The OJ Case

 Okay so, I have a lot of questions regarding the OJ case...And I don't mean to suggest that you don't have any questions, or worse, you're incapable of coming up with questions about the OJ case...But I'm pretty sure we don't have the same questions. 

Or maybe we do, I'm just banking on the hope that you don't have a problematically obsessive brain like me...and so you wouldn't have spent so much time angrily formulating questions, clutching your vape whilst pacing your room. 

This is my hope. 

But this is not the matter in question. 

A few problems in this timeline, and even my native Angeleno status is not helping me shine a light on these issues:

The recital. 

The restaurant. 

The residence(s).

How far away are these places from one another?

I know OJ was an obsessive, controlling spouse, and so I can understand him wanting to live close to his ex-wife, but how close is close? In LA truly close is down the block...but a car was involved so I'm gonna say we passed an intersection or two (5-30 minutes elapsing depending on the intersection). 

And I could pull up a map...but the map won't tell me anything about the traffic conditions that evening. 

Do you see where I'm going with this? 

In a city where dropping off your child, your dry cleaning and/or your pet locally can take you an hour

how was OJ able to attend a recital and family dinner, go to Burger King with Kato, then pop up at Nicole's house, commit murder, and then drive back to his house and still make his flight to Chicago? 

And did they valet? 

My parent has valeted before and sometimes it does feel like they're running to the dealership to pick up your car, like where 

did you park it, did you lose it, is this the same car? 

I only bring this up because I don't think the rich and famous DIY park, and so considering valet, the whole dinner ordeal should have taken quite some time. 

I DIGRESS. 

Okay, okay. The timeline is correct. 

Why were the facts of the case tried as they were? 

Why was Nicole Brown's --documented-- history of domestic abuse not apart of the trial, when such documentation would have been able to implicate OJ Simpson in a pattern of escalating domestic abuse? 

Why were fibers and traces of blood given more attention than motive? Well, what sort of compelling argument could be made for motive without elaborating on the aforementioned? It would seem beyond a reasonable doubt to suggest that, in a fit of jealousy, OJ Simpson murdered his ex-wife and her boyfriend, should this act not be contextualized by lesser provocations that did result in extreme violence. 

I an effort to sideline OJ's celebrity status in the hopes of an impartial trial, the prosecution failed to tell us who OJ was, outside of his fame. And in withholding pertinent, personal details about OJ Simpson's life, it seems they re-inscribed the reverence towards him that they were trying to counteract. Without a greater sense of the man you would like to call villain, I have a harder time finding villainy in anything he does. I find him, a victim of his status. 

And 

why

was 

Rodney King 

apart of the trial? 

OKOKOKOKOKOKOKOKKKKK

WE JUST WITNESSED AN INSTANCE OF EXTREME POLICE BRUTALITY CAUGHT ON CAMERA FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE JIM CROW, OKAY, OKAY, OKAY. 

A BLACK MAN IS THE CENTER OF THE STORY, FINE. 

ASSAULT WAS INVOLVED, YES. 

I HAVE TO ASK, BECAUSE I'M AFRAID YOU FORGOT: 

WHO PERPETRATED THE ASSAULT IN 1992? WAS IT: 

A) RODNEY KING 

OR 

B) THE WHITE POLICE OFFICERS

I'LL GIVE YOU THE CORRECT, PERTINENT, FUCKING ANSWER!!!!!

Rodney King was not put on trial in 1992, the white officers were. Rodney King was not national news because he was the cause of any bodily harm to another individual. Rodney King was national news because of what happened to him NOT what he did. 

OJ Simpson was put on trial, and thus became a media spectacle, because of what he did. His whole defense was predicated on making you believe something happened to him. 

Being a person of interest in an ongoing murder investigation does not equal racial profiling when you were the legal spouse of the slain. The bereaved are always members of the suspect pool until proven otherwise. 

While the intensity of King's encounter with CHP officers was entirely fueled by racial prejudice, nothing of the sort could be said about Simpson's involvement with the case. The hope of the defense was to remind the public of the optical similarity between the two cases: a White police force in armed pursuit of a Black man. The hope was that seeing any proximity between a White police officer and a Black man was to think: brutality. And while history has proven that violence can and will be perpetrated on innocent Black life, that was not the case with OJ Simpson. And in so succeeding in his mission, Cochran was able to have a jury pool, and a nation, overlook the gruesome murder of a young mother.