanding black marks on his record. He was defended against racism charges not only by Black cops who had worked with him, but by Black arrestees.
Cochran turned Fuhrman into a “racist” with only one piece of “evidence,” a tape he had made ten years earlier, in connection with a script he was working on, which used language that I hear from my Black employees every day. Fuhrman was lynched with language he used IN A PIECE OF FICTION.
Fuhrman’s career was destroyed, not because he was incompetent or racist, but because OJ Simpson is a murderer. Get your facts straight.
Black American dialects are not a “stereotype” but a linguistic reality,
All my employees are Black and they do not come from the middle class suburbs. When they get on their cellphones talking with their friends they descend into hip-hop slang so deep I barely understand it.
Then when they talk to my customers, it comes out so suburban that it’s practically Valley Girl.
They are bilingual, and I am not.
didn’t oj take down all of the pictures of white people hanging on his walls and replace them with black people before the jury toured his home?
Oliver: Marshall was alive at the time of the Thomas hearings.
A new Black Blogger in town. Check my stuff and please leave productive comments
Hot off the Press
“Barack Obama: America’s First Black President–If He
Were a Republican”
Check it at
http://www.thoughtmerchant.wordpress.com
Politics and Commentary for the thinking person of
color
Thought Merchant
Please that lynching Tom talks about never happened…he does not even have scars on his neck. The only scars Tom has are in his crazy, sick, and delusional mind.
Bruce, it’s less about the dialect than it is about the interracial romance and the golf course being a sign of “race treason.” I perhaps didn’t phrase my first post well. It doesn’t make me a “concern troll.” Get a grip, mate.
When one finds trouble in the public forum the strategy of retreating to one’s own constituency is common. It happens with Republicans caught wide-stancing in men’s rooms too.
Whenever I see OJ Simpson’s name invoked, though, I feel it necessary to point out the autopsy information proves that the murders did not occur anything like Marcia Clark tried to prove and it’s unlikely he did it. I’ve tried to get a discussion about it going here:
http://forums.talkleft.com/index.php/topic,1701.0.html
I think most people were absolutely convinced prior to the trial that Simpson was guilty. The crime was imagined as fitting some of the most despicable racist stereotypes against black men and which made the widespread belief in his guilt easier to accept in spite of evidence to the contrary.
I think that Simpson, who does not strike me as a particularly shrewd man (not unlike our current President), was badly served by his legal team (with the exception of Schreck and his group) in both presenting a case and in giving him personal advice.
And speaking of people who you may not want to see if you are black and in trouble, when Jesse Jackson emerged from visiting Simpson in jail he said that they prayed together and that Simpson was “contrite.” Jackson almost never fails to diminish those he comes to “help”.
The thing you have to understand about Simpson, though, and why it is that the lingering issue of his guilt remains, is that even if you can believe that he didn’t kill Ron and Nicole, his behaviors around his trial and in the years since his acquittal have not convinced us that he could not have committed such crimes.
The laughable “search for the real killer.” The bizarre explanation that “if I did kill her, it must mean I loved her very much.” The banana-stabbing jokes on British television. If I Did It. The road rage incident and, oh, right, the alleged armed robbery.
Darden and Clark have been rightly lambasted for their prosecution of the case, and you may be right that it couldn’t have happened the way they tried to prove it happened. But there’s something not right in that man OJ’s head.
Black American dialects are not a “stereotype” but a linguistic reality, like other accents and dialects throughout humanity hroughout history on every continent.
The accents and dialect have nothing to do with skin color and everything to do with where a person was raised, so it is in fact a stereotype and has nothing at all to do with linguistics.
And quite frankly, I am puzzled at this notion that playing golf is some kind of measuring stick for leaving “black roots” behind.
The rest of this entry is just as silly. Constitutional issues reach across racial lines. When a Justice issues an opinion in a ruling, they are to do so in the interests of the constitution, not to any particular group or race.
In addition, Oliver refers to Thomas’s view on affirmative action as “Neanderthal.” This is one of the main reasons why I deplore liberalism to the extent that the majority of liberals think this way. To the majority of liberals, there’s no reasonable explanation to be opposed to certain policies or take different positions than their own. No, it’s something much worse. There must be something wrong with the person or their motives are sinister. Don’t support affirmative action? You’re a neanderthal. Don’t agree with the level of funding for SCHIP? It’s because you WANT children to get sick and die or at the very least, don’t care. I could sit here all day and reel off example after example of the same but that’s what it boils down to. As such I find it laughable when liberals like Oliver complain about a lack of constructive discourse and blame conservatives for it.
The only scars Tom has are in his crazy, sick, and delusional mind.
See what I mean?
The truth hurts sometimes.
I’m not sure that the presumed guilt of Simpson had as much to do with black stereotypes as it did with his well-docmumented history of domestic abuse.
What strikes me the most about Thomas’ “anger” is that he assumes that his Yale law degree is worthless because he couldn’t get a job immediately out of law school, and that this was a direct consequence of affirmative action. Never does it occur to him that:
1) He was passed over because he was black. Not because of the degree, but in spite of it;
2) He was passed over because he was admittedly an angry black radical at that point in his life, which doesn’t go over well at stuffy white law firms;
3) He was passed over because he finished in the middle of the pack, not at the top of his class, and minorities often have to excel to be offered the same opportunities that average white men take for granted;
4) He was passed over because he didn’t have the access to the same network of good-old-boy connections that most of his Yalie classmates took advantage of (and which may have allowed many of them to overcome point #3; cf GWB).
As a counteroint to Thomas’ self-absorbed whinging, Skip Gates gave the commencement address at our small college last semester. He made the point that there were blacks at Yale before affirmative action… only about 3 or 4 per class, and all sons of professional, upper middle-class families. Only when Yale began its program of affirmative action did larger numbers of black students, including the sons and daughters of plumbers and railworkers, get access to that institution.
The idea that Thomas is villified just because he happens to be a black conservative is laughable. Its more the idea that Thomas ignores and denigrates the overwhelming positive effects of affirmative action over the last 3 decades that galls.
Then don’t bitch when it goes in your direction. After all, the truth hurts sometimes.
To the majority of liberals, there’s no reasonable explanation to be opposed to certain policies or take different positions than their own.
Give me a break, Jay. This is hardly a condemnation of “liberals” as much as it is a condemnation of partisan politics in general. Your statement is just as true when you replace the word “liberal” with “conservative,” but on different matters and as of late with far less subtlety.
Don’t support the war in Iraq? It’s because you feel sympathy for terrorists. Don’t support torture? It’s because you hate America. Don’t support an amendment defining marriage as heterosexuals-only? It’s because you hate families, you hate God, you hate children, and you like it when people have sex with dogs. And for everything else you disagree with? It’s because you hate Bush.
These are supposed to be “reasonable explanations” from the conservative side of the discourse?
I could sit here all day and reel off example after example of the same but that’s what it boils down to.
Yeah. Me too.
What strikes me the most about Thomas’ “anger” is that he assumes that his Yale law degree is worthless because he couldn’t get a job immediately out of law school, and that this was a direct consequence of affirmative action.
Huh? Thomas joined the staff of Missouri Attorney General John Danforth right after he graduated. Thomas learned while in Yale that he was the beneficiary of an affirmative action plan. He said later, “You had to prove yourself every day because the presumption was that you were dumb and didn’t deserve to be there on merit.”
Only when Yale began its program of affirmative action did larger numbers of black students, including the sons and daughters of plumbers and railworkers, get access to that institution.
The idea that Thomas is villified just because he happens to be a black conservative is laughable. Its more the idea that Thomas ignores and denigrates the overwhelming positive effects of affirmative action over the last 3 decades that galls.
First of all, Thomas IS villified because he is a black conservative. In a previous thread I asked people to list reasons why he’s such a disgrace to the Supreme Court. Nobody could supply any answers beyond myths about him never being involved in oral arguments. So give me a break with that nonsense.
Second of all, Skip Gates comments (with regard to the children of railworkers and plumbers) about affirmative action confirm what many people have said about such programs in that class should be the determining factor in such admission policies and not race or sex. Clarence Thomas supports such programs.
Jay, Thomas claimed in his 60 Minutes interveiw that he was a radical leftist until he joined Danforth’s staff, and that subsequently working for Danforth was what changed his ideas. He bemoaned the fact that he was turned down for many positions before that, and thus keeps his degree in a dime-store frame in the basement.
Yes, he worked hard, yes he was given strong values by his stern grandfather. But he carries around a rather unattractive persecution complex, arguing that he succeeded in spite of affirmative action, not largely because of it. I don’t deny his intelligence or his ability to have succeeded at a school of Yale’s caliber without affirmative action… I do challeng the idea that he would have been allowed those opportunities (including the one he is now enjoying) without it.
If he had well-reasoned arguments against such programs that went beyond the chip on his own shoulder, and at least acknowleged the progress that has come about due to their voluntary implemenation at schools such as Yale, I would have some respect for the man.
It’s not his conservative opinions that I object to. It’s his intellectual dishonesty.
Jay, Thomas claimed in his 60 Minutes interveiw that he was a radical leftist until he joined Danforth’s staff, and that subsequently working for Danforth was what changed his ideas. He bemoaned the fact that he was turned down for many positions before that, and thus keeps his degree in a dime-store frame in the basement.
Yes, he worked hard, yes he was given strong values by his stern grandfather. But he carries around a rather large, unattractive chip on his shoulder, arguing that he succeeded in spite of affirmative action, not largely because of it. I don’t deny his intelligence or his ability to have succeeded at a school of Yale’s caliber without affirmative action… I do challeng the idea that he would have been allowed those opportunities (including the one he is now enjoying) without it.
If he had well-reasoned arguments against such programs that went beyond his persecution complex, and at least acknowleged the progress that has come about due to their voluntary implemenation at schools such as Yale, I would have some respect for the man.
It’s not his conservative opinions that I object to. It’s his intellectual dishonesty.
apologies for the double post, damed slow connections on campus today
it’s his job to backhand the concern trolls.
I would hardly call Spider a concern troll.
SpiderJ said:
The thing you have to understand about Simpson, though, and why it is that the lingering issue of his guilt remains, is that even if you can believe that he didn’t kill Ron and Nicole, his behaviors around his trial and in the years since his acquittal have not convinced us that he could not have committed such crimes.
The laughable “search for the real killer.” The bizarre explanation that “if I did kill her, it must mean I loved her very much.” The banana-stabbing jokes on British television. If I Did It. The road rage incident and, oh, right, the alleged armed robbery.
+++
The list of Simpson’s subsequent behavior has nothing to do with the two murders. It is as if anything Simpson does should be used a proof of the murders.
How would you have acted if you were innocent but the world thought you were guilty? The people on cable TV that we know have been lying about the war are the people we believed about the Simpson trial. They rarely reported the defense side at all. For example, did anyone here actually watch or listen to Barry Scheck’s summation?
Everything that Simpson has said or done has been through a prejudiced lens of presumed guilt. Read the autopsy evidence. There is an elegant simplicity to the elements of the two victims’ deaths that leaves no room for Clark’s theory of the case. Rather, it points to something quite different. Take a look.
How would you have acted if you were innocent but the world thought you were guilty?
Look, I’m trying to engage with you here on facts, not on hypotheticals, but I can’t believe that a man who wants nothing more than to clear his name would even consider, for a second, writing a book called If I Did It. I don’t know how I would react, but I’m next to positive I wouldn’t do that.
It almost makes me want to agree with Al Franken’s satirical essay about OJ’s innocence…it couldn’t have been OJ, because the killer is smart, not stupid like OJ.
My point is that there’s something clearly unhinged about the guy, and this much was clear from the second he took off in the Bronco. People have trouble believing him innocent not because he’s black, but because he’s off his nut.
Not that I want to wade into these waters much, but OJ Simpson’s blood was all over the place and to this day he can’t consistently explain where he got that cut on his hand or why he mysteriously went to Chicago all of a sudden. OJ killed those two people.
1. I think Simpson killed them, but there were some evidentiary problems with the prosecution case, and Simpson had the resources to magnify the defects. ‘Beyond a reasonable doubt’ is a high standard, particularly in a trial where the defendant brings Simpson’s resources. Don’t blame Cochran, Judge Ito, or the jury.
2. Everyone’s credentials have been devalued. The culprits are the white racists who insisted on a quota of zero for all those years. Affirmative action isn’t perfect, but it’s a necessary part of the solution. The legacy of racism will taint everyone’s credentials for a good long time.
I just want to second Watson, OW, and SpiderJ. Also, it’s kind of weird how many white people I know are eager to admit that the justice system is biased in favor people with “resources,” as Watson put it, but have trouble saying that the system is biased against black people. When Edwards said it, the GOP went after him like crazy. What a sad state of affairs.
Thomas is vilified for some of his appalling decisions . It’s as if the man never heard of the American Constitution.
…He has advocated the reversal of Roe v. Wade, joining the dissenting opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and writing the concurrence in Gonzales v. Carhart…Thomas consistently supports a strict interpretation of the Constitution’s interstate commerce clause and supports limits on the power of federal government in favor of states’ rights….Thomas takes a narrow view of the substantive limitations imposed by the Constitution on the use of capital punishment; he was among the dissenters in both Atkins v. Virginia and Roper v. Simmons, which held that the Constitution prohibited the application of the death penalty to certain classes of persons….. In addition, Thomas does not believe that students possess any right to free speech in public schools, a view he expressed in his concurrence in Morse v. Frederick. In that case, he argued that the precedent of Tinker v. Des Moines should be overruled….Thomas has a favorable view toward the power of the executive branch. He was the only justice that agreed all arguments of the Bush administration in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. He also dissented in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, a case involving Guantanamo detainees…..
It’s one thing to be conservative, it’s quite another to be an authoritarian tool.
Mike, perhaps you can explain to the rest of the class what makes those decisions so appalling?
I mean, is copy and paste all you people can do? Can’t you think on your own?
In addition, Thomas does not believe that students possess any right to free speech in public schools, a view he expressed in his concurrence in Morse v. Frederick.
I wonder what Wikipedia idiot wrote this because I continue to be amazed by the sheer stupidity of those that claim a justice ‘believes’ something based on how they ruled on a case. Thomas never said, “I don’t believe students possess any right to free speech in public schools.” In his concurrence he wrote that the US Constitution does not afford students the right to free speech in public schools. To those with a CLUE, that is a BIG difference.
Bob in Pacifica,
You don’t live that far from me. I’m in Marin County.
If you wish to start a discussion of the OJ Simpson trial, start it in O-Dub’s forum area.
I am as expert as a layman can be on the case, listened to every day of the trial and had at one time collected all the transcripts on floppy disks (back in the day).
OJ did it.
To the majority of liberals, there’s no reasonable explanation to be opposed to certain policies or take different positions than their own. No, it’s something much worse. There must be something wrong with the person or their motives are sinister
Funny, coming from someone whose ilk called and calls people who question their lack of foreign policy skills “terrorists” or “terrorist appeasers”.
Don’t agree with the level of funding for SCHIP? It’s because you WANT children to get sick and die or at the very least, don’t care.
Evidence seems to suggest that this may be true.
I presume that people here who insist that Simpson read my link.
++
Southern Quaker wrote: I’m not sure that the presumed guilt of Simpson had as much to do with black stereotypes as it did with his well-docmumented history of domestic abuse.
–
I cannot with certainty say that Simpson never abused his ex-wife, but reading Detective Edwards’ testimony reveals a rather curious thing. According to Edwards, both Nicole and OJ separately and independently told him that police had come to the house eight (8) times before and didn’t do anything. Since both had come home from a New Years party and both were agitated (and probably intoxicated), it’s surprising that both Nicole and OJ remembered the exact number of times that police had come over for domestic abuse incidents and had not reported them. People who are upset tend to exaggerate. People who beat up their spouses neither remember nor volunteer the exact number of times police come to investigate spousal abuse. Edwards’ testimony sounds a little phony to me.
Another bit of curiousness in Edwards’ testimony is that after Nicole allegedly told him that OJ had a gun collection and was going to shoot her Edwards allowed Simpson to reenter his house. Now that’s a bad cop.
Farrell, his commander at the time, admitted under cross that when he asked at a police standup if anyone else had been called for a domestic dispute, only one cop came forward–any guesses? I’ll give you a hint. He perjured himself at the Simpson trial.
Repack Rider, you would recall that, right?
++
Oliver wrote: Not that I want to wade into these waters much, but OJ Simpson’s blood was all over the place and to this day he can’t consistently explain where he got that cut on his hand or why he mysteriously went to Chicago all of a sudden. OJ killed those two people.
–
Oliver, you didn’t hear Barry Scheck’s summary. He explained it. Which blood? The blood on the swabs that were wet 24 hours later when they were packed to send to the lab? Or the blood on his socks that wasn’t on the socks the day they were recovered? Well, that was the victims’ blood, but the quarter-sized stain on the sock which leaked over to the inside of the other side of the sock didn’t appear until the socks had been examined three times. There was the blood in the Bronco, which people (including a cop) testified wasn’t there in the days after the Bronco was impounded but was collected a month and a half after the crime.
++
But all of you have read the link now, so you guys can explain how come Goldman didn’t bleed internally after he was stabbed in the back and his artery was cut, and you can all explain why Nicole wasn’t breathing or bleeding when her throat was cut. I’m waiting for anyone’s explanation.
Watson said: I think Simpson killed them, but there were some evidentiary problems with the prosecution case…
–
Great, Watson, how did Simpson kill both victims? What wounds killed them? Why did he wait until they were dead and bled out, probably another ten minutes, until he gave the two corpses additional wounds? How did all the blood above Goldman’s back wound get out of his body before he was stabbed there?
We agree that there were evidentiary problems.
Here was the post I kept asking folks to look at:
When a body is retrieved from the ocean, one of the things that a coroner must check for is whether the victim had aspirated, or inhaled water into his lungs. If not, or if there is fresh water in the lungs of the victim, that is proof that the victim did not die by drowning in the ocean. There was a scene in the movie “Chinatown” with just this kind of problem of evidence for those of you interested interested in fictional corruption in Los Angeles.
This line of investigation is a fundamental one for a coroner, and the theory behind it not only shows that the prosecution’s theory of the case against O.J. Simpson was wrong, but also strongly suggests that there was something other than justice being pursued in those courts in Southern California a decade ago.
The prosecution claimed that Nicole Simpson’s ex-husband, football star and actor O.J. Simpson, attacked and killed her by cutting her throat on the steps of her condomium on the night of June 12, 1994. As he was doing this, or soon after or immediately prior to her death, he was surprised by a waiter from the Mezzaluna Restaurant, Ron Goldman, whom Simpson killed by stabbing him in the back fatally.
The prosecution’s theory fails in the deaths of both victims.
Nicole Simpson suffered a throat cut so deep that it nicked a bone in the spinal column. All major arteries and veins to and from the head were severed. She was almost completely “bled out” (most of the blood in her system was out of her) when she was found by police. Even her epiglottis, the flap of skin that covers the windpipe when someone swallows, had been cut. It was a devastating wound that could have killed her. But it wasn’t cause of her death.
There was no aspiration of blood into her lungs. Simply, she was not breathing when her throat was cut. Even if she were unconscious when her throat was cut, she would still be breathing. More telling, there was no blood found in her mouth or sinuses. If she had been alive when her throat was cut, blood would have spurted out of her neck under great pressure, some of it going into her mouth and sinuses. The wound to the epiglottis alone should have produced blood in the mouth. She had already “bled out” when her throat was cut.
The ghastly throat wound was delivered to Nicole Simpson after she had stopped breathing and bleeding.
The wound that bled out Nicole Simpson was a puncture of the right common carotid artery on the side of her neck. It wasn’t as dramatic as the throat wound, and as a wound it doesn’t provide an easy logic to the crime, but because it was the only other potentially fatal wound that would have caused so much loss of blood, it is the only wound that could have killed her.
Ron Goldman’s cause of death has similar problems. The wound that was supposed to have killed him was the stab in his back that cut his abdominal aorta, which carries blood from the heart to the lower torso and extremities. If that had been the death wound, Goldman’s pleural (chest) cavity would have filled up with much of the blood in his system until he weakened and the heart stopped pumping. About a half cup of blood or the amount that drained from his heart, was found in his chest cavity. In short, that wound, like Nicole Simpson’s throat wound, had been delivered after his death.
Goldman’s body was found in a sitting position, slumped against a tree stump. Someone would have had to have lifted up the dead Goldman in order to deliver the back wound, and then place him against the tree stump.
Goldman, like Nicole, also had a wound on the side of the neck that punctured his carotid artery.
Neither of the victims’ wounds on the sides of their necks, the only wounds which could have killed them, would have produced death immediately. The victims could have continued to struggle, could have moved, could have vocalized shouts of help, with the fatal wound at the side of their necks.
Even if both victims had immediately gone into shock, it would have taken time for them to bleed to death, somewhere from five to ten minutes. This would require the killer to wait around the crime scene of his double homicide for precious minutes until both victims had bled to death, and then deliver ghastly but meaningless wounds to the dead bodies.
The autopsies do not make sense in the context of the crime scene, and they do not fit the prosecution’s theory of the case or any imagined theory of a double homicide. Killers in the middle of Los Angeles do not stand around a crime scene for ten minutes waiting for people to bleed to death in order to inflict meaningless wounds. They don’t lift up a dead body to stab it in the back. Certainly not if they have to catch a limo to the airport.
This had to have been evident to the coroner when the bodies were first examined.
Dr. Irwin Golden, the coroner who examined the two victims, was nervous when he testified at a pre-trial hearing. By the time of the trial the prosecution replaced him with another doctor in the coroner’s office.
The wounds not only make the prosecution’s theory of the case impossible, it also raises questions about how the victims actually died, how the crime scene evidence may have been tampered with and why the prosecution did not pursue a case based on the autopsy results and what really happened on June 12, 1994.
Bob,
I looked at your text, and I read the autopsy testimony from the trial. I was unable to find any correspondence between your post and the testimony.
Please start a thread in the Forum, and I will be happy to discuss the case there.
Our host isn’t looking to get too deep into all-things-OJ, but Simpson had an alibi problem. He wasn’t at choir practice that night. The best he could do was claim that he fell asleep in the shower while practicing his golf swing.
Watson said:
Our host isn’t looking to get too deep into all-things-OJ, but Simpson had an alibi problem. He wasn’t at choir practice that night. The best he could do was claim that he fell asleep in the shower while practicing his golf swing.
–
When the Browns were contacted by Claudine Ratcliffe of the coroner’s office the morning after the murders, Ratcliffe asked them when the last time was that they’d spoken with their daughter. They both said after 11p.m., after they got back home from the Mezzaluna. Several weeks later Mr. Brown made an amended statement that it was actually more like nine-thirty. How did both parents misestimate what time they got home from the Mezzaluna the morning after it happened, but then remember two weeks later? It certainly reopened a window of opportunity to allow Simpson to be prosecuted.
At 11 p.m. June 12 OJ was loading luggage into the limo on his way to the airport. If Nicole was still alive then he couldn’t have done it.
Simpson had an alibi until the Browns changed their story to accommodate the prosecution.
Actually, a number of witnesses adjusted their “timelines” from their initial statements, and these adjustments all helped to fit the timeline to move the time of the murders earlier.
I don’t know how closely you followed the OJ trial when it was going on, but I did, and I studied the transcripts afterward.
I do not care to debate this here, so I started a thread in the forum. As far as I know,and I will stand corrected if OW says different, the forum is available for ongoing discussions on many subjects.
Take your argument elsewhere.
Repack, I’ve already commented over there, so the ball is in your court.
For Watson, regarding Simpson’s alibi and the original statements by the Browns regarding the last time Nicole was known to be alive, here is verbatim from Coroner’s Investigator Ratcliffe’s report, signed 6.13.94:
“The decedent 94-05136 was last known to be alive at about 2300 hrs. speaking to her mother on the telephone. Her mother had left her eyeglasses at a restaurant that evening and the decedent reportedly advised her mother that she should ask if an employee could bring them to her residence.”
Please note the problems beyond the fact that Simpson was loading his luggage into the limo at his home across L.A. at the time that Nicole and Mrs. Brown were talking. If Mrs. Brown were talking to Nicole at 11 p.m. about contacting the Mezzaluna for her glasses, then there is no reason for Goldman to be there. Goldman allegedly left the Mezzaluna around ten. You notice how the timeline begins to collapse.
That’s why it was necessary for the Browns to make such a drastic change in their timeline. Otherwise, there was no case against OJ. Think of all the problems and all the timeline shifts done after the fact. Remember the clock doing the credit card billing at the Mezzaluna that wasn’t yet set to daylight savings time in the middle of June? LOL.
You wrote, “If Thurgood Marshall were still alive at Thomas’ Supreme Court nomination he would have surely recoiled at the neanderthal positions Thomas held on race.”
Not only was he alive at his nomination, he was alive for his swearing in, and for his first year or so on the bench.
So far as my research shows, he never criticized Thomas publicly or privately.
I look forward to your retraction.
“Thomas is vilified for some of his appalling decisions . It’s as if the man never heard of the American Constitution.”
Actually, he rules based on the American Constitution. The SC is not the legislature. If you want to change the law go there. You want to modify the constitution, start there. Stop expecting the SC to let you skip past all that. You have no idea what you are talking about.
If you can’t even bother to do enough research to learn when Marshall died, why should we bother to read this piece?
Nobody’s forcing you to read anything.
Oliver Willis is proof positive that Kryptonite equates to stupidity. He has not read the Justices’ book, he has no clue of Justice Marshall, his life or thoughts, and proves how bankrupt the left has become in its lazy, thought-free, lemming-like groupthink.
Oliver Willis is by far the stupidest blogger I’ve ever read. He also eats too much and should go on diet, so he doesnt have a heart attack at 40.
Clarence Thomas opposes racial preferences for blacks. That doesn’t make him a hypocrite when he attributes racial motive to some injustice. In fact, there are occasions where black people acting against whites are motivated by racial animus. That doesn’t mean whites are entitled to racial preferences. It is twisted logic to call this “convenient blackness” when in fact, it is simply calling out injustice when it occurs.
What is most disturbing to me is how some blacks, and the whites who count on a lopsidedly liberal black vote, have so many nasty things to say about conservative blacks. The wonderful liberals you say deserve the support of every black voter are the same ones who sustained segregation, and who now shove blacks into dangerous ghettos and failing schools. Affirmative action might get you a job driving the garbage truck, but education gets you the job of CEO of the garbage collection company.
Nick Kasoff
The Thug Report
Repack Rider,
I’ve posted a number of times over at the forum discussion thread that you started yesterday. So far no rejoinder from you. Is the forum “elsewhere” enough for you or have you decided not to risk your belief system?