Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 5, 1995 TAG: 9511030048
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: G-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK E. CALL
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
This conclusion is unwarranted.
First, the Simpson jury was not all-black. Three jurors were not African-American.
Other reasons against concluding that the Simpson jury's verdict was race-based relate to an assessment of the evidence against him.
Most of us who think Simpson committed these murders base our conclusion on the evidence reported by the media. Very few of us actually watched the trial from start to finish; many of us did not even follow the trial very closely. Our conclusion that Simpson was guilty is based on limited pieces of information selected by the media for us on days that we watched the news or read the newspaper accounts.
Even those rare individuals who watched all the trial on television were subjected to media analyses and were exposed to information excluded from the trial.
All of us heard things about the trial or the case from other people; some of this information was undoubtedly false or distorted. A dramatic illustration comes from an Internet discussion group - made up primarily of law-school professors who teach criminal law and criminal procedure, as well as a few judges and undergraduate criminal-justice professors like myself - of which I am a member.
In the course of the lively discussion just before and after the verdict, one participant asked what had happened to the confession Simpson had made to Roosevelt Grier, the ex-football star who is now a minister. Others expressed interest. Finally, a participant who had followed the trial quite closely cleared it up. A jailer had overheard a conversation between Simpson and Grier. The jailer had not been permitted to divulge what he had heard, and the contents of that conversation are still unknown. The Rosey Grier "confession" that several people "remembered" does not exist.
The point is that our perceptions of Simpson's guilt or innocence have undoubtedly been influenced by distortions, glosses and innuendoes added to "the record" by others. The jurors are the only people whose judgments were based strictly on all the evidence, and only the evidence, presented at trial.
Furthermore, only the jurors had to actually decide whether Simpson had been proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. They were not asked whether they thought Simpson had killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. They were asked whether the evidence presented at the trial convinced them beyond a reasonable doubt.
I am not convinced beyond any doubt that O. J. Simpson killed these two people. Are the doubts I harbor reasonable? I am not certain. But in any event, my answer is not as properly informed as the jurors'.
And even if I had watched all the trial, and had somehow managed not to watch or read anything else about it, and had turned off the television when the jury was out so that I would not be exposed to information jurors would not hear, my answer to the reasonable-doubt question would be merely an academic exercise. I could not be absolutely certain of my own answer unless I knew it would actually affect the fate of the defendant. Answering a question academically and answering it "for real" may not necessarily result in the same answer.
In one respect, the African-Americans on the Simpson jury should have let their race influence them. Juries are supposed to be representative of the community, because we want jurors to bring their values and life experiences to bear. It is a means of attempting to prevent the system from becoming too isolated from the public it is supposed to serve.
When we white Americans first heard the defense theory about planted evidence, most of us scoffed. But the experience of most white Americans with the police and the criminal justice system is very different from the experience of many (if not most) African-Americans. Whether we want to admit it or not, the idea of the police planting evidence is easier for most African-Americans than for most white Americans to believe.
I do not mean to imply that it is common for police officers to frame black defendants. I mean no more than what I said: The life experiences of African-Americans make it easier for them to listen with an open mind to evidence of possibly planted evidence.
Some participants in that Internet group are African-Americans, with law degrees from prestigious schools and teaching positions at equally prestigious schools. Every one of them who addressed this question reported that at some time or other they had gone to court as part of their professional duties and been mistaken as the defendant in a criminal case by judges, clerks, bailiffs and other court personnel.
We white Americans should have more respect for the Simpson jurors than we have demonstrated. Perhaps their verdict was inaccurate, but it is hard to see how it can be "wrong." After all, they were the only ones given the responsibility to decide. Until and unless we are given concrete evidence that clearly demonstrates they made their decision for improper reasons, we white Americans should stop assuming they did.
Jack E. Call is a professor of criminal justice at Radford University.
by CNB