100,000 O.J. Simpsons
DiLulio, John J. Jr.
100,000 OJ. Simpsons by John J. Dilulio, Jr. Where were you when the O.J. verdict came in? I was at a conference in Albany, New York, with over a hundred of the Empire State's top criminal-justice...
...case was typical in other ways, too...
...Poor Ron Goldman was simply caught in an all-too-common murderous crossfire...
...At least...
...County prosecutor Chris Darden, I saw up close and personal in the sadly stoic black, white, and brown faces of people who loathe crime, love justice, and hate it when the system fails to honor their best efforts...
...Forget Cochran, Fuhrman, and race...
...Of course, convicted murderers still do go to prison, but not for as long as you might suppose...
...Forget about the Bronco...
...What the rest of America saw later that day in the broken-hearted, demoralized reaction of L.A...
...In 1992 alone, an estimated 1,432 females were killed by intimates...
...Since 1977, about 400,000 people have been murdered in this country...
...Conservatives like to claim that numbers like these spring from over a generation's worth of activist court decisions that force police to handle suspects with kid gloves, render legally inadmissible crucial evidence unless every last legal technicality is followed, and permit both accused criminals and long-time prisoners to clog the system with frivolous litigation and endless appeals...
...is director of the Brookings Institution's Center for Public Management and adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute...
...These prosecutors do their best, but their best inevitably amounts to doing a little deterrence on the cheap, not a lot of justice at great effort and financial cost...
...case is how ordinary it is...
...We've reached the point where the system is rigged to let murderers, and not just rich ones, escape justice...
...They're basically right, but another reason for the revolving-door system is that many big-city prosecutors are very wary of controversy and don't seek the death penalty if they can help it, least of all in racially charged cases...
...Gil Garcetti's fateful decision to hold the trial (and the media) in a venue closer to his own camera-ready address, to permit the effective criterion in jury selection to be a racism-charge-proof verdict, and to declare, virtually on day one of the process, that no matter what the verdict, the People would not seek the death penalty for one of the most brutal double-murders in L.A...
...For example, about two-thirds of all murder trials involving defendants accused of murdering a family member drag on for more than six months...
...would have been just another "supervised felon" accused of murdering an ex-wife whom he had previously battered...
...Between the time when the Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional in Illustrations by Sean Delonas 1972 and reinstated it in 1976, murder cases fell into the plea-bargaining pit along with other violent crimes...
...Eighty percent of all murder victims are killed by relatives, ex-spouses, friends, or acquaintances...
...And in four or five out of 10 cases, the accused murderer who doesn't plead guilty walks free...
...was against Zsa Zsa Gabor for slapping a traffic cop in the face...
...Princeton University Professor John J. DiIulio, Jr...
...Tragically, Nicole, Ron, and their families have plenty of company...
...Indeed, each year women experience nearly 600,000 violent victimizations at the hands of male intimates, including former boyfriends and husbands...
...About a third of those convicted of murder are under community-based legal "supervision"-on probation, parole, or pretrial release-at the very moment they kill...
...In came the verdict...
...Forget about everything except the fact that two innocent people were murdered in cold blood and no one has yet been brought to justice-arrested, convicted, imprisoned, or executed-for the heinous crime...
...Are there 100,000 cases out there where the families of murder victims have received little or no justice...
...trial, you name it...
...Had the system ever actually bothered to nail him for beating Nicole, O.J...
...Between 1977 and 1993, a total of 226 killers were executed...
...But for all that killing, in 1993 only 2,713 convicted murderers were on death row...
...On average, murderers released from prison in 1992 had spent just 5.9 years behind bars (that's "jail credits"- time spent awaiting trial and during trial-plus actual prison time) on sentences of 12.4 years...
...Nonetheless, most juries, including most sequestered ones, take longer to bring in a verdict than the shameful speed with which the Simpson panel deliberated...
...I was at a conference in Albany, New York, with over a hundred of the Empire State's top criminal-justice officials-prosecutors, police, probation and parole chiefs...
...So the horrible fact that the Browns and the Gold-mans will now probably live the rest of their lives without anyone being convicted and sentenced for the murder of their loved ones is but one example of how we have institutionalized crime without punishment in America, even for homicide-even in cases where the circumstantial evidence seems overwhelming, the physical evidence rings conclusive, and the reasonable doubt standard is gorged...
...Finally, never mind the anemic record of Garcetti's office in high-visibility cases...
...The only truly extraordinary thing about the O.J...
...In some states, three times as many people have been released from death row by commutations or judicial reversals as have been executed...
...Forget D.A...
...For starters, America has 3,000 counties, but over half of all murders occur in the 75 largest ones, including L.A...
...The O.J...
...County's history...
...so that we could herd ourselves in front of the televisions specially placed for the event in the hotel lobby...
...In 61 percent of all murder cases, the defendant pleads not guilty...
...If you think about it that way, then for all its eccentric aspects and bizarre twists and turns, what is ultimately so extraordinary about the outcome of the O.J...
...And guess what...
...I made sure to finish my speech before 1:00 p.m...
...Don't get me started on their "conditions of confinement"-big-screen televisions to watch the O.J...
...Forget Judge Ito's bizarre decisions on everything from putting sensationalizing cameras in the courtroom to putting pillow-talking conjugal visitors in the jurors' bedrooms...
...Forty-five percent of family murder victims are female...
...trial was that L.A...
...One of the last such cases won in L.A...
...Later that day, one veteran official sighed, "There's 100,000 O.J.s...
...County invested so much personnel and money in trying to convict an accused murderer on all major charges...
...Let's just say the American Civil Liberties Union has done its work well...
Vol. 1 • October 1995 • No. 5
