Oh. My. God. (and I'm an atheist)

[Mr.Bill]

I'm watching the ED Show and he has dug up Marcia Clark. She's talking about the South African runner who shot his girlfriend.

[JI7]

1. are they discussing it in terms of gun control ?

[mwrguy]

11. They should be

You can't murder someone through a door without a gun.

[Mr.Bill]

2. I don't know.

I tuned in to it late and didn't really listen to it. Just couldn't believe anyone would think she has any credibility about any legal mattters.

[davidpdx]

3. That's scraping the bottom of the barrel

He might as well invited Nancy Grace to join them.

[SharonAnn]

5. Not so. Marcia Clark is actually an intelligent, capable prosecutor. I'm sure she regrets

the things that lead to O.J. getting off but IMO, the death knell for the prosecution's case was when the detective who investigated and testified to the evidence was proven to been a racist in his writing and in his speech.

When there's a long history of racist behavior and framing of black men by racist law enforcement officials, it could be expected that the defense's claims of innocence would have credibility with a black jury.

When one of friends told me that the verdict proves that blacks protect their own, I responded with "racist law enforcement officials caused the problem". We just can't afford racism in any of our institutions and organizations, especially law enforcement.

Sorry. Maybe Marcia isn't perfect, but she did her best in a very difficult prosecution.

And, of course, the judge being "on stage" with the video of the trial didn't help.

[davidpdx]

7. I certainly didn't mean it because she is a woman

I think all of the prosecutors on that team were a little too overzealous in the trial and it didn't pay off very well.

I agree there is a huge amount of discrimination in the justice system. The number of African-American men in prison is quite high. At the same time I do believe OJ got away with the murder. The jury found him not guilty and that's what we have to accept though.

[Mr.Bill]

8. We'll have to agree to disagree,

but I watched the entire OJ trial, and the woman is an idiot. She was also on the prosecution team of the McMatin pre-school trial, another idiotic episode for the DA's office.

[ChoppinBroccoli]

9. Nope, She Lost The Trial Long Before She Put Her First Witness On The Stand

Marcia Clark made 3 critical mistakes before the trial even started that doomed her case.

1. She asked the trial to be moved from a suburban, upper-class county (which is where the crime occurred, and SHOULD have been where the trial happened) to urban Los Angeles county. That changed her jury pool. Instead of getting rich, suburban (translation: mostly white, mostly conservative, mostly pro-prosecution) jurors, she got a more urban jury pool (translation: more defense-oriented). Why she chose to ask for this change of venue, I don't know if anyone can really tell you for sure.

2. She didn't ask for the death penalty. Now, everyone knows that O.J., if convicted, would NEVER have gotten the death penalty. He's a celebrity. No way he'd be sentenced to death. But by failing to ASK FOR the death penalty, Marcia Clark deprived herself of a "death qualified" jury. In order to serve on a jury in a death penalty case, each and every juror seated has to testify during voir dire that he/she is willing to recommend death as a sentence if the Defendant is found guilty. The people who say that they couldn't recommend death, or who are opposed to the death penalty in any way, can't be seated on a death penalty jury. So once again, Marcia Clark denied herself an EXTREMELY pro-prosecution jury simply by not asking for a death penalty she was never going to get to begin with.

3. She doggedly clung to her timeline. When the Prosecution was prepaing its case, they tried the case to 3 different mock juries (many times, attorneys in preparation for a big case will have a mock trial to a "focus group" of mock jurors in order to see what parts of their cases are strongest, weakest, etc.) In ALL THREE mock trials, Marcia Clark lost. Why? According to ALL THREE mock juries, they didn't believe her timeline. Many members of the Prosecutor's Office BEGGED her to change her timeline, but Marcia Clark refused to do so. And when she lost the actual trial, what was one GAPING hole in the prosecution's case? The timeline didn't make sense.


If you want to read an EXCELLENT book on the O.J. trial, written from a legal standpoint, pick up, "O.J., The Last Word" by Gerry Spence. Gerry Spence is quite possibly the best trial attorney ever, and he's a guy I have immense respect and admiration for. In addition to being a great attorney, he's also a very deep and insightful thinker on any number of topics. He used to have a weekly half-hour show on CNN years ago, and I was a loyal viewer, but it got canceled after only a few months on the air. I urge people to check him out. I think people will really enjoy his perspective on things.

[HeiressofBickworth]

10. She made another fatal blunder

They ran a mock jury (to test the prosecution's case) and the result reported by the jury consultant was that Marcia Clark was not liked and shouldn't be the lead prosecutor on the case. The mock jury preferred Chris Darden. She did it anyway. Ego overcame good judgment, like it always does. She was wrong from the get-go. And, for me, THAT's the reason I never listen to anything she has to say.

There were other errors in addition to the ones listed in #9, but that first mistake set the course for the failure to obtain a guilty verdict.

[treestar]

12. Monday morning quarterbacking

Much easier to do than handling the case itself in the flurry of all the tension.

[rocktivity]

4. Marcia Clark was the right choice

She's not a stranger to the defense strategy of putting the police investigation on trial instead of the defendant.


rocktivity

[elleng]

6. I switched it off.