The black community’s apotheosis of Johnnie Cochran makes it obvious that many of them don’t understand what has happened, or at least it hasn’t sunk in yet with them.
But if it hasn’t sunk in with the black community, it’s rather obvious to just about everyone else. Since the trial and verdict, I personally (and this is an observation I’ve heard many others make) have never heard so much antiblack sentiment in all my years, even from people I know have never been racist and whom I have never heard utter an antiblack word before.
The verbal assaults on blacks are threefold. One is that blacks must be awfully stupid to believe Simpson is innocent. But blacks are no more stupid than whites or anyone else. I think those assailing blacks would be more accurate to call the millions of blacks who passionately supported Simpson ignorant of the facts.
The second criticism I now hear of blacks—partly because of the burst of jubilation with which they responded to the not guilty verdict—is that they simply are not nice people, and couldn’t care less that two white people were butchered to death. This is a very unfortunate and, I feel, erroneous charge. At least my association with blacks through the years (I’m not referring to the criminal element) has shown them to be people with a compassionate heart and rich sense of humor. Callousness, greed, and meanness of spirit are not at all the norm for the blacks I’ve known.
The third charge, which is somewhat related to the second, is that the blind support of Simpson by fellow blacks, and the seemingly
personal
pleasure they derived from the verdict, which conveyed a sense that they had somehow gotten even with whitey, reveals them to be more racist than whites. This may be true, and may even be understandable, since if a race has been discriminated against by another race for centuries because of racism, the victim race has good cause to develop even deeper racism than the perpetrating race.
Black racism is a social phenomenon which apparently has been close to the surface but largely unfocused upon by the white majority. For many years the social engineers and reformists among the white majority have viewed the obliteration of white racism against blacks as a moral imperative, and diverse groups and movements have consecrated their existence to this end. Has there ever been one such counterpart group or movement in the black community? Of course, it’s a lot easier to be magnanimous when you are on top.
In any event, the experts have weighed in with their views on the injurious impact upon blacks of the Simpson verdict. Here’s a random sampling. David Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, said that the verdict may have set race relations in this country back thirty years. Though most experts do not predict consequences quite this dire, they are no less certain that the black community will suffer. “A lot of [black] people will pay the price for O.J.’s freedom, because there’s no question there will be a backlash,” says Susan Estrich,
USC
law professor and
USA
Today
columnist.
Columnist Ronald Brownstein asserts that “the apparent responsiveness of the predominantly black jury to the defense claim that Simpson was the victim of a vast, racially motivated police conspiracy…has widened the separation” of the races. Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist think tank in Washington, D.C., adds that “what this episode does is deepen the polarization.” Andrew Hacker, author of the book
Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal
, predicts that the acquittal
and the black response to it
will translate, because of white anger, into a lowering of support for affirmative action, welfare, and other social programs that are important to blacks. “A lot of white people were very upset to see black people on television looking that happy,” Hacker says. Earl Ofari Hutchinson, a black sociologist who is writing a book about the Simpson trial, expects the acquittal and the black response to it to result in immeasurable harm to the black community. And Roger Boesche, professor of politics at Occidental College in Los Angeles, also predicts that as blacks rioted after the first Rodney King trial, whites will riot against blacks at the ballot box.
There can be little question that the racial tensions fanned by the defense attorneys in this case, mostly Johnnie Cochran, have increased (and with many people,
created
) white antagonism against blacks, and therefore, with only 12 percent of the nation’s population anyway, it is not improbable that blacks are going to get hurt by it, at least to some degree, in the policies and votes of the white majority in the years ahead. So Johnnie Cochran, instead of being viewed in his community as a hero, should be judged by them for what he did—cynically and blatantly use and exploit them, to their very serious detriment, just to promote the interests of himself and his client.
Again, what makes all of this so painfully ironic and sad is that O. J. Simpson, who used the black community, has not been a member of that community for years and years. George Curry, black editor in chief of the black news magazine
Emerge
, observes: “O. J. Simpson is not a person who has cast his lot with African-Americans. In fact, you could say just the opposite. He’s gone out of his way to not align himself with blacks.” William Safire,
New York Times
syndicated columnist, sums it up this way: “The wealthy celebrity who lived white, spoke white, and married white, wrapped himself in the rags of social injustice.” And blacks, who have suffered enough because of the color of their skin, unfortunately bought into it, and in the process may have contributed to their continuing misfortune.
The American jury system, in light of the Rodney King and O. J. Simpson verdicts
Even before the Simpson verdict, there was a rising chorus among many in America that something should be done about the jury system, that there was a tremendous need for “jury reform.” Some have gone so far as to recommend abolishing the jury system as we know it. People could not accept the results in cases where it seemed that guilt was certain—the Menendez brothers, Lorena Bobbitt, Damien Williams—yet the defendants walked or the juries hung. Have jurors taken leave of their senses, Americans wanted to know. To them, it seemed as if today in America, anything, even murder, can be excused if you just claim you were abused. Juries will buy it, just as they did in the Bobbitt and Menendez cases, they said.
People are alluding here to the so-called “abuse is an excuse” defense. Obviously, there is no such defense. However, abuse can be of such a severe nature that it gives rise to a recognized legal defense, such as irresistible impulse, which was the defense in the Bobbitt case. Irresistible impulse, at least in some states, is a species of insanity. Under the basic law of insanity, you are deemed to be insane only if, because of a defect of reason caused by a diseased mind, you did not know that what you did was wrong. In irresistible impulse, the person
does
know the wrongfulness of his act, but is unable to control the impulse to commit it. Most states don’t have this defense, but in Virginia, where the Bobbitt case was tried, it’s a legitimate defense. As far as the first Menendez trial was concerned, the jurors were hung up on whether it was first-or second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter, not on whether the defendants should go free.
How did this “abuse is an excuse” concept come into play? It’s just a new, catchy phrase for an old concept that has been around for years. But it’s been given increased prominence because of the supposed Oprahization of the jury syndrome. Through watching shows like Oprah, Donahue, and Geraldo, Americans are exposed to endless numbers of people who are the victims of abuse from dysfunctional families and relationships. A subliminal empathy develops for these purported victims when they thereafter engage in antisocial behavior against their alleged abusers. That’s the theory. But, as it is said in the Book of Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun. Juries have always given a break, where they legally can, to victims of abuse as well as to people suffering from mental disorders. Any trial lawyer will tell you this. There’s nothing different about or wrong with today’s juries. Way back in 1835, when Americans were supposedly as hard as nails, a jury found Richard Lawrence, a housepainter, not guilty by reason of insanity for attempting to assassinate President Andrew Jackson. Likewise with the attempt on President Reagan’s life by John Hinckley in 1981.
So I don’t think juries are softer on criminal defendants today at all. Why would they be? Americans are more concerned and conservative about crime today than they have been in many years. It makes absolutely no sense that when they walk into that courtroom they leave their concern and their conservatism at the courtroom door. I just think it’s been a quirky coincidence that a few recent high-visibility cases have resulted in seemingly unsatisfactory verdicts. The reality is that some of these cases have turned on subtle legal issues that laypeople don’t understand.
For instance, in the case of Damien Williams, who was charged with attempted murder and other crimes during the Los Angeles riots, when the jury found him not guilty of attempted murder, people were angry. The erroneous impression was that he had “gotten off.” Even several syndicated columnists, who should have known better, made this assertion. But Williams did not get off. He was convicted of mayhem and sentenced to ten years in prison, a not insubstantial term. The reason he wasn’t convicted of attempted murder is that the law of attempted murder requires a specific intent to kill. Firing a bullet at someone’s head clearly shows such intent. But throwing a brick at someone’s head, as Williams did, does not necessarily show, beyond a reasonable doubt, that you specifically intended to kill that person. The argument could be made that if Williams had intended to kill Reginald Denny—as opposed to merely intending to cause great bodily harm, or not caring whether he killed him or not, neither of which state of mind would satisfy the specific intent-to-kill requirement of attempted murder—instead of dancing around after throwing the brick, he would have followed it up to make sure he got the job done. The crimes actually committed in the Williams case were mayhem, assault with a deadly weapon, and assault by means of force likely to produce great bodily harm. If Williams had the requisite intent to kill, there may indeed have also been an attempted murder, but it isn’t clear from the evidence and circumstances that he did. The attempted-murder charge was a typical overfiling by the DA in the hope of inducing a plea of guilty to a lesser charge. The defense called the DA’s bluff and got a not-guilty verdict. But there was a proper verdict of guilty (for mayhem) in that case, despite the popular perception there was not.
Some verdicts, of course, have been clearly improper, bringing about gross miscarriages of justice. Two of the worst ever, both inflicting very black marks on our jury system, were those in the Simpson case and in the first Rodney King trial in Simi Valley, where a nearly all-white jury acquitted the white
LAPD
police officers despite the fact their crime was captured on film. The verdict threatened, overnight, to convert the aphorism “One picture is worth a thousand words” into an anachronism.
We have seen how the Simpson case was improvidently transferred by District Attorney Garcetti to a venue unfavorable to the prosecution, and a judge did the exact same thing in the King case. In the latter case, the original judge assigned to the case denied a defense motion for a change of venue out of Los Angeles, but on a writ of mandate-prohibition taken by the defense to the Second District Court of Appeal, the court granted the writ and ordered the respondent Los Angeles Superior Court to grant the venue motion. The eventual trial judge was given three counties outside of Los Angeles to choose from by the State Judicial Council: Ventura, Riverside, and Alameda. Both Ventura and Riverside are conservative, Ventura even more so than Riverside, and the defense predictably asked the judge for one of them, preferably Ventura. The DA’s office asked for Alameda County (Oakland), which has a racial mix resembling that of Los Angeles.
Inexplicably, the judge selected the most conservative county of all, Ventura. He rejected Alameda because of the added cost and inconvenience necessitated by the transfer to the Bay Area. But as I said earlier, you can’t place a price tag on justice. Moreover, this was an important case of considerable sociological implications, and cases a hundredfold less important have been transferred even greater distances on changes of venue. The murder case upon which my book
And the Sea Will Tell
was based was transferred to San Francisco all the way from Honolulu.
In my opinion, no one is as responsible for the shocking verdict in the King case as much as the trial judge. Yet, remarkably, all one hears in this regard is that the case was probably lost for the prosecution when he transferred it to Ventura County, not that he himself therefore committed the gravest of judicial errors, and hence was the proximate cause of the verdict. Like a magician, he somehow managed to separate himself from his act. At a minimum, he should have transferred the case to Riverside County, which is very close to Los Angeles. Yet the judge, the bench’s Teflon man, has heretofore miraculously escaped criticism. In fact, after the Rodney King verdict and subsequent riot it induced, the judge was rewarded by being assigned to preside over the Menendez trial.
As most know by now, the jury that heard the King case had no blacks on it. In fact, only one black was called to the jury box for questioning during the entire jury selection process. Predictably, the defense immediately excused her, using a peremptory challenge. If four or five blacks had been on the jury—if even two or three, perhaps even one, had been—and the verdict had been the same, not guilty, there is a much greater likelihood the black community would have accepted the verdict, and the biggest and most costly race riot in American history might have been averted. Not only were there no blacks on the jury (ten whites, one Latina, and one Asian-American), but it was decidedly conservative. Although only two of the jurors ultimately came from the city of Simi Valley (1.5 percent black), a conservative bedroom community of Los Angeles which is home to the Reagan presidential library, the remaining ten came from the equally white, conservative surrounding area of Ventura County (2.2 percent black). Three of the twelve jurors were members of the rightwing
NRA
, one’s brother was a retired
LAPD
sergeant, one was a former security guard, and two others had been police officers in the military. Just as the Simpson jury, with nine blacks out of twelve jurors, was not a representative jury, neither was the jury in the King case a representative cross-section of American society. In fact, the King jury consisted of people who, in moving to Ventura County from Los Angeles, had run away from the Rodney Kings of the world.