The OJ Simpson and Casey Anthony Acquittals Were The

Attorney and Legal Journalist Debate Criminal Trial Issues Resolved: The O. J. Simpson and Casey Anthony Acquittals Were The Best Possible Outcomes O.J. Simpson Legal journalist Keith Long investigated the O. J. Simpson acquittal in 1995 and now offers a surprising, new perspective in a speech made to criminal defense lawyers in May this year. Mr. Long believes an objective assessment compels a conclusion that the jury made the correct decision to acquit the former football star. A prominent attorney objects to that perspective and offers challenging arguments to Mr. Long’s thesis. Background For The O. J. Simpson Trial It is often overlooked that in Los Angeles between 1992 and 1996, there was an environment of racial tensions which were later confirmed by the Department of Justice to be the result of racist police and judicial system policies and practices in LA’s African American community. In 1992 Rodney King was beaten by white LA police officers. The original judge assigned to their trial was replaced for bias against the victim, Rodney King. When the white jury acquitted these four officers, Los Angeles erupted with the worst riots in its history. Within months, congress passed a law giving the Department of Justice authority to force police departments to reform their racist patterns or practices in African American communities. Only months later and in that environment, O. J. Simpson was charged by Los Angeles police for murder. The lead detective, Mark Fuhrman, was convicted of perjury in that trial. When asked if he planted evidence to falsely convict O. J. Simpson, Fuhrman took the Fifth Amendment, and refused to answer. Shortly after the football star’s acquittal, the US Department of Justice enforced a consent decree against the LA police for patterns and practices of racial discrimination in the Los Angeles African American community. Current NYC Police Commissioner, Bill Bratton, was brought in as LA Police Commissioner. He has been universally recognized with reforming the racist police practices of LA’s police. Legal journalist, Keith Long, argues that the jury’s acquittal of O. J. was in response to those racist police practices against African Americans like Simpson. He argues that Simpson’s acquittal focused national attention on race problems in LA’s police and that attention directly led to reforms initiated by Bill Bratton in both the LA police and LA County justice system. Casey Anthony Journalist, Keith Long, has researched the Casey Anthony case exclusively from trial evidence. His book shows that prosecutors had a prima facie case against Casey’s father for the murder of two-year-old Caylee, and his abuse of daughter, Casey, beginning when she was only eight-years-old. The investigative journalist uncovered a poisonous family relationship which informs readers on the acquitted defendant’s unusual behavior when she learned her abusive father killed her two-year-old daughter. The attorney argues against Mr. Long’s new evidence in an interesting and provocative discussion of these twin Trials of the Century. Legal Journalist, Keith Long, delivered speeches to two lawyers’ bar associations recently in 2015 in Florida. He received an offer to debate the points made in his speeches by an attorney. Their debate is published below. See the speech text at https://www.academia.edu/12783881/O_J_Simpson_and_Casey_Anthon y_Acquittals_--_Were_They_The_Right_Verdicts Dear Keith, Attorney: Thank you for sending me a copy of the speech you made to the Florida Defense Bar on the O. J. Simpson and Casey Anthony cases. If I may, please allow me to say how much I enjoyed the lucid writing. My compliments also on your research on jury nullification. In all amity, may I disagree somewhat with the thesis? Though I lack time to respond at length, I would just make the following points: Legal Journalist’s Answer: I am pleased to have the opportunity to respond to your challenging and informed opinions in reaction to my speech regarding the O. J. Simpson, and Casey Anthony trials. They force me to reconsider premises, and reevaluate details that led me to the opinions I advocated to Florida’s criminal defense lawyers. BTW, I also delivered the same presentation to the Osceola County Bar in Kissimmee, Florida in February, where the former prosecutor of the Casey Anthony trial, Jeff Ashton, is a member. I should begin by outlining my basic position for the O.J. acquittal and then later revisit Casey Anthony’s acquittal. The source of our opposing conclusions regarding O.J.’s acquittal rests in my claim that the jury rejected California’s law against murder as the law for judging O.J.’s guilt. An extension of that claim is my belief that not only was the Simpson jury right to acquit O. J., but in doing so, that trial joined a select company of acquittals that has helped move American jurisprudence toward an elusive ideal: justice for all. In other words, the Simpson acquittal was a landmark success for American jurisprudence. A review of case law identifies a litany of important landmark jury acquittal precedents. 1 The Peter Zenger trial was the first instance where a jury rejected a law as the standard for judging a defendant’s guilt or innocence. By the way, William Penn was arrested and tried in England for practicing freedom of religion, and at his trial the jury refused to use the King’s law prohibiting free exercise of religion as the standard to judge Penn’s guilt or innocence. After his acquittal, Mr. Penn promptly fled to America and founded a colony that established religious freedom as an American right; something that ultimately found voice in the First Amendment. So there is this nagging nexus between unanimous jury rejection of laws through trial that have contributed to historic reforms in the law itself. Religious freedom as an inalienable right is the cornerstone in a series of noteworthy examples in American legal history. An early noteworthy jury acquittal was the Peter Zenger trial in colonial America. He was tried for speaking critically of the local governor. The jury believed that Zenger was guilty of the crime of criticizing the government, but found the law itself to be unjust, and unjustly applied to Peter Zenger. The jury acquitted Mr. Zenger. Fast forward to 1776 and the Zenger jury’s rejection of British laws prohibiting free speech found expression in America’s First Amendment guarantee of free speech. Other instances of trial jury acquittals that led to historic legal reforms in America include the acquittals of the many defendants who were prosecuted for violating the Fugitive Slave Act. Those acquittals contributed to Lincoln’s decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. So we’re talking about the role trial jury acquittals of guilty defendants has had in constitutional reforms including religious freedom, our rights to free speech, and the abolition of slavery. 1 I have numerous case law references. In the 1920’s juries acquitted defendants who were in obvious violation of Prohibition laws. Those jury acquittals convinced political leaders that prohibition of the sale of alcohol was never going to be accepted by the people and forced the legislative repeal of Prohibition in 1933. It is just as clear that the 1995 Simpson jury’s refusal to enforce California’s law against murder was a similarly historic example of unanimous jury rejection of a law. In the Simpson trial the jury’s verdict to acquit led to historic reforms in Los Angeles police relationships with the African American community. All of these trials involving jury acquittals share a common element: based on the facts presented, the defendants seemed to be guilty as charged; but their juries applied a judicially recognized power to try the laws rather than the facts. These juries refused to enforce existing laws because of the unjust way they were being applied against those defendants. 2 The Simpson jury’s refusal to enforce California’s law against murder was a recognized legal power it possessed. 3 More importantly, their acquittal led directly to systemic reform not only in the Los Angeles Police Department, but in Los Angeles County courts. Attorney: 1. I don’t think one may conclude that because black riots followed the acquittal of the police in the Rodney King case therefore the jury’s decision was wrong or racially motivated. As we know, riots followed the grand jury’s non-indictment of policeman Wilson in Ferguson, but Wilson was subsequently exonerated at all levels, including the U.S. Justice Department. 2 A jury’s power to nullify is recognized in numerous case law citations. 3 My speech has numerous case law citations of nullification as an inherent power of juries, though not a right. Legal Journalist’s Answer: The argument presented above is that the jury’s acquittal of four white police officers who beat Rodney King does not suggest that there were race issues infecting the Los Angeles County judicial system. The argument above notes that Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson was also not judged guilty, and so the riots that followed his grand jury no {true} bill similarly cannot be viewed as an indication of institutional racism in Ferguson’s police department. However, I believe it can be reasonably stipulated that the {Los Angeles} police acquittals and the {Ferguson} refusal by a grand jury to indict precipitated both riots that immediately followed those decisions. The argument I raise in my speech draws attention to the relationships between the African American community and their local police and judicial systems. I am reminded that only months after the Rodney King police acquittals, congress passed 42 U.S.C.

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