Via Jim Rome.
I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.
I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.
I don't mean to pick on you, Tim, but great lord in heaven do I hate this phrase.
If I had meant to pick on you, I would have called you "Chrissy."
Reference. One of the great moments in comeuppance.
4: Gawd, you're pathetic. Like anyone needs the link.
So, OJ. I think I've mentioned here before that I was sure he was guilty, and still happy that he beat the rap, because that's the good kind of affirmative action, but I have to say that since then, he's really been an unlikable skeez. This show is in massively poor taste. It's one thing to gloat privately, but innocent people are dead.
Like anyone needs the link.
I'm pretty sure that less than half the people here had any idea what 3 was about.
Wow. I wanted him to get got, but I worried a little about the reaction if he did. Kind of like your injustice affirmative-action, but not nearly so radical. It would have been nice if something bad would have happened to him.
7: Yeah, fair point. I think I was acting out from nervousness; the solicitousness of "I don't mean to pick on you" made me worry. How bad must whatever's coming down the pike towards me be for ogged to include that, etc.
happy that he beat the rap, because that's the good kind of affirmative action
Wait, spell this out for me?
Don't worry, SCMT, apostropher's got your back.
Drole? Bellweather? Less than half the people here?
Has Ben given up? Or is this a kinder, gentler era for Unfogged?
6: is this sarcastic? If not, what's the bad kind?
6: why would you think a double-murderer would be anything but an unlikeable skeeve? Also, the innocent people were dead a long time before OJ started bragging.
14: With ogged, it's a fine line between sarcasm and genuine mindbending weirdness.
why would you think a double-murderer would be anything but an unlikeable skeeve?
Because my guess is that murderers are usually the most normal among criminals. A lot of people can be incited to murder, but not so much to rape or arson, for example. (A parole office I knew confirmed this--in her experience, anyway.)
I don't have what I'd call a defensible position on the OJ Simpson verdict, but my visceral reaction was that it was about time a black man in America benefited from some corruption and injustice.
12: Um, Megan, you might want to check your spelling before you post.
17: OJ was also, at the time of the verdict, a confessed spousal abuser. I don't think he's become *more* of an unlikeable skeez since that time.
I don't have what I'd call a defensible position on the OJ Simpson verdict, but my visceral reaction was that it was about time a black man in America benefited from some corruption and injustice.
Mark one up for genuine mindbending weirdness.
I think I agree about the murdering part generally.
20: I don't think it's that strange. It's wrong, though.
Well, yeah, I do know what he means. But sticking up for it in the face of the evident wrongness really brings the strange.
You, I wouldn't feel too weird about defending it on, say, the grounds that it was a net good for African-Americans to feel like one of their own could beat the system. What would make me feel weird would be speaking, in some sense, for African-Americans, not so much the fact that two people were killed.
How many yards did Mumia gain? Fuck him.
Ogged's position is pretty much exactly what I remember black people in CA saying about the case.
It's no accident that I could dunk, people.
Not all black people in CA; I know half a dozen who thought the SOB was guilty, guilty, guilty and thought he should be convicted. And, ftm, considered him to be a race traitor, what with divorcing the black wife and subsequently dating only white women, and never - unlike, say, Magic Johnson - doing anything for the black community. But there was Johnny Cochran - he who also had a blonde, white mistress - insisting that it was all about race, despite the history of spousal abuse, the history of large settlements for random violence [throwing a diner through a restaurant window, etc.]. There's a reason Howard Weitzman wouldn't defend him again.
Rodney King getting off for DUI is one thing; OJ getting off for murder is quite another.
Ogged's position is pretty much exactly what I remember black people in CA saying about the case.
You'd think ogged would have more insight into the Mexican community's reaction.
I like 30.
Additionally, OJ was rich rich rich. THAT'S how he got out of it, similar to the way in which rich honkies get out of trouble.
I'm all for beating the system, by the way, but I hate that anyone thinks an injustice was vindicated at the expense of two people's lives.
Because my guess is that murderers are usually the most normal among criminals.
I hate to say this, but I think that somehow Ogged is saying this shit to set up his defense.
Welll, I assume he was guilty. But it's also true that the prosecution did a shitty job, and that whatsiface, the cop, was obviously a racist, and I don't think that it's so shocking that the jury ended up not seeing the man guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt"--which is, after all, the standard.
Rodney King didn't get off for DUI. He was beaten into a fucking wheelchair. I don't call that "getting off" by any stretch of the imagination.
Quite awhile back he said something like "If I had killed her. it would have been because I loved her." I thought that let the cat out.
I think the Rodney King comment was referring to a later DUI charge, not the original incident where he was beaten and the police later got off which set off the riots. Still...just saying.
I can understand a spiteful kind of "welcome to my world" feeling. But the good KIND of affirmative action? So, a bump in college admissions is the bad kind, but getting away with murder is the good kind?
I'd call it the worst possible kind of affirmative action: rich black criminals can get off because of their race just like rich white criminals, but poor defendants--innocent and guilty alike--are screwed, and poor black defendants are extra screwed.
You don't root for hurricanes either, do you Katherine?
Actually, I kind of do. And blizzards definitely.
As I said, I understand a sort of feeling satisfaction, I was nitpicking your specific phrasing as much as anything else.
(I suppose it's better that if you're going to have a criminal justice system that puts rich people at an unfair advntage, it's better that rich white and black people be able to hire fancy beat the system as opposed to only rich white people. But it's much less fun to root for that than for a natural disaster.)
OJ didn't deserve to get away with murder; but the LAPD did kind of deserve to lose the case, I think.
I was sure he was guilty, and still happy that he beat the rap, because that's the good kind of affirmative action
Because there isn't enough affirmative action for rich people.
I remember seeing polls breaking down along racial lines who thought OJ did it and who didn't. If the black community had a consensus that OJ was innocent, then the verdict does restore faith in the judicial system, and not just reinforce the perception that rich folks can get away with murder.
4, 5 and 7: What's funny in an "I can still stand Jim Rome for 15 minutes when I'm driving somewhere" sort of way is his reaction whenever someone calls in and makes that same sort of play on an athlete's name (the one I remember was "Vinessa Young") - he goes off for about 10-15 minutes straight on what a classless, juvenile thing that is to do, and how no one thinks it's funny, etc. Leads me to think that he believes about 1/3 of what he says...
Re: OJ if we could have found a way to lock up OJ and Mark Fuhrman, that would have been fine too.
34: It was the later arrest, not the one where he was beaten. [FWIW, I think those cops should have been sent to prison, where they could have enjoyed being beaten shitless.]
OJ got off because he was rich; it wasn't a victory for the average black man wrongfully accused of a crime - all it did was affirm the stereotype that the black community would rather see a murderer [or child molester] go free than rightly convict a black man, which leads to prosecutors seeking less diverse [read: whiter, more conservative] venues [say, Simi Valley...] in order to get convictions. No favours done all round.
Just think of Nicole and Ron as reparations.
48: But a lot of average black men/women *did* see it as a victory. I think we underestimate the rarity of a black man being found innocent, especially when there's evidence of prosecutorial racism. And maybe especially when the conventional wisdom is that he's guilty as sin.
Ogged, why do you hate white people?
You know, I was just thinking to myself, with Pooh and Biohazard and few others, we have some good new commenters. Glad to see you two disagreeing. But 51 was to 49, which was very funny.
Cheers Ogged, I'm mostly here for the genitalia jokes. Plus now that Yglesias is down to one blog, there's a pretty high wonk-to-"Wire" ratio over there, and I can't really handle the earnestness.
I would do more Wire blogging, but I went and watched the whole season, so I have to wait for everyone to catch up. As for earnestness, well, I try to fight it, in myself and in others, but I keep losing.
why do you hate white people?
For their pale skin. Why do other people hate them?
Incidentally, my roommate is thinking of having me committed for voicing my opinion of Snoop...
For their pale skin.
Recall that we've seen a picture, wan one.
Snoop is cute, and anyone who says different is a bigot.
If the black community had a consensus that OJ was innocent, then the verdict does restore faith in the judicial system, and not just reinforce the perception that rich folks can get away with murder.
So imagine what it will do for the black community's faith in the judicial system when he confesses. At least it will reinforce the perception that rich folks can get away with murder, which really can't be stressed enough.
My forensic pathologist mom discussed the case with many of her colleagues, and the consensus appeared to be guilty, guilty, guilty.
the consensus appeared to be guilty, guilty, guilty
Quite obviously so.
I think more or less everyone thinks that he's guilty, no?
I would think so, but I remember an animated conversation at my (African-American) neighbors' across the street at which "No way he was guilty" was the overwhelmingly popular verdict. I also worked at the time for a contrarian French-Canadian cook who, despite her racism -- part of a matched set including anti-Semitism, misogyny and homophobia -- took up his cause, once scoffing at a news item, "There's no way he could have done that. You'd have to be really strong and really fast." To be fair, she wasn't a sports fan, so she wasn't aware of what it takes to win a Heisman.
28
It's no accident that I could dunk, people.
29
I thought Persians were Aryan.
According to the upcoming movie "300", Xerxes I and much of the Persian army were black.
At the time of the trial, I worked with a guy who was convinced OJ couldn't have done it because of his bad knees.
Yeah, but I'd love to see, for example, a poll today of African-Americans on the question of OJ's guilt. I bet that now the majority think he's guilty, too.
"If he can't bend his knee, he must go free!"
Oh, I know plenty of black people who think the guy is guilty. Regardless, I admit to being a little bugged by the way that the OJ case commands public attention over and above all other high-profile murder cases (who ever talks about Phil Spector?), and I'm willing to say that I think that's probably got something to do with the fact that OJ is black.
That and because it was the first 24-hour cable-TV trial.
I thought Spector was beastly to Ronni too.
I'm willing to say that I think that's probably got something to do with the fact that OJ is black.
Gee, B, that's big of you.
All right, maybe I'm an ass. But it's not something anyone ever admits; people always talk about it as if the question were simply guilt vs. getting away with murder, and people who think the latter are just flat-out wrong. I don't see a lot of nuanced discussion about why public opinion about the case is more complicated than that.
Not necessarily people here, mind. I just mean in general.
I'm willing to say that I think that's probably got something to do with the fact that OJ is black.
More to do with his wife being white, really.
Why don't more people talk about Phil Spector? Christ, what an evil motherfucker.
Has no one noted the biscuit conditional?
It looks like a proper conditional to me. The antecedent refers to a hypothetical world and the consequent to something that is true in that world. In a proper biscuit conditional, the antecedent describes conditions for the relevance of the utterance, not the truth of the proposition uttered.
76: Well, the combination. Lana Clarkson was white, too.
They could start a celebrity wife-killer club. Robert Blake could join too. They'd all have someone to golf with.
I have very pleased to read the comments of bPhd here today. I have long contended that the cops screwed up, OJ walks. End of story. Presumed innocence still maintains.
I am still unwilling to say "Guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." so OJ is innocent. Were he even to confess, well, offer me a few million with no legal jeopardy and I will confess to killing Jimmy Hoffa, JFK, and Nicole. A confession would not convince me.
I can't deny that I enjoy being perhaps the only person in America willing to declare OJ's innocence.
But for me the whole point was that the LAPD and DA did not care about the law, the constitution, or the rule of law. "OJ was guilty" so they do whatever they wanted. That is by far the larger crime, much larger than murder.
Look at Gitmo for the reasons why.
Presumed innocence still maintains.
Only for the government. The cops screwed up plenty, but there isn't much question that he killed those two people.
Rock's mention of Seinfeld leads me to remember (all the way back to last week) and mention: This was a good Daily Show moment.
85: Sam Sheppard
Sorry, as I remember the OJ case, I retain a reasonable doubt.
Refreshed my memory of the case via Wikipedia.
1) DNA evidence is tainted beyond repair thru fucked chain of custody. I buy none of it. Zero.
2) Spousal abuse/rage motive sucked. This bugged me most at the time. Zero history of violence;one proven incident involving a fight; five year gap though almost constant contact, then murder. This is insultingly and harmfully outside the pattern for abuse-murderers.
haven't thought about OJ in a long time; didn't really think about it that much at the time, either.
(I.e., not much compared to the fact that THE ENTIRE FUCKING COUNTRY CAME TO A HALT SO WE COULD OBSESS ABOUT IT).
But I do remember thinking that the acquittal might show a problematic ambiguity in jury-instructions. Not especially OJ-related, just a general problem. To wit:
When I'm a jury member, and I'm told that the standard for acquittal is "reasonable doubt", whose doubts should I attend to? Whose doubts should I assess for reasonableness?
A) Only my own. If I personally don't doubt that he's guilty, and if I can elicit hypothetical doubt in myself only by doing something unreasonable (ignoring evidence, positing Martians, etc.), then I should vote to convict.
B) The doubts of anyone I can imagine talking with. If I can imagine the existence of someone who is both in doubt and reasonable, then a reasonable doubt exists, even if not in me.
The problem with the B-standard is that for a variety of reasons, most Americans are extremely reluctant to tell someone to their face that the other person is not being reasonable. A believes that B is saying something evidently wrong, ill-informed, and poorly-argued. But still A will feel great reluctance to say that B is not reasonable. ("Well, that's your opinion and I can respect that. I'm sure what your saying is valid, too. Reasonable people can disagree." etc.) It's not quite the dreaded "moral relativism" that is supposed to infect us liberals; it's more like an excess of politeness (which then sometimes gives rise to phenomena that resemble moral relativism).
So the standard of "reasonable" that we use for judging *other* people's doubts is almost infinitely elastic.
The result is that you could have 12 people, each of whom felt in fact no live doubt whatsoever about a defendant's guilt, but each of whom can imagine some *other* doubting person whom they are unwilling to declare unreasonable.
For a variety of reasons, I think A) should be the standard. I should try to be reasonable in the formation of my beliefs, and having done that, if I have no live doubts, then I should vote to convict. Or if I have live doubts, then I should vote to acquit.
It's not just that the conventions of interpersonal courtesy make us reluctant to label other people's views "unreasonable", it's also that in general we are bad judges of what other, hypothetical people might or might not doubt., and the judicial system ought not to be asking us to try.
I'm also not saying that the ambiguity above *always* results in acquittals; clearly people get convicted every day. What it does, instead, is to give jurors who want to acquit for other reasons a rationale that they can tell themselves: "sure, I thought he did it, and in fact I had no doubt he did it. But someone *else* might doubt it for this or that reason, and then wouldn't *that* be a reasonable doubt? So there *is* a reasonable doubt that he did it, somewhere out there, so I *have* to acquit."
And you can avail yourself of that excuse when you want to (e.g. when you feel other pressures or desires to acquit), and not when you don't.
Maybe the lawyers here can tell us if there's any literature on what the hell "beyond a reasonable doubt" is supposed to mean, and in particular whose doubts count.
I swore I wouldn't post here, but I think that the pattern of continual abuse is different than the "If I can't have her nobody can" pattern.
84: Presumed innocence still maintains.
Yes. The gummint has to cross "t"s and dot "i"s before I'd vote to convict. But I'm somewhat disappointed in Goldman's father. Had it been my kid I'd have used the .30-06 & 'scope afterwards. Golf courses are ideal.
Maybe the lawyers here can tell us if there's any literature on what the hell "beyond a reasonable doubt" is supposed to mean, and in particular whose doubts count.
There's a consensus in the caselaw that trying too hard to define "reasonable doubt" only makes things even more confusing -- or that, at least to some extent, it's up to the jury to decide what "reasonable doubt" means. If the jury asks for further definition, the trial court's allowed, even sort of encouraged, to refuse.
But I think it's generally thought of as being about your state of mind, whether you are certain or not certain of guilt, not hypothetical doubts that you can imagine someone else holding.
The classic 19th century formulation:
What is reasonable doubt? It is a term often used, probably pretty well understood, but not easily defined. It is not mere possible doubt; because every thing relating to human affairs, and depending on moral evidence, is open to some possible or imaginary doubt. It is that state of the case, which, after the entire comparison and consideration of all the evidence, leaves the minds of jurors in that condition that they cannot say they feel an abiding conviction, to a moral certainty, of the truth of the charge. . . . [T]he evidence must establish the truth of the fact to a reasonable and moral certainty; a certainty that convinces and directs the understanding, and satisfies the reason and judgment, of those who are bound to act conscientiously upon it.
Maybe the lawyers here can tell us if there's any literature on what the hell "beyond a reasonable doubt" is supposed to mean, and in particular whose doubts count.
There's buckets of it, and I think it's mostly nonsense. There are three main standards of proof -- 'preponderance of the evidence', 'clear and convincing evidence' and 'beyond a reasonable doubt', and most of what I've seen analyzes the differences between them in terms of percentage certainty -- 'p.o.t.e' means slightly more than 50% sure, 'c.a.c.e.' means 80% or better, and 'b.a.r.d.' means 95% or better. The problem with that is that I have no idea what it means, quantitatively, to be 95% sure of something and I don't believe anyone else does. I don't think the thought process 'Huh, I guess I'm only 90% sure, so I should vote to acquit' is a possible one. (I think people fell into this because more than 50% is a good way to conceptualize p.o.t.e. -- a better way is 'You have to pick a side. Which way do you bet?')
The way I describe b.a.r.d., based on the few bits of analysis that made sense to me at the time (sorry, I don't have any links -- I haven't thought about this in forever) is that it's a two-step process. First, after considering the evidence, you inspect your mental state and decide if you are in any doubt at all about the guilt of the defendant (And, yes, your own doubt, not a doubt that someone else might have. The point of the jury system is the judgment of each juror). If no, vote to convict. If yes, go to step two. Take the doubt you have and inspect it. Is is a doubt based on some concrete reason? ("I'm not sure OJ did it, because Furman's clearly a racist nutcase, and the evidence was handled sloppily enough to make a frameup possible.") Then it's a reasonable doubt, and you acquit. If it's just a vague sense that anything's possible, and how can we ever really be sure, with nothing concrete, then there's no particular reason for it, it's an unreasonable doubt, and you vote to convict. I've seen a proposal somewhere for a 'beyond a shadow of a doubt' standard for death penalty cases, and for that, I suppose the standard would be any doubt, reasonable or unreasonable, means an acquittal.
Pwned by Felix, and my disquisition on reasonable doubt is my own paraphrase and expansion of that quote.
sometimes all the law provides is words. this is one of those times.
thanks felix and lb.
So from what you've said,
a) it would be okay for any judge to say "and the doubt in question is your doubt, not the doubt of any other person you might imagine, no matter how reasonable they might be," and
b) if a juror said, "well, I was convinced of his guilt, and I was as careful as I could be about my consideration of the case, but it seemed to me that there was still room for a reasonable person to doubt it," then they would be making an error if they voted to acquit, i.e. they would not be following the instructions they should have received. Their mistake would be that they cast their vote by reference to their beliefs about someone *else's* doubts and reasonability, rather than the doubt that they in fact had.
Lb--yes, I'm familiar with the difference btw civil 50% p.o.t.e. standard and criminal bard standard, but my question was more about *whose* doubt, rather than *how much* doubt. (And I share your doubts about quantifying doubt. In fact, I don't merely share them; I have *twice* as many as you do.)
Well, in order to establish guilt or innocence, we first must proved that other minds exist. Next we must prove that the defendant is an "other mind", and not a cunningly-designed robot. Once we have proven that, we must next prove that there has been persistence of personality, and that the person before actually existed as such in the past when the crime was committed -- and was not a different person in the same body.
Doesn't betting behavior or "willingness to pay" track someone's probability assessments?
Remember, "beyond a reasonable doubt" is not the same thing as no doubt, especially since Gwen Stefani started doing solo projects.
Sure, roughly, but not in a way that I think genuinely helps them make decisions. IANAExperimental Psychologist, but I think if you had couple of panels of jurors sit through a criminal trial, and told one panel: "You have a lot of money resting on whether your vote is factually correct -- if you vote to acquit and he's innocent, you win, and if you vote to convict and he's guilty, you win. The payoff for a correct acquittal verdict is 10x the payoff for a correct conviction verdict." and told the other the same thing, but with 20-1 rather than 10- odds, I don't think you'd actually get different behavior. My strong guess is that you couldn't find a case where people would consistently convict at 10-1 odds, but acquit at 20-1 odds. Which means to me that that saying stuff like 95% certainty is useless.
LB--very nice thought experiment for making the point that numbers like 95% are not meaningful in these contexts.
in fact, the more I think it over, the better that frames the issue.
OJ didn't deserve to get away with murder; but the LAPD did kind of deserve to lose the case
That's what I thought at the time and I thanked God every day that I wasn't on that jury. I was at a coffee shop when the verdict was announced and I remember the barrista (a white guy) nearly coming to blows with a customer (another white guy) over the decision.
Right now, I see OJ the same way I see Bush. If they can't be convicted for their crimes--and they probably can't--then I'm all for them becoming a living reminder of their own skeeziness.
Fellow law students, lawyers: this post makes me realize that at a point in the not too distant future I will graduate from law school without ever having been taught the double jeopardy clause. I do, however, have a copy of Modern Criminal Procedure (the class for which I have it covered 4th Amendment, self-incrimination, and right to counsel issues). Time to ignore other work I have and go auto-didact on the clause, I suppose.