Marcia Clark was forced by her boss to do the trial downtown if I believe, so she didn't have a lot of jury selection options, since she was only allowed to choose from downtown citizens only. I read that in the Simpson case, the downtown population has a larger fear of police, and that was a problem. I don't know if that is true, and have never been to L.A., that is just what I read, when it comes to the case.
I agree that it could have been a slam dunk conviction, just not with the jury she may have had options with.
Even if Clark chose to not put Furhman on the stand, the defense would have called him anyway, since he is their race card target. So doesn't it look better to the jury that she called him, rather than doing it? I mean it looks bad when the defense calls a police witness on the case, and not the prosecution, doesn't it?
I don't know much about Darden's motivations. But some of her decisions seem either bad or lazy. When Furhman took the fifth, at that point a witness is to leave the stand and not answer any more questions. But Clark and Ito let him go on and take the fifth for everything. Why didn't Marcia object and try to get him off the stand at that point?
There are also other pieces of evidence that Marcia would not allow in that she should have such as the taped interview with Simpson, where Simpson himself says it was his blood at both crime scenes, on tape.
And the witness at the airport who saw Simpson there, dump a bag, in the trash can, and other pieces of evidence as well.
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haynese_98
8 years ago
Honestly I think Marcia Clark was in over her head and it didn't help that she had the inexperienced Chris Darden on her team. Remember, Vince Bugliosi gave Marcia and Darden an "F-" in his book OUTRAGE.
With all that being said I don't think the prosecution ever had any real chance to win this case. The Jury was rigged pretty good, the Rodney King incident fresh in everyone's minds, and with O.J.'s high priced "Dream Team" playing the race card there was no way to win.
Thankfully, everything worked out perfect in the end as O.J. has been in jail for almost a decade and now he's fat and unhappy and feeling the wrath of revenge.
In the end, Marcia and Darden barely did a fair job but at least they were on the good side. There's no reason to rag on them esp. since they took on an unwinnable case.
Shall we play a game?
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RynoII
8 years ago
I don't see how the lawyers were a dream team though. Vincent Bugliosi points out how the defense was highly inexperienced as well, and that they only won because the prosecution threw them too many bones.
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snowleopard
8 years ago
Except Bailey. He had a lot of trial experience, much of it extremely high profile. Bugliosi credits him in the book as being a gifted lawyer. But also one who's ego got in the way at times in his career, costing him a few key cases.
Both Shapiro and Cocharan had a fair amount of experience, just none in a murder trial.
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markb63
8 years ago
Just a comment about "downtown citizens." The jury pool came from all over Los Angeles, not just "downtown" (I was called twice to jury duty in downtown Los Angeles and I didn't live downtown). There were plenty of white people in the jury pool, but Clark picked black women, which was against the advice of her jury experts. She thought she knew best, but clearly she didn't. It was that type of arrogance and incompetence that cost her the trial.
But yes, had the trial been held in Santa Monica (its own city with an overwhelmingly white population), which they could have done, there would have been far fewer blacks in the jury pool.
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RynoII
8 years ago
Oh okay, a lot of people blame the jury being wrong, because the trial was downtown. By that, I assume that they meant the jury was of downtown citizens as well. I wondered why they just didn't get jurors from other places, but apparently they did. My mistake.
I was watching the miniseries The People VS. O.J. Simpson and in that series, when the defense is picking jurors and trying to find out what how black people feel about the case, it is pointed out that the majority of black women in the population do not like white women, cause they think of white women as stealing their men.
So if this is true, then perhaps picking black women jurors was not a good idea, since the one of the murder victims was a white woman who was married to a black man.
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nihilistdude2000
8 years ago
I thought part of the problem was that the Prosecution's ideal candidates (white, e.g.) were unable or unwilling to go through such a long trial and be sequestered, which is why they ended up with a less than stellar jury pool. I know Marcia thought she did well with black women, but I wasn't under the impression that she passed up white people to get black women, but that black women were the few that were available for the trial and the remaining jury pool left over was getting worse and worse for her so she had to make a decision.
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RynoII
8 years ago
Yeah it may have been Ito's call to keep the black women jurors and not Marcia's final say.
But I still think that Marcia made other mistakes when trying to prove the case, such as not allowing the police interview as evidence, and not allowing the witness who saw Simpson at the airport.
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