BY ERIC KING
A gripping Bbc drama chronicling the murder trial of OJ Simpson is due to be aired tonight on BBC2. The programme depicts that captivating events that transpired in a case that captured the attention of the world at the time, keeping all waiting for what the eventual verdict will be on whether the celebrity American football player was innocent or guilty.
Adding spice to the drama is the inclusion of the Kardashian girls in the drama, and the awesome presence of John Travolta, which will give the programmer an obvious lift. In the drama special, a scene is featured I in which Johnnie Cochran, represented by Courtney b Vance, is pulled up by a cop for no apparent reason, causing the prominent lawyer to rightly or wrongly attribute it to his color.
“I know the drill,” he says. “I’m black, I’m driving in a fancy white neighborhood, nice car, you
pull me over.” He is subsequently handcuffed in the presence of his daughter, leaving him feeling aggrieved- a grievance that will undoubtedly contribute to his image of the American police as being racist. Cochran cut an incredibly intellectual image as he maximized the international podium afforded to him by this high profile case and used every skill and existing trick in the book to discredit the prosecution and present their case to be flawed and weakened by the racism of the police, once a tape recording evidencing racially charged connotations from one of the investigating officers came to light.
Cochran would later accuse the prosecution of deliberately hiring a black man to represent the crown; a comment that was irrelevant to the case, as the verdict would have to be determine don the facts themselves. However, in a country like America where race has always been a strong and divisive issue, it would probably have been a smart ploy by the prosecution
WEAPON
That evidence was indeed their weapon against a plethora of circumstantial evidence pointing to O.J as the perpetrator of this crime that horrified the world, and America in particular.OJ Simpson himself demonstrated a repulsive level of arrogance and dishonor by flashing an amused smile from time to time when the opposition was presenting their case to the court and jury. A major drawback to the prosecution happened when a glove they found at the scene did not fit O.J Simpson. This was a damning blow for the prosecution, but not one that should strengthen his defense since it would not take a genius to figure out that a glove too small could have been smartly planted by the perpetrator of the horrendous crime.
OJ Simpson was eventually acquitted of the murder charge because of the ‘doubt’ that arose in the minds of the jury, but he was convicted by a civil court years later where he could not exercise the right to silence guaranteed by the 5th amendment in a criminal case. He has since been jailed for 33 years for his part in an armed robbery, and in that respect had karma served his way for the murder of his ex wife and her boyfriend
O. J. Simpson – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
