Johnny Cochran has died

[AfricaBrass]

Clem,

OJ wasn't a hero to me like Lincoln or something, but I grew up as a football fan. I was born in '69 so from the time I was really little, OJ was a great player. I look back at the heroes of my childhood with great fondness. My point was that race never was a factor for me with OJ.

Don't worry, my heroes aren't celebrities or athletes anymore...

[Jazzmoose]

Just because the jury fell for a snow job doesn't mean the prosecution didn't meet its burden.

Yes, that's exactly what it means. It's the prosecutions job to convince the jury. If they didn't do it, they didn't meet their burden.

[Dan Gould]

Just because the jury fell for a snow job doesn't mean the prosecution didn't meet its burden.

Yes, that's exactly what it means. It's the prosecutions job to convince the jury. If they didn't do it, they didn't meet their burden.

and it is the jury's job to seriously evaluate the evidence presented to them, to judge the relative merits of the opposing sides by using their God-given intelligence.

So, in reality, the jury failed to meet their burden, and their burden is every bit as important a part of the system of justice as the prosecution's.

Edited March 30, 2005 by Dan Gould

[Jazzmoose]

Um...okay. Sounds like grasping at straws to make a point, but okay. The jury wasn't convinced by the prosecution's argument, or their rebuttal of the defense's rebuttal to that argument. I'm not sure how this is the jury's fault. Both sides seemed to be more intent on playing to the cameras than to the jury in my opinion.

The bottom line is, the case was lost. You could see the case going south as it unfolded, and the prosecution looked hopelessly lost. My only question after seeing this case unfold is 'how shitty are the defense attorneys that actually manage to have an innocent client convicted, if prosecuters are this bad?'

[BruceH]

It was the fundamentally fraudulent and deceitful defense that was offensive, not Cochran's race.

He did his job. What did you expect him to do?

Not be a dick.

[Chuck Nessa]

It was the fundamentally fraudulent and deceitful defense that was offensive, not Cochran's race.

He did his job. What did you expect him to do?

Not be a dick.

Some of us here can't do that. Why would you expect it from him?

[JSngry]

The prosecution didn't have a clue how to play the jury. The defense did.

It's like musicians who expect their brilliance to be automatically and instantly recognized and accepted. That ain't the way it goes. You got to find a way to reach your audience, and if you don't, if all you do is sit there and say, "Look at me! I'm BRILLIANT! You GOTTA love me!", whose fault is it when nobody does?

The defense's job is to establish reasonable doubt, the prosecution's to remove same. Juries are an audience, pure and simple, and the knack to reaching an audience is to identify points of commonality as well as any potential "soft spots" in terms of resistance and/or acceptance. The prosecution failed miserably to do this. In fact, they seemingly failed to even recognize the need for it. It was as if they were submitting data to a computer for objective evaluation rather than to a group of humans who, incredible as it might seem, might have had reason to suspect the police & judical systems. It was this arrogance, this refusal to deal with the reality of the jury as well as the reality of the case that cost them the case, I do believe, and yes, that's 100% their fault.

Yeah, an in-all-probability guilty man got off, and that's a drag. Neither the first time that's happened nor the last time that it will, but it's still a drag. A real cultural/social/whatever gap that definitely & obviously presents a threat to the administration of real justice to and for all strata of America was exposed, and that's a good thing. Identifying a problem is the first step to solving it, right?

Now, the question is a simple one - have we as a society spent more time on addressing and attempting to resolve the issues and conflicts that the Simpson case brought to light, or have we instead been trying to comfort the farmer by attempting to convince him (and ourselves) that the fox got away with robbing his henhouse simply because the chickens let him?

Edited March 30, 2005 by JSngry

[RainyDay]

"He got an awful rap in the white community after the Simpson trial," said Stuart Hanlon, a white attorney who was a longtime criminal defense collaborator with Cochran. "All he did was do a great job as a lawyer — which is what we're supposed to do — and beat some inept prosecutor. For him to get vilified for it just shows the racism in our community. I really think if OJ's lawyer had been white, that wouldn't have happened.… If I had done that trial and won, no one would hate me."

Anyone else NOT agree with this opinion?

As the British might say, that is 'spot on'. Outside of racism, I could never understand why people hated him so much. True, he probably got a guilty guy off, but his JOB was to get him off, and he did a splendid job of that. RIP

The irony of it is that OJ got off because Cochrane was able to raise a reasonable doubt about the DNA evidence. DNA evidence is usually the kiss of death for the defense, but thanks to an inept LAPD, where a detective walked around with the blood sample in his pocket for some period of time instead of allowing technicians to handle it and book it into evidence, the chain of possession was called into question. The jury just didn't buy the DNA evidence. Cochrane did what he was supposed to do, put on an effective defense. The DNA team, Neufeld and the the other guy Barry somebody or other, (who are considered very competent in the analysis of DNA evidence and who have freed wrongly convicted persons) made a convincing not guilty argument based on their analysis that the DNA evidence was tainted. Nobody ever accused them of "playing dirty" and if it weren't for their testimony, OJ would be in jail today. The anger at Cochrane is silly.

Personally, I think OJ got away with murder.

[RainyDay]

The more I think about Chuck's comments the more I disagree.

Courts of law are supposed to find truth.

Lawyers are supposed to zealously represent their client. 

They aren't supposed to perpetrate frauds, which is what the Simpson defense consisted of (like the nonsensical Furhman was a racist who found two gloves at the murder scene and, not having anyway of knowing if Simpson was even in town, took one glove with him to the Simpson estate so that he could frame O.J.

And then there's the final piece of the system, the jurors.  The jurors in this case were a joke, because intelligent people who took their duties seriously would have seen through all of the crap the defense threw up and would have convicted him.

The adversarial system is a great thing.  Facts and interpretations of fact should be tested by opposing parties, and yes, the state has the higher burden of proving "beyond and to the exclusion of all reasonable doubt". 

It is most certainly not a great thing when a no-brainer case is corrupted by a fraudulent defense. 

It is most certainly not a great thing when a murderer who's guilt no intelligent person can deny walked free due to the "adversarial system".  It is not a net gain to the nation.

Baloney! Didn't you hear about the Republican governor of Illinois who susupended the death penalty and had to let a bunch of convicted folks go because of prosecutor misconduct? It's not about truth, it's about WINNING. I went to law school. Lance Ito was two classes ahead of me at Boalt. I know how this game is played. Truth my eye. I hate to invoke the Lacey Peterson case, but I recall a couple of times the judge came down on the prosecution team for withholding evidence from the defense. This is not uncommon. If you have a public defender, chances are no one is going to catch it. Innocent people go to jail. Guilty people get off. That's the way our imperfect system works.

Whoever blamed the prosecution in the OJ case had a point. Here were a couple of grandstanding attorneys, who were probably writing screenplays during lunch, making a mess of their case. The OJ trial was the perfect storm to get a not guilty verdict. Sloppy police practices, painting a cop as a racist, and a bumbling prosecution.

Edit: Add to the perfect storm the celebrity angle, and OJ is now a golfing fool.

Edited March 30, 2005 by RainyDay

[Herb]

Whatever happened to finding the TRUTH, and JUSTICE? Whoever can afford the best lawyer that can pull the proper tricks at the proper times wins. Doesn't this bother or scare anybody? I don't care what color he was, he got men off by tricks and deceit that were most probably guilty. And he made a career of that. The world is a better place without him. *ducks and covers*

[JSngry]

Whatever happened to finding the TRUTH, and JUSTICE?

Krptonite got'em.

[Cali]

RainyDay and JSngry have it right AFAIC. Why was Cochran "disgusting and slimy"? Was it because he dominated that courtroom? Was it because he was better at his job than the inept and politically selected prosecution team?

To accurately appraise Johnny Cochran as an attorney, anyone who cares about accuracy should look at the cases he won for underprivileged defendants. How he had found the LAPD guilty in several cases of tainting evidence and lying under oath. They should also look at his background in the L.A. District Attorney's office. After all, he had been at one time, Judge Ito, Marsha Clark and Chris Durden's boss! The man was a brilliant attorney.

For the record, I believe OJ did it. But to classify anyone who believes otherwise as brainless and unintelligent is patronizing at best.

[Jazzmoose]

Whatever happened to finding the TRUTH, and JUSTICE? Whoever can afford the best lawyer that can pull the proper tricks at the proper times wins. Doesn't this bother or scare anybody? I don't care what color he was, he got men off by tricks and deceit that were most probably guilty. And he made a career of that. The world is a better place without him. *ducks and covers*

What do you mean by "whatever happened"? It's always been this way.

[Christiern]

"The anger at Cochrane is silly."

• I can only speak for myself, but my utter disrespect and loathing ("anger" is the wrong word) for Cochran is his manipulation of facts in the OJ case. I know, all attorneys manipulate the facts, but here was a case when doing so freed a man who brutally murdered his wife and another person, a case where evidence to the contrary was flimsy, at best. Cochran is said to have admitted to a friend that he thought OJ guilty, but he was too smart a man to have drawn any other conclusion. It does not matter what good he might have done in other cases, this one should forever disgrace him in the minds of intelligent, decent people. That's how I feel about it. Funny how some people look up to this man yet feel strongly that he let a murderer loose. Now that, IMO, is "silly."
  

[ralphie_boy]

jackie chiles was my favorite seinfeld character.

"Your face is my case!"

[Soulstation1]

i wonder if oj ever paid for jc's services

Edited March 30, 2005 by Soulstation1

[Dan Gould]

jackie chiles was my favorite seinfeld character.

"Your face is my case!"

Even better,

It's lewd, lascivious, salacious, outrageous!

[Guest akanalog]

jackie chiles was my favorite seinfeld character.

"Your face is my case!"

Even better,

It's lewd, lascivious, salacious, outrageous!

"this is the worst of my many public humiliations"

"who told you to use a salve? i didn't tell you to use no damn salve."

[ralphie_boy]

jackie chiles was my favorite seinfeld character.

"Your face is my case!"

Even better,

It's lewd, lascivious, salacious, outrageous!

"this is the worst of my many public humiliations"

"who told you to use a salve? i didn't tell you to use no damn salve."

"Jackie gonna cash in on your retched disfigurement"

[Christiern]

Just to put a cap on this thread...

[Jazzmoose]

Hmph. He's still dead? Thought maybe he'd won on appeal...