Word: simpson
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...Simpson trial was probably destined to come down to race, though maybe it didn't have to come down quite so hard. By the time the case went to the jury last week, careening into its final and most heart-stopping stage, blacks and whites, who often live in separate neighborhoods, were living in separate worlds on the subject of O.J. His trial has generated two utterly opposed views of who is guilty: Simpson for murder, or the Los Angeles police for tainting the evidence against him. That both views might be true is a possibility that threatened...
...final arguments Clark urged the jurors to ignore "the sideshows." But when it came to the toxic racial elements of the case, there were no clear lines anymore between what was a distraction and what was essential to a fair judgment. It would be complicated enough if Simpson were just a wealthy and charming athlete accused of murdering his wife. But from the start there was more to it: he was black, his wife was white and the police department was the same one that brought the world the beating of Rodney King...
Even before the verdict, it was plain just how passionately the Simpson case pressed upon the sore spots of the American racial psyche. On Thursday Bill Clinton said he was "concerned" about Cochran's play to racial feeling in his final arguments: "I hope the American people will not let this become some symbol of the larger racial issue in our country...
There may be no verdict that can reconcile feelings so sharply polarized. Never mind that the jury has nine African Americans--a guilty verdict will infuriate many blacks outside the courtroom. An nbc poll last week showed just 2% of blacks would convict Simpson of first-degree murder, which requires proof of premeditation and could send him to prison for life without parole. Only 15% would support even a second-degree verdict, the one appropriate to killings that might be called crimes of passion, which in California would carry a prison term of 15 years to life. Fifty-nine percent...
Acquitted? For the majority of white Americans who think Simpson did it, a cynical reading of that verdict--and cynical readings would be common--would mean that a millionaire jock who beats his wife, then butchers her and another man, can still walk, provided he buys the best lawyers around and they play the race card. For that majority, an acquittal would be the mirror image of the outcome in the first Rodney King beating trial, in which a mostly white jury acquitted four white police officers of what looked to most people like a blatant act of brutality...