Ding Dong the witch is convict-ed

Well OJ is in jail. Where I honestly think belongs. The latent redneck in me is sorely tempted to just say "About fucking time, too.", brush off my hands, and go about my business. I just wish I felt a bit better about the way it was done. This man almost unquestionably killed his wife. He killed his wife and left a Hansel and Gretel trail of blood leading back to his fucking house from the crime scene. Unless the entire LAPD (admittedly a tarnished brand, to be sure) conspired to frame this man, and managed to hush it up so that no one has ever said a word about it. Frankly, that strains my credibility.

I am convinced after hearing juror interviews that the only reason he was acquitted was the preponderance of evidence not shown to the jury. Some of it was suppressed by the "dream team" in collusion with a star(and camera)-struck Judge Ito, and some of it they just plain didn't use. Not presenting the things found in the car after the "slow chase" was just nuts IMHO. But all this is ancient history. I think he was guilty. And so does pretty much everyone else in the world who isn't either black (who I really think, could they be absolutely honest {even with themselves}, were on some level just glad to see another black guy screw the system that has been screwing them for so long), or believe we need to wear aluminum foil hats so the government can't read our thoughts. To me, the case has always been ultimate proof that justice (or injustice) in this country is unfortunately for sale. If you have enough money, you can basically do anything you want with a fair amount of impunity. (I'll cite Michael Jackson here as another example. I read everything about that trial, and frankly, if that man isn't guilty, I'll eat an entire donkey. Tail and all. And I'm a pescetarian.) Equally regrettably, that means the opposite is also proven. Without money, you are pretty much screwed (even more than you were before) if you get in trouble. That is hardly a new situation in the world, but it does rather crap all over the sometimes rose-tinted glasses with which we view our judicial system, and indeed our society as a whole.

Truthfully, from what I have read about the current case, he sounds guilty as hell here too. There were recordings made during the incident that the jury heard. That, as much as anything, kind of outlines my uneasiness about the situation. Recordings? What the hell? That almost sounds as if this was planned. Secondly, the cops were overheard to make remarks that they were going to "get Simpson". There was certainly a much more overt bias here than was ever heard from the LAPD (with specific reference to the Simpson case), whatever moldy tapes they dug up of Mark Fuhrman saying the N word as the earth cooled. The sentence seems middle-of-the road. He could have gotten life in prison for some of the charges. Yet a guaranteed nine years in prison isn't going to satisfy the "string him up" crowd (even if he is 61). I will candidly say though, that I can't imagine being a judge in this case and being impartial with Simpson - much less being a woman judge and being impartial. I try to imagine myself being impartial in a situation where a man was well known to be a fag-basher, and had murdered a gay man. I would have to recuse myself from the case.

I can't just dust off my hands and go on without at least thinking a bit; first because this smells just a bit like vigilante justice. Any time we use other crimes to punish a crime we can't (or don't) convict on, that is a slippery slope. Getting Al Capone on tax evasion was almost inarguably a good thing for society as a whole. But it was also a tough day for our justice system. That's how this conviction feels to me. For a justice system that is perilously close to feeling like a "pay for play" set-up already, any further injury is dangerous. I'm just not sure how many more black eyes Justice in this country can take before the KO. However justified given actions are, one of the primary principals of our system is that the means are important in and of themselves. Any time we stray from that premise for ends, no matter how attractive, we endanger the entirety of said system.

Allow me to flaunt my homosexuality here (yes again, gentle reader) for a moment and cite the Bette Davis movie Storm Center. In the movie, Bette's character is first seduced into removing a book from the shelves of the library (it contains communist dogma - the movie was released in 1956) with the promise of a new children's wing. The new wing would be very beneficial, and would do a lot more good for the community than would this single book. Additionally, the book was crappy - even her character admits that she found the book a poorly written tome of proselytizing junk. Davis's character ultimately reverses her decision and becomes a town pariah for the stance. I don't know that I would go to the mat for a crappy book - even as a librarian (we live in a nation of people who have, mostly quietly, allowed Mark Twain to be removed from our schools; a subject on which I will not expound here, but which I feel bears mention). That is how it starts. When you start letting the little stuff go by rationalizing, soon the big stuff is being let go as well. By extension, when we start taking short-cuts on the rights of a "crappy" person, how long is it before "good" people are getting the same treatment?

The second thing here that niggles at the back of my mind is the "down the hatch" mentality that comes into play with Simpson. I have been looked at with a "down the hatch" mindset too often myself to ever be entirely comfortable with seeing society at large treat someone else as disposable. There but for the grace of God, etc. Having worn the scarlet letter of societal contempt myself, it is more difficult for me to be complicit in consigning someone else to the sentence with an un-shadowed conscience.

Thirdly, and quite a(nother) cliche, two wrongs just don't add up to a right. I really wish that I could believe whole-heartedly that karma, or the Hand of God, or whatever, was at work here. But this really feels like something we have done to please ourselves.

So I am troubled. All the more so because the pretty ends here have fairly well seduced me away from looking at the means involved too closely. Or at least from being too upset about them. And maybe I feel I should be, a bit more. The problem with being seduced is that sometimes, by the time you realize what's going on, your legs are in the air and the damage has been done.