The outrage over the acquittal led to the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The riots started when white truck driver, Reginald Denny, it pulled from his truck and beaten. The riots only escalated further from there. These riots were catastrophic and led to the death of more than 50 people and the injury of more than 2,000 people (Los Angeles Riots). The rioting only ended after troops were brought in. In America there has been a history of police treating black men unfairly and the Rodney King beating brought this problem to the forefront of the national conscience. Even popular music at this time commented on the mistreatment of black males by the Los Angeles Police Department, specifically NWA’s 1988 song “Fuck Tha Police.” Most black people believed …show more content…
Simpson was being falsely accused because of his race was advanced by the fact that the prosecution used Los Angeles Police Department detective Mark Fuhrman as a witness. The lawyers who were prosecuting O.J. Simpson didn’t do a thorough enough background check on Fuhrman to realize that he had said some racist things in his past. The “dream team” of lawyers who defended O.J. Simpson did however find racist remarks that Mark Fuhrman had made when being interviewed by a screenwriter looking for a police perspective to help her write a potential movie. The statements Fuhrman made seemed racist and Fuhrman also confessed to unethical and sometimes illegal activities as a police officer (Judge Lance Ito). These racist remarks were allowed to be used as a defense in the trial in Judge Ito’s ruling. Judge Lance Ito was the judge who presided over the O.J. Simpson case. This is thought to have helped the defense’s case to a large extent. Judge Ito’s ruling is often considered a big reason for why the defense won the case. The fact that Mark Fuhrman was an employee of the Los Angeles Police Department further advanced this narrative that the Los Angeles Police Department was …show more content…
This concept was epitomized in the horrible murder of Emmett Till in 1955 and subsequent acquittal of Till’s killers. Till was a 14 year old black boy who had been lynched for merely flirting with a white girl. It’s difficult to provide quantitative evidence proving how frequently black men were falsely accused of committing crimes against White women throughout American history. However, it can be reasonably assumed because of the racist history of our nation -- a nation still recovering from the effects of institutions such as slavery and the Jim Crow laws -- that this was not a particularly unusual experience. Because there is such a history of racism in the United States, it’s hard to look at any case involving a black man and a white woman without factoring race into it. Time magazine got in a lot of trouble for altering an image of O.J. Simpson to give him the appearance of being darker-skinned than he actually was. Time was accused of doing this to make Simpson appear more threatening, more black. This was another reason why people were fascinated with the racial aspect of the case; it made people wonder if the media was racist. Could the media have treated O.J. Simpson as a guilty man because of his race? Does darker skin, even when compared with other black people make an accused man
Gender and Race play the most prominent role in the criminal justice system. As seen in the movie Central Park 5, five African American boys were charged with the rape of the a white women. In class decision we’ve discussed how the media explodes when it reports cross-racial crimes. The Central Park 5 were known everywhere and even terms were being made up during the process such as wilding. Also, during one of the class discussions it was brought up that victims of crime are of the same race of the perpetrator. However, the media likes to sensationalize crime of the victim being of a different race, because it makes for a good story. By doing this, the media does create more of a division of race. As seen in the video Donald Trump was trying
The job of a criminal lawyer is quite difficult. Whether on the defense or the prosecution, you must work diligently and swiftly in order to persuade the jury. Some lawyers play dirty and try to get their client off of the hook even though they are guilty without a doubt. Even though the evidence is all there, the prosecution sometimes just can’t get the one last piece of the puzzle to make the case stick and lock the criminal up. Such is the case Orenthal James Simpson.
During the years 1992 and 2000, a series of developments and events occurred that changed the way America functions. Of these events, two stuck out in the minds of many people as the national news coverage was hard to ignore. These two events that occurred resulted in many changes, Rodney King and the Los Angeles riots of 1992 and the disputed election of 2000. It proves that one person can be the reason behind an event that will cause local and national governments and officials to stop and think of the consequences, both negative and positive. The Los Angeles riots kicked off on the twenty-ninth day of April 1992 following the acquitting of four officers who had beaten and injured a motorist in the previous year.
The funeral for the two victims was held on June 16th, 1994. O.J attended the funerals along with Nicole Simpson’s family and Ronald Goldman’s family. Shortly after, on June 17th, O.J was arrested and charged with first degree murder. Simpson immediately pleaded “100% not guilty’” on July 22nd, and the trial officially began on July 24th, 1994 (Linder 1). Because the jury was made up of mostly blacks, many outsiders believed that it would affect final decision of the jury. “O.J is free and so are we!” and “Live with it!” Were many of the comments blurted out during the many days of the trial (Elias 22). Judge Lance A was assigned to the case.
After a lengthy two hundred and fifty-two-day trial “not guilty” were the words that left the world in shock. O.J Simpson was your typical golden boy. He had it all, the nice car, the football career, and his kids. Unfortunately, this all came to an end when two bodies came to be spotted deceased in Nicole Browns front yard and was a gruesome sight. O. J’s ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ronald Goldman both found with brutal stab marks. Unfortunately, all his glory days now brought to an end, he went from playing on the field to begging for his freedom when becoming the main suspect of their murders. Since this trial has not only altered the way Americans viewed celebrities, but it also racially divided society,
Simpson. The first thing that can be noted is he is a football player and to be a football player one has to be a male. Most football players tend to show signs of aggression, which is an additional characteristic in the case that leads me to believe he violently attacked and killed his wife and one of her good friends. The next important evidence to note was the fact that O.J.’s football glove was found at the scene with blood spatters on it. Even though the agreed to turn himself in, he fled in the white Bronco. If he was not guilty then why did he flee. Even if he was innocent, that was one of the poorest decisions he could have made making him look guilty. What is actually interesting to me is the fact the limousine driver saw a man looking like Simpson at 10:56, when he rang the doorbell at 10:25 the time he was supposed to be there and there was no answer. O.J. had sufficient amount of time to execute his wife and her friends before going in the limo to catch a ride to the airport. The fact the O.J. had a cut on his hand was because Ronald Goldman was fighting for his life trying to escape and wounding Simpson
When the trial was happening, I had no idea who he was until the trial started. I had my Dad tell me all the details of who he was, and everything else I learned was from watching television. I was young, but I still knew that racism was awful. I looked upon the television to Simpson sitting in the trial and just thought, "Oh, okay." I know it 's hard to believe, but I wasn 't brought up to believe race had anything to do with whether people judged based on race, but this case was a 101 course in proving I was oblivious to the real world. However, what I did hear based on pure evidence was that this guy totally did it. There was too much evidence that proved he was involved, and the only reasonable doubt that was brought into the case was purely based on race.
The New York Times bestseller book titled Reasonable Doubts: The Criminal Justice System and the O.J. Simpson Case examines the O.J. Simpson criminal trial of the mid-1990s. The author, Alan M. Dershowitz, relates the Simpson case to the broad functions and perspectives of the American criminal justice system as a whole. A Harvard law school teacher at the time and one of the most renowned legal minds in the country, Dershowitz served as one of O.J. Simpson’s twelve defense lawyers during the trial. Dershowitz utilizes the Simpson case to illustrate how today’s criminal justice system operates and relates it to the misperceptions of the public. Many outside spectators of the case firmly believed that Simpson committed the crimes for which he was charged for. Therefore, much of the public was simply dumbfounded when Simpson was acquitted. Dershowitz attempts to explain why the jury acquitted Simpson by examining the entire American criminal justice system as a whole.
The people directly involved with this case are Judge Lance Ito, the prosecution lawyers, Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden, the defense lawyers, Johnnie Cochran, Robert Shapiro and Robert Blasier , the jury and the defendant, O.J. Simpson. The families of the victims have also been present in the courtroom, as well as other spectators and news media. This case has heard one hundred and twenty witnesses over a nine month period.
This incident would have produced nothing more than another report for resisting arrest had a bystander, George Holliday, not videotaped the altercation. Holliday then released the footage to the media. LAPD Officers Lawrence Powell, Stacey Koon, Timothy Wind and Theodore Brisino were indicted and charged with assaulting King. Superior Court Judge Stanley Weisberg ordered a change of venue to suburban Simi Valley, which is a predominantly white suburb of Los Angeles. All officers were subsequently acquitted by a jury comprised of 10 whites, one Hispanic and one Asian, and the African American community responded in a manner far worse than the Watts Riots of 1965. ?While the King beating was tragic, it was just the trigger that released the rage of a community in economic strife and a police department in serious dec...
On the morning of March 3rd, 1991 an African-American man led police on a high-speed chase through the city of Los Angeles. Approximately eight miles later police swarmed around the car and confronted the driver, who went by the name Rodney King. During the confrontation, officers tortured King until the point he was forced to seek medical care. A case was opened and the police officers were acquitted. This angered many people, specifically Blacks and led to the historical “L.A. Riots’’ , where they felt race had something to do with the case.
The way the media portrays a trial influences many people’s views of the trial, such as the George Zimmerman trial. Racial profiling is based on the way a person looks or acts. The way some media portrayed George Zimmerman was as an innocent white man who shot Trayvon Martin as an act of self-defense. Other media such as NBC portrayed him as a racist. The way these two media portrayed him influenced many Americans to determine a verdict without hearing the trial. In the article “The Quiet Racism in the Zimmerman Trial” by Steven Mazie, he implies ...
In 2014, the death of Eric Garner in New York City raised controversial conversations and highlighted the issues of race, crime, and policing in neighborhoods that tend to be poor and racially isolated. Garner, an unarmed black man, was killed after being tackled and held in a “chokehold.” According to the AP Polls in December 2014, “Police killings of unarmed blacks were the most important news stories of 2014.” The problem is that young black men are targeted by police officers in which they have responded with the misuse of force and policy brutality. It is evident that this issue affects many people nationwide. The civilians do not trust the police department and the justice system because they hold the perceptions that police officers are immune from prosecution despite their actions. In particular, black individuals, specifically black males, do not feel safe in the presence of police officers because they are not held accountable for their mistakes.
Crimes in America can be vicious and brutal, often leading to long, draw out trials, but it is only fair if you charge the right man. The only way that it can be fair is if you go by the facts and not the appearance of the accused. Many trials in America have men of color pointed out to be criminals. Many crimes are committed for a reason but many people label it as unknown. People are racist especially against colored people, they believe that white men are innocent but that is not always true. They always turn against the colored people for many crimes that could have been committed by a white man. The novel,Monster and the documentary “Murder On A Sunday Morning” are the same because,both cases have similar charges,both crimes were taken in a public place,and the both consist of racism either by the jury or police.
Fairchild, H. & Cowan, G (1997). Journal of Social Issues. The O.J. Simpson Trial: Challenges to Science and Society.