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The Run of His Life
Book by Toobin, Jeffrey
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1996
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About the author
Jeffrey Toobin
28 books714 followersJeffrey Ross Toobin (J.D., Harvard Law School, 1986; B.A., American History and Literature, Harvard University) is a lawyer, blogger, and media legal correspondent for CNN and formerly The New Yorker magazine. He previously served as an Assistant United States Attorney in Brooklyn, New York, and later worked as a legal analyst for ABC News, where he received a 2001 Emmy Award for his coverage of the Elian Gonzales custody saga.
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April 19, 2024
“It is ultimately unknowable whether a brilliant effort by prosecutors in the Simpson case could have produced a conviction in spite of the defense effort to make the case a racial referendum. There was, alas, no such splendid performance. Indeed, despite the best intentions, the case was largely botched by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office. The prosecutors were undone by the twin afflictions most common among government lawyers: arrogance…and ineptitude. Drunk on virtue, the prosecutors squandered what little chance they had for victory. At its core, the Simpson case was a horrific yet routine domestic-violence homicide. It metastasized into a national drama, one that exposed deep fissures in American society, for one reason: because the defendant’s lawyers thought that using race would help their client win acquittal. It did. That was all that mattered to them. More than a decade ago, Alan Dershowitz, one of Simpson’s lawyers, gave a candid precis of the approach that would characterize the defense team’s efforts. In his book The Best Defense, Dershowitz wrote: ‘Once I decide to take a case, I have only one agenda: I want to win. I will try, by every fair and legal means, to get my client off – without regard to the consequences…’”
- Jeffrey Toobin, The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson
I was just a teenager when the O.J. Simpson verdict was handed down, on October 3, 1995. I watched his acquittal live on television, during homeroom. Frankly, I hadn’t followed the trial at all, since like most teenagers, I had my head deep up my own ass. I do recall, however, cheering the outcome. Like many relatively young people, there was an oppositional-defiant side to me that wanted to see the bad guy get away. Also, I loved O.J., not for his football skills, but his roles in The Naked Gun movies, and in The Towering Inferno, where his contribution to San Francisco’s greatest fictional disaster is to save Jennifer Jones’s cat.
It is now many years later, and FX has turned the trial into a fantastic miniseries, of which Jeffrey Toobin’s The Run of His Life forms the basis. The O.J.-backing high schooler I used to be has turned into a criminal defense attorney – one of those government lawyers Toobin disdains – so it was with some professional interest, along with a lot of 90s nostalgia, that I finally picked up this book.
It is everything I wanted.
***
A lot of words have been spent on O.J. Simpson. I have not read all of them. I haven’t the notion to try. Despite this, I feel comfortable saying that Toobin has probably written the best book on the subject. He not only has the necessary background – Harvard Law, Assistant U.S. Attorney, a number of bestselling books on legal topics, one epic Zoom fail – but the ability to write clearly and well. This latter talent is not to be undersold. If you read a book by famed prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, for instance, you’ll know what I mean. The Run of His Life is written by a legal analyst, one who thoroughly understands the byzantine system he is describing. It answered questions that popped into my head as a lawyer, yet it never seemed inaccessible to a layman who’s never watched a trial before.
Most important to a reader is Toobin’s ability to combine his research and knowledge into something that reads propulsively. This is an all-encompassing, fly-on-the wall look at every aspect of the People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson, from detectives to prosecutors, defense attorneys to jurors. From Larry King to Judge Lance Ito. Indeed, as Toobin recounts, the talk show host and the presiding judge had a nice conversation in Ito’s chambers during a break in the trial. This doesn’t break the top 1,000 strange things that happened in this case, which gives some indication as to how poorly it was managed.
***
My edition of this book – which includes a short chapter on the civil trial – runs 458 pages. That’s fairly lengthy, but barely up to the task of containing the many incidents in this quintessentially bizarro American saga.
All the touchstones are here, ready to take you back to those glory days after the Cold War, but before the New Cold War: the Bronco Chase; the leaked 911 tapes; the testimony of court jester Kato Kaelin; the infamous “bloody glove” that did not “fit”; and the virulent racism of Detective Mark Fuhrman, who, as Toobin notes, spent only 30 minutes as lead detective on the case, and managed to irrevocably knock it into a cocked hat.
It is fascinating to have a replay of all these events that linger in the fog of my memory. Toobin is at its best, however, when dealing with the behind the scenes details. Prosecutor Marcia Clark’s refusal to heed the advice of pro bono jury consultants. Clark’s decision not to use important witnesses who had already sold their stories. D.A. Gil Garcetti’s decision to have the trial heard downtown, rather than in Santa Monica where the murders occurred. The many trials of Christopher Darden, a black prosecutor who was goaded by Johnnie Cochran into some terrible blunders.
***
Topping everything is the tale of Simpson’s “Dream Team,” his spare-no-expenses bullpen of lawyers that included Robert Shapiro, Johnnie Cochran, F. Lee Bailey, noted blowhard Alan Dershowitz, DNA expert Barry Scheck, and O.J. sycophant Robert Kardashian, whose legacy endures in ways he probably did not expect.
Shapiro – the plea bargainer to the stars – was initially the lead attorney in Simpson’s case. He actually developed the theme of the defense, to wit: that O.J. was framed by a racist LAPD. He received an assist from none other than Jeffrey Toobin, who had done some snooping in Fuhrman’s file that revealed the detective to be a bigot. Shapiro was not a litigator – that is, he did not have a lot of experience conducting actual jury trials. To make up this deficit, Johnnie Cochran came into the case.
***
Cochran is a fascinating figure. He surveyed the angles and played the best one. During closing arguments, he called Detective Fuhrman “a lying, perjuring, genocidal racist,” an apt description that fails to have any relevant bearing on O.J.’s guilt or innocence. The defense worked in a deviously beautiful way. There is an old saying among lawyers. If you don’t have the law on your side, argue the facts. If you don’t have the facts on your side, argue the law. If you don’t have either, call the other side a liar. This, in a crystalline form, is what Cochran did. He clouded the issues, clung tenaciously to the irrelevant, and played to the sympathies of the majority black jurors. At this point, I should add that Cochran was doing his job, and did it extremely well. It’s up to the judge to act as referee, but Lance Ito remained an ephemeral presence for most of the trial, allowing a trial to become a spectacle, and the spectacle to become a five-ring circus with the Big Top on fire.
As Cochran came to dominate the defense, Shapiro fell into a sulk. By the time the trial ended, he was openly ruing the tenor of the defense he crafted. One of his last acts was to go on Barbara Walters and admit that the defense had played the race card “from the bottom of the deck.” This is true, of course, but you’re his lawyer and you can’t say that!
***
Simpson’s trial lasted nine months, meaning that Toobin has to pinpoint the most relevant testimony to describe. He devotes a chapter to Barry Scheck – who he calls the defense’s best trial lawyer – and his efforts to discredit the State’s abundant DNA evidence. Anyone who has watched Netflix’s Making a Murderer will enjoy Scheck’s attempts to show the presence of EDTA in the crime scene blood. Fuhrman gets two chapters. The first details his initial testimony, in which he denied using the n-word; the second chapter deals with the taped interviews between Fuhrman and a screenwriter, in which Fuhrman does indeed use the n-word. A lot. He’s a nasty guy, and is up there with the prosecutors in blameworthiness for failing to secure a conviction.
***
Toobin also has a chapter on the machinations in the jury room. The jurors were sequestered for the entirety of the trial, and were only allowed minimal access to the outside world (and only one conjugal visit a week!). The tight quarters, bad food, and conflicting personalities made for a lot of squabbling. Several jurors were kicked out for inappropriately prejudging the case. It seems that this worked to both side’s advantage. The racial divisions within the jury perfectly mirrored the racial divisions of the nation as a whole as it watched the trial unfold. All things considered, it’s a minor miracle that there were any jurors left at the end.
By the time I read about one of the dismissed jurors going on to pose for Playboy, it didn’t surprise me a bit.
***
The Run of His Life is not a polemic. It does not seethe with anger and righteous indignation. To the contrary, it is cool and unaffected by the strong emotion that still cocoons the trial. It is admirably free of all the sensationalized tabloid nonsense that helped obscure the brutal knife-murders of two innocent people.
Toobin states at the outset that he thinks Simpson is guilty; however, he isn’t out to prove this with some prosecutorial brief pinpointing all the evidence against Simpson, or the impossibility that a racist idiot like Mark Fuhrman could concoct a wide-ranging conspiracy to frame Simpson during the time it took him to drive to O.J.’s house.
This is a good literary choice. Toobin doesn’t have to prove anything. O.J. is guilty. He is factually guilty. That is a truth woven into the tapestry of the universe. No one’s opinion changes that. Still, Toobin is a curious enough person to wonder why twelve people took only two hours – after a nine month trial – to render judgment. In doing so, they ignored their charged duty to look at the evidence, and instead sent a message to the LAPD. But – as Toobin notes – they had their reasons. As context, he documents the terrible racial history of the LAPD, which had trampled on minority rights – and lives – for years. Given this background, it makes total sense that ESPN’s magisterial documentary, O.J.: Made in America, spends almost as much time on Rodney King as the Juice himself.
Without doubt, the LAPD needed a message sent; the open question is whether this trial was the best signage.
***
I think it’s important to point out that Simpson’s trial does not tell us anything about our criminal justice system, either then or now. It is, in fact, an inversion of everything that normally occurs in courtrooms across the country. O.J. wasn’t targeted because he was black; he was guarded because of his celebrity. The cops loved him. They hung out at his house. They looked the other way when he beat his wife. When his wife died, they “questioned” him for 30 minutes, never once asking him to answer for his evasions. When it finally came time to arrest him – on a double murder, no less – they allowed him to turn himself in. This is special treatment, California style. I tell you from experience – that’s not typical.
Then we come to the uneven courtroom brawl. I’m a defense attorney, so I seldom feel sorry for the prosecution. After all, the State has all the resources; police officers, detectives, crime lab, a panoply of available experts from the FBI, ATF, and DEA. The full force of the government brought to bear on an individual citizen. On top of all that, the judge is usually a former prosecutor, like the disappearing Judge Lance Ito. We’re talking David and Goliath, but David can’t afford a sling. Or a rock.
Not here.
Here there were times I cringed at how overmatched Clark and Darden were in comparison to Cochran, Scheck, and the others. The high-priced defense that O.J. purchased turned all those officers and experts into liabilities, paradoxically bumbling fools and slick conspiracists, all at once. The Dream Team, to quote the legendary evidence expert John Henry Wigmore, made “the truth appear like falsehood.” Again, that’s not typical.
***
So, this is not the representative American crime story. What is? It goes something like this: a poor, young black man is charged with a felony and given a single court-appointed attorney who might have the budget to hire one or two investigators. Despite the acute possibility of his innocence, he takes a plea deal, because if he doesn’t, he’s going to face a better-funded prosecutor, draconian sentencing laws, and a jury that’s not going to look like him. It is not as dramatic as O.J., but it has huge societal implications.
Though not the archetypal criminal case, O.J.’s is a purely American epic. A trial for the 21st century that took place in the final years of the 20th. It prefigures so many of the cultural issues that we face – and wrestle with – today. Race. Class. Police brutality. Instant fame. Celebrity. Media-driven narratives. The never-ending news cycle. Kardashians.
The Run of His Life was first copyrighted in 1996. There were dozens of times while reading it that I could’ve sworn it was written yesterday. It tells of a verdict delivered over twenty years ago. It still speaks to us today.
- Jeffrey Toobin, The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson
I was just a teenager when the O.J. Simpson verdict was handed down, on October 3, 1995. I watched his acquittal live on television, during homeroom. Frankly, I hadn’t followed the trial at all, since like most teenagers, I had my head deep up my own ass. I do recall, however, cheering the outcome. Like many relatively young people, there was an oppositional-defiant side to me that wanted to see the bad guy get away. Also, I loved O.J., not for his football skills, but his roles in The Naked Gun movies, and in The Towering Inferno, where his contribution to San Francisco’s greatest fictional disaster is to save Jennifer Jones’s cat.
It is now many years later, and FX has turned the trial into a fantastic miniseries, of which Jeffrey Toobin’s The Run of His Life forms the basis. The O.J.-backing high schooler I used to be has turned into a criminal defense attorney – one of those government lawyers Toobin disdains – so it was with some professional interest, along with a lot of 90s nostalgia, that I finally picked up this book.
It is everything I wanted.
***
A lot of words have been spent on O.J. Simpson. I have not read all of them. I haven’t the notion to try. Despite this, I feel comfortable saying that Toobin has probably written the best book on the subject. He not only has the necessary background – Harvard Law, Assistant U.S. Attorney, a number of bestselling books on legal topics, one epic Zoom fail – but the ability to write clearly and well. This latter talent is not to be undersold. If you read a book by famed prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, for instance, you’ll know what I mean. The Run of His Life is written by a legal analyst, one who thoroughly understands the byzantine system he is describing. It answered questions that popped into my head as a lawyer, yet it never seemed inaccessible to a layman who’s never watched a trial before.
Most important to a reader is Toobin’s ability to combine his research and knowledge into something that reads propulsively. This is an all-encompassing, fly-on-the wall look at every aspect of the People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson, from detectives to prosecutors, defense attorneys to jurors. From Larry King to Judge Lance Ito. Indeed, as Toobin recounts, the talk show host and the presiding judge had a nice conversation in Ito’s chambers during a break in the trial. This doesn’t break the top 1,000 strange things that happened in this case, which gives some indication as to how poorly it was managed.
***
My edition of this book – which includes a short chapter on the civil trial – runs 458 pages. That’s fairly lengthy, but barely up to the task of containing the many incidents in this quintessentially bizarro American saga.
All the touchstones are here, ready to take you back to those glory days after the Cold War, but before the New Cold War: the Bronco Chase; the leaked 911 tapes; the testimony of court jester Kato Kaelin; the infamous “bloody glove” that did not “fit”; and the virulent racism of Detective Mark Fuhrman, who, as Toobin notes, spent only 30 minutes as lead detective on the case, and managed to irrevocably knock it into a cocked hat.
It is fascinating to have a replay of all these events that linger in the fog of my memory. Toobin is at its best, however, when dealing with the behind the scenes details. Prosecutor Marcia Clark’s refusal to heed the advice of pro bono jury consultants. Clark’s decision not to use important witnesses who had already sold their stories. D.A. Gil Garcetti’s decision to have the trial heard downtown, rather than in Santa Monica where the murders occurred. The many trials of Christopher Darden, a black prosecutor who was goaded by Johnnie Cochran into some terrible blunders.
***
Topping everything is the tale of Simpson’s “Dream Team,” his spare-no-expenses bullpen of lawyers that included Robert Shapiro, Johnnie Cochran, F. Lee Bailey, noted blowhard Alan Dershowitz, DNA expert Barry Scheck, and O.J. sycophant Robert Kardashian, whose legacy endures in ways he probably did not expect.
Shapiro – the plea bargainer to the stars – was initially the lead attorney in Simpson’s case. He actually developed the theme of the defense, to wit: that O.J. was framed by a racist LAPD. He received an assist from none other than Jeffrey Toobin, who had done some snooping in Fuhrman’s file that revealed the detective to be a bigot. Shapiro was not a litigator – that is, he did not have a lot of experience conducting actual jury trials. To make up this deficit, Johnnie Cochran came into the case.
***
Cochran is a fascinating figure. He surveyed the angles and played the best one. During closing arguments, he called Detective Fuhrman “a lying, perjuring, genocidal racist,” an apt description that fails to have any relevant bearing on O.J.’s guilt or innocence. The defense worked in a deviously beautiful way. There is an old saying among lawyers. If you don’t have the law on your side, argue the facts. If you don’t have the facts on your side, argue the law. If you don’t have either, call the other side a liar. This, in a crystalline form, is what Cochran did. He clouded the issues, clung tenaciously to the irrelevant, and played to the sympathies of the majority black jurors. At this point, I should add that Cochran was doing his job, and did it extremely well. It’s up to the judge to act as referee, but Lance Ito remained an ephemeral presence for most of the trial, allowing a trial to become a spectacle, and the spectacle to become a five-ring circus with the Big Top on fire.
As Cochran came to dominate the defense, Shapiro fell into a sulk. By the time the trial ended, he was openly ruing the tenor of the defense he crafted. One of his last acts was to go on Barbara Walters and admit that the defense had played the race card “from the bottom of the deck.” This is true, of course, but you’re his lawyer and you can’t say that!
***
Simpson’s trial lasted nine months, meaning that Toobin has to pinpoint the most relevant testimony to describe. He devotes a chapter to Barry Scheck – who he calls the defense’s best trial lawyer – and his efforts to discredit the State’s abundant DNA evidence. Anyone who has watched Netflix’s Making a Murderer will enjoy Scheck’s attempts to show the presence of EDTA in the crime scene blood. Fuhrman gets two chapters. The first details his initial testimony, in which he denied using the n-word; the second chapter deals with the taped interviews between Fuhrman and a screenwriter, in which Fuhrman does indeed use the n-word. A lot. He’s a nasty guy, and is up there with the prosecutors in blameworthiness for failing to secure a conviction.
***
Toobin also has a chapter on the machinations in the jury room. The jurors were sequestered for the entirety of the trial, and were only allowed minimal access to the outside world (and only one conjugal visit a week!). The tight quarters, bad food, and conflicting personalities made for a lot of squabbling. Several jurors were kicked out for inappropriately prejudging the case. It seems that this worked to both side’s advantage. The racial divisions within the jury perfectly mirrored the racial divisions of the nation as a whole as it watched the trial unfold. All things considered, it’s a minor miracle that there were any jurors left at the end.
By the time I read about one of the dismissed jurors going on to pose for Playboy, it didn’t surprise me a bit.
***
The Run of His Life is not a polemic. It does not seethe with anger and righteous indignation. To the contrary, it is cool and unaffected by the strong emotion that still cocoons the trial. It is admirably free of all the sensationalized tabloid nonsense that helped obscure the brutal knife-murders of two innocent people.
Toobin states at the outset that he thinks Simpson is guilty; however, he isn’t out to prove this with some prosecutorial brief pinpointing all the evidence against Simpson, or the impossibility that a racist idiot like Mark Fuhrman could concoct a wide-ranging conspiracy to frame Simpson during the time it took him to drive to O.J.’s house.
This is a good literary choice. Toobin doesn’t have to prove anything. O.J. is guilty. He is factually guilty. That is a truth woven into the tapestry of the universe. No one’s opinion changes that. Still, Toobin is a curious enough person to wonder why twelve people took only two hours – after a nine month trial – to render judgment. In doing so, they ignored their charged duty to look at the evidence, and instead sent a message to the LAPD. But – as Toobin notes – they had their reasons. As context, he documents the terrible racial history of the LAPD, which had trampled on minority rights – and lives – for years. Given this background, it makes total sense that ESPN’s magisterial documentary, O.J.: Made in America, spends almost as much time on Rodney King as the Juice himself.
Without doubt, the LAPD needed a message sent; the open question is whether this trial was the best signage.
***
I think it’s important to point out that Simpson’s trial does not tell us anything about our criminal justice system, either then or now. It is, in fact, an inversion of everything that normally occurs in courtrooms across the country. O.J. wasn’t targeted because he was black; he was guarded because of his celebrity. The cops loved him. They hung out at his house. They looked the other way when he beat his wife. When his wife died, they “questioned” him for 30 minutes, never once asking him to answer for his evasions. When it finally came time to arrest him – on a double murder, no less – they allowed him to turn himself in. This is special treatment, California style. I tell you from experience – that’s not typical.
Then we come to the uneven courtroom brawl. I’m a defense attorney, so I seldom feel sorry for the prosecution. After all, the State has all the resources; police officers, detectives, crime lab, a panoply of available experts from the FBI, ATF, and DEA. The full force of the government brought to bear on an individual citizen. On top of all that, the judge is usually a former prosecutor, like the disappearing Judge Lance Ito. We’re talking David and Goliath, but David can’t afford a sling. Or a rock.
Not here.
Here there were times I cringed at how overmatched Clark and Darden were in comparison to Cochran, Scheck, and the others. The high-priced defense that O.J. purchased turned all those officers and experts into liabilities, paradoxically bumbling fools and slick conspiracists, all at once. The Dream Team, to quote the legendary evidence expert John Henry Wigmore, made “the truth appear like falsehood.” Again, that’s not typical.
***
So, this is not the representative American crime story. What is? It goes something like this: a poor, young black man is charged with a felony and given a single court-appointed attorney who might have the budget to hire one or two investigators. Despite the acute possibility of his innocence, he takes a plea deal, because if he doesn’t, he’s going to face a better-funded prosecutor, draconian sentencing laws, and a jury that’s not going to look like him. It is not as dramatic as O.J., but it has huge societal implications.
Though not the archetypal criminal case, O.J.’s is a purely American epic. A trial for the 21st century that took place in the final years of the 20th. It prefigures so many of the cultural issues that we face – and wrestle with – today. Race. Class. Police brutality. Instant fame. Celebrity. Media-driven narratives. The never-ending news cycle. Kardashians.
The Run of His Life was first copyrighted in 1996. There were dozens of times while reading it that I could’ve sworn it was written yesterday. It tells of a verdict delivered over twenty years ago. It still speaks to us today.
March 7, 2017
Good golly, is this a fantastic true crime book. Jeffrey Toobin is one of those rare people who can take complex legal issues and explain them to laypeople, while also writing fantastic descriptions and crafting a good narrative.
I was in college during the O.J. Simpson murder case and confess I wasn't paying much attention to it back then. I was busy doing college stuff, plus I was never into football and had only a vague idea of why O.J. Simpson was famous. However, despite my lack of interest, I remember watching the famous chase involving the white Ford Bronco in June 1994. I also remember where I was in October 1995, when the verdict was announced and O.J. was acquitted of murdering his wife, Nicole Brown, and an innocent bystander, Ron Goldman, despite overwhelming evidence against him. More than 20 years later, this decision is still shocking.
Toobin covered the murder trial and had incredible access to the key players. Considering how much went wrong for the prosecution in that case, this book reads like a manual of What Not To Do. Regarding the defense team, what is interesting is how many narcissists were sitting at one table (F. Lee Bailey made that comment). In another good line, Toobin called defense attorney Alan Dershowitz a "preening clown."
I became interested in reading The Run of His Life after watching ESPN's incredible documentary on O.J., called "Made in America." Toobin was interviewed in the series, and this book is a great supplement and goes deeper into some of the trial issues than the film.
Things I Learned from Toobin's Book:
This was my first Toobin book, and he's such a compelling writer that I'm interested in reading his other works. Highly recommended for true crime fans, and also those interested in racial issues involving police.
Good Passage
"Simpson's friends often used the same expression to describe him: 'He loved being O.J.' That was, in many respects, his occupation -- being O.J. By 1994, he was long retired from his days of football glory. He had modest visibility as a sports broadcaster and some minor success as an actor in occasional self-mocking roles in the Naked Gun movies. He judged beauty contests. He shilled for Hertz. He pitched in an infomercial for an arthritis cure. At the time of his arrest for murder, Simpson had only a vaporous, peculiarly American kind of renown: He was famous for being O.J."
I was in college during the O.J. Simpson murder case and confess I wasn't paying much attention to it back then. I was busy doing college stuff, plus I was never into football and had only a vague idea of why O.J. Simpson was famous. However, despite my lack of interest, I remember watching the famous chase involving the white Ford Bronco in June 1994. I also remember where I was in October 1995, when the verdict was announced and O.J. was acquitted of murdering his wife, Nicole Brown, and an innocent bystander, Ron Goldman, despite overwhelming evidence against him. More than 20 years later, this decision is still shocking.
Toobin covered the murder trial and had incredible access to the key players. Considering how much went wrong for the prosecution in that case, this book reads like a manual of What Not To Do. Regarding the defense team, what is interesting is how many narcissists were sitting at one table (F. Lee Bailey made that comment). In another good line, Toobin called defense attorney Alan Dershowitz a "preening clown."
I became interested in reading The Run of His Life after watching ESPN's incredible documentary on O.J., called "Made in America." Toobin was interviewed in the series, and this book is a great supplement and goes deeper into some of the trial issues than the film.
Things I Learned from Toobin's Book:
*O.J. Simpson was described as semi-literate and can barely write a sentence. Toobin says O.J.'s main job at USC was to play football, and he didn't get an education while he was there. This was in the 1960s, before the NCAA cracked down on college athletes and their schooling.
*O.J.'s "dream team" of defense attorneys all seemed to despise each other and often bickered. After the trial, some attorneys vowed never to speak to each other again.
*Defense attorney Johnnie Cochran had a longtime mistress and basically kept up two households for about a decade, until his real wife got tired of his antics and left him.
*Nicole Brown was financially dependent on O.J. and seemed to have no real skills other than modeling. (Toobin reported that all of the Brown sisters had breast implants, but no college degrees.) Nicole had only worked a few weeks -- as a waitress and as a shop girl -- when O.J. met her. I also didn't know how much domestic violence Nicole had suffered in her relationship with O.J. And when Nicole tried to get help, she found that she couldn't rely on Los Angeles police, because they would always defer to O.J.'s celebrity. It's telling that just a few days before Nicole was murdered, when she was concerned O.J. was stalking her and was going to harm her, she called a women's shelter for help, rather than the police. Even though O.J. and Nicole had separated at that point, O.J. was still trying to control her life and her finances.
*Look, there's no doubt that police detective Mark Furhman said some horrible racist shit years ago, but there's no way he planted evidence at O.J.'s house. It's absurd.
*Oy vey, the race issue. The O.J. case fed into the whole history of racial injustice in America, and specifically it became a referendum on the LAPD. What a mess.
*I listened to Toobin's original book on audio, but I also checked out an updated edition of the paperback, which had an afterword on the civil trial that Goldman's family filed against O.J. It was interesting to learn how arrogant he was during the civil trial, even when more evidence was found against him. This time, the jury found him guilty and he was ordered to pay millions in damages. By then his celebrity status had been lowered to one of social pariah, and O.J. couldn't afford (or refused) to pay. In a bizarre twist to this tragic tale, O.J. is currently in prison for an unrelated burglary incident in 2007.
This was my first Toobin book, and he's such a compelling writer that I'm interested in reading his other works. Highly recommended for true crime fans, and also those interested in racial issues involving police.
Good Passage
"Simpson's friends often used the same expression to describe him: 'He loved being O.J.' That was, in many respects, his occupation -- being O.J. By 1994, he was long retired from his days of football glory. He had modest visibility as a sports broadcaster and some minor success as an actor in occasional self-mocking roles in the Naked Gun movies. He judged beauty contests. He shilled for Hertz. He pitched in an infomercial for an arthritis cure. At the time of his arrest for murder, Simpson had only a vaporous, peculiarly American kind of renown: He was famous for being O.J."
November 6, 2018
Um dos melhores livros que já li na minha vida, com toda certeza. Vou falar mais sobre ele em vídeoS, mas queria registrar minha forte recomendação.
May 10, 2016
A woman and her male friend were brutally murdered just outside her home. There was practically a trail of blood leading to her ex-husband’s house. The ex had a history of domestic violence against her and no alibi. A mountain of physical and circumstantial evidence including DNA, hairs, footprints, and a bloody glove found on his property all point at him as the killer.
You didn’t need Sherlock Holmes to solve this one, but I doubt that even an amazing lawyer like Perry Mason or Atticus Fitch could have gotten a conviction considering everything that happened next.
I thought the interest I had in the OJ Simpson murder case had been buried in a shallow grave back in the ‘90s along with some grunge CD’s, my flannel shirts, and any lingering belief that the legal system actually worked as advertised. That's why I was surprised to find myself getting so wrapped up in the excellent TV mini-series from FX based on this book that I wanted to read it. While the show was a gripping dramatization that highlighted social issues that we’re still grappling with today this is more of a straightforward look at the case, but it’s still fascinating to get a step-by-step account of what exactly happened.
Jeffrey Toobin was a lawyer turned reporter who covered the trial starting with a story leaked to him by Simpson attorney Robert Shapiro that was the first seed of what would become a defense based on the idea that OJ was framed by racist cops. Toobin doesn’t even pretend to entertain the notion that Simpson might have been innocent and instead focuses on the legal strategies and mistakes that happened along with a bit of biographical info about the major players and their personalities. He also highlights what a media circus the entire fiasco became and how that became a factor for everyone in the court room.
The book delves deeply into exactly how Simpson’s legal team, led by the brilliant Johnny Cochran, exploited the racial tensions of Los Angeles just a few years after the Rodney King beating and riots. Cochran had been hoping for a hung jury at best and basing much of his strategy on pointing a finger at the detective who found some of the key evidence, Mark Fuhrman*. After tapes of Fuhrman using racial slurs and bragging about abusing minorities as a cop surfaced that proved he’d lied under oath a delighted Cochran realized that he’d gotten the chance for a full acquittal and pressed hard for it.
OJ’s defense was helped along by the prosecution which had an almost unerring instinct for shooting themselves in the foot at critical moments. For example, one strong piece of evidence was that the type of gloves used by the killer were a specialty item of which only 200 pairs had ever been sold. Investigation showed records that Nicole had purchased a pair of these in OJ’s size while they were still married, and the prosecution had a strong witness in a sales rep for the company to explain this.
Yet rather than simply pointing out how unlikely it would be that Nicole Simpson was murdered by someone else who had bought these rare gloves Christopher Darden let himself get distracted and baited by the defense into having OJ try them on. This led to the famous incident of OJ struggling to put on the gloves and Cochran’s later assertion that, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”** What should have been a solid piece of evidence against OJ instead became a moment that was a complete disaster.
Still, Toobin documents the prosecution probably had no chance to convict no matter what they had done once the jury was chosen. From the focus group research done before the trial to the mindset of the of jury during the proceeding to their very brief deliberations the book makes a compelling case that they jury had their minds made up almost from the start, and that OJ’s fame as well as the LAPD’s history of racism both played a large part in that.
I don’t think that’s actually unique to the OJ jury. I’ve been reading a lot in recent years that has convinced me that people are hardwired to believe what we want, and this applies to politics, religion, conspiracy theories, and even the scams of con men. Human beings are just crappy about accepting facts that contradict what we think we already know, and we will come up with any absurd reason we can to justify this. That’s a big part of the reason why a judicial system based on believing in the common sense and objectivity of average everyday people is fundamentally flawed. And democracy doesn’t work either. (OK, I’m kidding about democracy. Sort of. Maybe. Maybe not. Ask me again in November 2016.)
There were a couple of small issues I had with the book. I listened to the audio version of this which hasn’t been updated in quite some time so the wrap-up at the end was pretty dated. It doesn’t include the deaths of some key players like Cochran or that OJ lost a civil suit to the Brown and Goldman families during which more evidence of his guilt was presented. OJ only paid a fraction of the millions they were awarded and is currently in prison for another crime he committed years later. I’ve also seen that Marcia Clark has disputed some details of Toobin’s account recently, but I’m not sure how much of that is because he consistently places much of the blame for prosecution failures on her for being arrogant overall and sometimes hostile to witnesses when it wasn’t called for.
At the end of it all Toobin effectively spells out that African-Americans in LA during the mid-’90s had ample reasons to mistrust the police force. The LAPD having a racist like Mike Fuhrman be a cop at all was the kind of thing which created the environment that allowed a wife-beating narcissist whose favorite hobby was playing golf with his rich white friends at his country club to successfully exploit a very real racial problem to get away with double murder.
* Fuhrman had tried to get a stress disability pension in the early '80s and essentially admitted misconduct while claiming it was the stress of the job that caused his behavior. The LAPD thought he was faking to get an early pension and put him back on the street. So either Fuhrman was a guy admitting that he was unstable and unfit to be a police officer, or he was a liar trying to get off the job. Neither one of these would seem like the kind of cop you’d want to keep on the payroll, and yet they did.
**Toobin provides a detailed explanation as to why the form fitting gloves which were coated in dried blood wouldn’t easily slide on over the latex gloves Simpson was wearing, and OJ did one of his finest acting jobs ever by pretending to struggle with them. Marcia Clark also pointed out in a recent interview that while claiming innocence OJ didn’t seem bothered at all by trying on gloves coated in his ex-wife’s blood and mugging for the cameras and the jury while doing it.
You didn’t need Sherlock Holmes to solve this one, but I doubt that even an amazing lawyer like Perry Mason or Atticus Fitch could have gotten a conviction considering everything that happened next.
I thought the interest I had in the OJ Simpson murder case had been buried in a shallow grave back in the ‘90s along with some grunge CD’s, my flannel shirts, and any lingering belief that the legal system actually worked as advertised. That's why I was surprised to find myself getting so wrapped up in the excellent TV mini-series from FX based on this book that I wanted to read it. While the show was a gripping dramatization that highlighted social issues that we’re still grappling with today this is more of a straightforward look at the case, but it’s still fascinating to get a step-by-step account of what exactly happened.
Jeffrey Toobin was a lawyer turned reporter who covered the trial starting with a story leaked to him by Simpson attorney Robert Shapiro that was the first seed of what would become a defense based on the idea that OJ was framed by racist cops. Toobin doesn’t even pretend to entertain the notion that Simpson might have been innocent and instead focuses on the legal strategies and mistakes that happened along with a bit of biographical info about the major players and their personalities. He also highlights what a media circus the entire fiasco became and how that became a factor for everyone in the court room.
The book delves deeply into exactly how Simpson’s legal team, led by the brilliant Johnny Cochran, exploited the racial tensions of Los Angeles just a few years after the Rodney King beating and riots. Cochran had been hoping for a hung jury at best and basing much of his strategy on pointing a finger at the detective who found some of the key evidence, Mark Fuhrman*. After tapes of Fuhrman using racial slurs and bragging about abusing minorities as a cop surfaced that proved he’d lied under oath a delighted Cochran realized that he’d gotten the chance for a full acquittal and pressed hard for it.
OJ’s defense was helped along by the prosecution which had an almost unerring instinct for shooting themselves in the foot at critical moments. For example, one strong piece of evidence was that the type of gloves used by the killer were a specialty item of which only 200 pairs had ever been sold. Investigation showed records that Nicole had purchased a pair of these in OJ’s size while they were still married, and the prosecution had a strong witness in a sales rep for the company to explain this.
Yet rather than simply pointing out how unlikely it would be that Nicole Simpson was murdered by someone else who had bought these rare gloves Christopher Darden let himself get distracted and baited by the defense into having OJ try them on. This led to the famous incident of OJ struggling to put on the gloves and Cochran’s later assertion that, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”** What should have been a solid piece of evidence against OJ instead became a moment that was a complete disaster.
Still, Toobin documents the prosecution probably had no chance to convict no matter what they had done once the jury was chosen. From the focus group research done before the trial to the mindset of the of jury during the proceeding to their very brief deliberations the book makes a compelling case that they jury had their minds made up almost from the start, and that OJ’s fame as well as the LAPD’s history of racism both played a large part in that.
I don’t think that’s actually unique to the OJ jury. I’ve been reading a lot in recent years that has convinced me that people are hardwired to believe what we want, and this applies to politics, religion, conspiracy theories, and even the scams of con men. Human beings are just crappy about accepting facts that contradict what we think we already know, and we will come up with any absurd reason we can to justify this. That’s a big part of the reason why a judicial system based on believing in the common sense and objectivity of average everyday people is fundamentally flawed. And democracy doesn’t work either. (OK, I’m kidding about democracy. Sort of. Maybe. Maybe not. Ask me again in November 2016.)
There were a couple of small issues I had with the book. I listened to the audio version of this which hasn’t been updated in quite some time so the wrap-up at the end was pretty dated. It doesn’t include the deaths of some key players like Cochran or that OJ lost a civil suit to the Brown and Goldman families during which more evidence of his guilt was presented. OJ only paid a fraction of the millions they were awarded and is currently in prison for another crime he committed years later. I’ve also seen that Marcia Clark has disputed some details of Toobin’s account recently, but I’m not sure how much of that is because he consistently places much of the blame for prosecution failures on her for being arrogant overall and sometimes hostile to witnesses when it wasn’t called for.
At the end of it all Toobin effectively spells out that African-Americans in LA during the mid-’90s had ample reasons to mistrust the police force. The LAPD having a racist like Mike Fuhrman be a cop at all was the kind of thing which created the environment that allowed a wife-beating narcissist whose favorite hobby was playing golf with his rich white friends at his country club to successfully exploit a very real racial problem to get away with double murder.
* Fuhrman had tried to get a stress disability pension in the early '80s and essentially admitted misconduct while claiming it was the stress of the job that caused his behavior. The LAPD thought he was faking to get an early pension and put him back on the street. So either Fuhrman was a guy admitting that he was unstable and unfit to be a police officer, or he was a liar trying to get off the job. Neither one of these would seem like the kind of cop you’d want to keep on the payroll, and yet they did.
**Toobin provides a detailed explanation as to why the form fitting gloves which were coated in dried blood wouldn’t easily slide on over the latex gloves Simpson was wearing, and OJ did one of his finest acting jobs ever by pretending to struggle with them. Marcia Clark also pointed out in a recent interview that while claiming innocence OJ didn’t seem bothered at all by trying on gloves coated in his ex-wife’s blood and mugging for the cameras and the jury while doing it.
June 24, 2017
This book was soo good. After watching the FX show that was based off of this book I became completely obsessed with all things O.J. & since I was 8 yrs old when it was happening I had never really given it much thought. I now completely understand why its called "The Trial of the Century" its almost too ridiculous to be true but it is. The book like the trial itself was gossipy & sordid. I LOVE THIS BOOK. Also O.J. totally killed Nicole & Ron.
October 7, 2017
3.5 stars. The Run of His Life is interesting but feels dated. Jeff Toobin provides a detailed account of the OJ Simpson criminal trial for the murders of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goodman. He gives the back story on the investigators, Judge Ito and many of the lawyers involved. He explores the jury dynamics. And he delves into Simpson's life and the victims' lives. Toobin has a lot of criticism about how the case was handled by all involved, and he spreads it generously. He explores what he sees as many of the prosecution's ineptitudes and gaffes. He looks at the dynamics within the defence team, almost describing them as vain peacocks struggling to get centre stage. He doesn't spare Ito, depicting him as overly excited about being in the limelight. Ultimately, he states bluntly that the evidence was overwhelming against OJ Simpson, and that the predominantly African American jury was overly influenced by race in its not guilty verdict. To me, the book felt dated because Toobin's discussion of the role race played seemed simplistic and not particularly respectful of the jury members involved. I also felt that his depiction of Marcia Clark was especially harsh, verging on sexist. This was written almost right after the trial. The civil trial and verdict against Simpson had not yet occurred. It was interesting, but I suspect there's a far better and more nuanced book to be written about the same events with the benefit of the passage of time.
I listened to the audio, which was well done.
I listened to the audio, which was well done.
December 4, 2016
There might not have been a better time in the past 20 years to read a book about the O.J. Simpson trial than in 2016. Not only is there an acclaimed dramatization and and an acclaimed documentary, but the questions of race, class and celebrity highlighted by the trial remain as unresolved and relevant as ever.
I was 13 and in eighth grade when our teacher wheeled in the school's shared TV set so we could watch the verdict given live. I still remember being stunned as the words "not guilty" were repeated by every juror as they individually confirmed their votes. How could a jury have reached such a conclusion based on the evidence we had all seen and read about – evidence that overwhelmingly pointed to Simpson's guilt?
In Run for His Life, Jeffrey Toobin tries to explicate the seemingly inexplicable. He makes no bones about Simpson's guilt – but he also makes no bones about the police incompetence, prosecutorial missteps and savvy (or cynical) defense efforts that led to Simpson's acquittal. It's an honest, in-depth dive into the details of the most famous murder case of our lifetimes. It's clear, well-written, informative and interesting. I came away with a much better understanding of how Simpson was acquitted despite murdering his ex-wife and her friend.
Toobin spends a good deal of the book talking about race, as anyone discussing the Simpson trial must do. The defense moved quickly to make the trial a referendum on the Los Angeles Police Department's long history of flagrant racism. Simply put, the defense understood – and the prosecution took too long to understand – that African Americans in Los Angeles were simply not inclined to trust the LAPD's case against a black man. In that sense, the police reaped what they sowed, and compounded their problems with sloppy work in the investigation of the crime scene and, ironically enough, overly deferential treatment of Simpson.
On top of that, Johnnie Cochrane applied a thick layer of civil rights language that polarized the case nationally. This is how a middle-class white kid from Connecticut could be so out of touch with middle-class black friends and neighbors. And, from my perspective, that remains a deeply problematic legacy of the Simpson trial. Simpson was no civil rights pioneer; indeed, he abandoned his roots and did all but deny his racial heritage as a rich football star. Further, as Toobin notes, Simpson was almost certainly guilty; the evidence really was overwhelming. In this case, Cochrane used the language of civil rights to free a man who had brutally murdered two people and paint this pampered, wealthy, narcissistic man-child as a victim of a system that lavished him with privilege denied to most other men of his race and background. The result, in my opinion, was to set back the cause of civil rights, not advance it, assuming that one of the goals of the civil rights movement is to encourage buy-in from all people and not just African Americans.
Toobin does not go so in depth; I would have liked to see a deeper exploration of these questions, though that probably would have stretched a book that already feels a tad too long beyond the breaking point. A more significant failure is that Toobin fails to broach the questions of class and celebrity. Simpson was acquitted because he was black, which is an odd twist to the usual machinations of the justice system, but he could not have afforded attorneys like Bob Shapiro, F. Lee Bailey, Cochrane and the rest of the "Dream Team" were he not incredibly wealthy; likewise, his acquittal owed a great deal to his celebrity – his smiling visage was well known from football, movies, Hertz ads and other TV appearances. Simpson's race was only an advantage because the fame and money he had accrued allowed him to hire the attorneys who could manipulate the trial the way they did. Beyond discussing Simpson's celebrity and how it allowed him to abuse Nicole Brown for years essentially with impunity, Toobin misses the role these other factors played in the trial – and still play in American society. (We should also mention that the attitudes about domestic violence and the defense's sexist portrayals of Brown also contributed to the acquittal; one can't help but wonder if Simpson would have had a harder time if he had simply murdered Goldman.)
In the end, thanks to Toobin's book, I understand much more clearly how I could have been so shocked at Simpson's acquittal – and I can understand, too, what the jurors who acquitted him were thinking. I still think they made a mistake, and Toobin clearly does too, but he should be commended for taking the time and effort to shed light on a complex situation, rather than merely heat. On the subjects of race, gender, class and celebrity, 2016 has taught us we need much more light than we thought we did.
I was 13 and in eighth grade when our teacher wheeled in the school's shared TV set so we could watch the verdict given live. I still remember being stunned as the words "not guilty" were repeated by every juror as they individually confirmed their votes. How could a jury have reached such a conclusion based on the evidence we had all seen and read about – evidence that overwhelmingly pointed to Simpson's guilt?
In Run for His Life, Jeffrey Toobin tries to explicate the seemingly inexplicable. He makes no bones about Simpson's guilt – but he also makes no bones about the police incompetence, prosecutorial missteps and savvy (or cynical) defense efforts that led to Simpson's acquittal. It's an honest, in-depth dive into the details of the most famous murder case of our lifetimes. It's clear, well-written, informative and interesting. I came away with a much better understanding of how Simpson was acquitted despite murdering his ex-wife and her friend.
Toobin spends a good deal of the book talking about race, as anyone discussing the Simpson trial must do. The defense moved quickly to make the trial a referendum on the Los Angeles Police Department's long history of flagrant racism. Simply put, the defense understood – and the prosecution took too long to understand – that African Americans in Los Angeles were simply not inclined to trust the LAPD's case against a black man. In that sense, the police reaped what they sowed, and compounded their problems with sloppy work in the investigation of the crime scene and, ironically enough, overly deferential treatment of Simpson.
On top of that, Johnnie Cochrane applied a thick layer of civil rights language that polarized the case nationally. This is how a middle-class white kid from Connecticut could be so out of touch with middle-class black friends and neighbors. And, from my perspective, that remains a deeply problematic legacy of the Simpson trial. Simpson was no civil rights pioneer; indeed, he abandoned his roots and did all but deny his racial heritage as a rich football star. Further, as Toobin notes, Simpson was almost certainly guilty; the evidence really was overwhelming. In this case, Cochrane used the language of civil rights to free a man who had brutally murdered two people and paint this pampered, wealthy, narcissistic man-child as a victim of a system that lavished him with privilege denied to most other men of his race and background. The result, in my opinion, was to set back the cause of civil rights, not advance it, assuming that one of the goals of the civil rights movement is to encourage buy-in from all people and not just African Americans.
Toobin does not go so in depth; I would have liked to see a deeper exploration of these questions, though that probably would have stretched a book that already feels a tad too long beyond the breaking point. A more significant failure is that Toobin fails to broach the questions of class and celebrity. Simpson was acquitted because he was black, which is an odd twist to the usual machinations of the justice system, but he could not have afforded attorneys like Bob Shapiro, F. Lee Bailey, Cochrane and the rest of the "Dream Team" were he not incredibly wealthy; likewise, his acquittal owed a great deal to his celebrity – his smiling visage was well known from football, movies, Hertz ads and other TV appearances. Simpson's race was only an advantage because the fame and money he had accrued allowed him to hire the attorneys who could manipulate the trial the way they did. Beyond discussing Simpson's celebrity and how it allowed him to abuse Nicole Brown for years essentially with impunity, Toobin misses the role these other factors played in the trial – and still play in American society. (We should also mention that the attitudes about domestic violence and the defense's sexist portrayals of Brown also contributed to the acquittal; one can't help but wonder if Simpson would have had a harder time if he had simply murdered Goldman.)
In the end, thanks to Toobin's book, I understand much more clearly how I could have been so shocked at Simpson's acquittal – and I can understand, too, what the jurors who acquitted him were thinking. I still think they made a mistake, and Toobin clearly does too, but he should be commended for taking the time and effort to shed light on a complex situation, rather than merely heat. On the subjects of race, gender, class and celebrity, 2016 has taught us we need much more light than we thought we did.
October 18, 2014
Toobin covered the OJ trial for the New Yorker, so he knows his -ish: he was there, watching the trial every day, and The Run of His Life is his comprehensive account of it. I appreciate that Toobin doesn't hide behind a facade of objectivity: he lays out his thesis in the introduction. Toobin firmly believes that OJ was guilty, yet was acquitted because the (1) defense team succeeded in making the trial a referendum on the racism of the LAPD (2) the prosecution made some serious errors (3) the trial judge let chaos reign, resulting in a trial that lasted an entire year (producing 50,000 pages of transcript!). I would modify (1) slightly, in that the defense lawyers also highlighted how the investigators exhibited shocking incompetence and non-compliance with the Constitution. Toobin is fair: I didn't always agree with his characterizations, but he is fairly clear in separating his direct observations with his opinions, which means as a reader you don't always have to have your guard up. His book does 3 things very well: it documents what happened in the courtroom, what happened outside the courtroom (the drama between OJ's team of big-ego defense lawyers is fascinating), and provides some basic legal analysis of various arguments and rulings (Toobin's a Harvard Law grad who practiced for a few years before journalism-ing).
The trial itself provides great fodder for a book, with seemingly everyone a larger-than-life character. Clark and Darden, the outmatched prosecutors battling a super-team of defense attorneys; Cochran, the star trial lawyer; Scheck, the DNA-expert lawyer, founder of The Innocence Project; Dershowitz, the motion-filing-and-arguing law professor; Shapiro, the frustrated egotist, losing his control over the case to Cochran; F. Lee Bailey, the veteran cross-examiner; and Judge Ito, the overwhelmed referee. And that's leaving aside the witnesses, such as Mark Fuhrman, who were mercilessly picked apart by the attorneys. Toobin gets many of the key players to talk to him (many of them are either media-savvy or media-obsessed, depending on one's perspective), providing an inside scoop into many of their thoughts about each other. This, along with Toobin's background research into each of their pasts, help adds context to everyone's actions at trial.
As for the bigger questions--Did OJ do it? Should he have been convicted?--Toobin answers Absolutely Yes and Yes. He's convincing on the first one, but not on the second. In fact, after finishing the book, I'm left thinking that should he have been convicted, an appellate court might very well had to reverse said conviction. Although controversial, the Supreme Court has interpreted the 4th Amendment to require exclusion of illegally obtained evidence, and some of the prosecution's best evidence was (arguably) illegally obtained: when police found out OJ's ex-wife had been murdered, they went to his house to tell him in person, and (according to them) when he didn't answer, and they saw what looked like blood on a car parked outside his house, they became worried that perhaps the "killer" was after him, too, so they jumped the fence and (looking for him, ostensibly) searched around his property, finding a bloody glove, among other things (34-38). Among this group (in fact, the one who saw the stain in the car, and the one who hopped the fence) was detective Fuhrman, who knew that OJ had a history of domestic violence with his ex (53-56). Basically, if the officers didn't reasonably believe that there were actually worrisome "exigent circumstances" (e.g. OJ getting attacked by whoever attacked his ex-wife)--and this normally requires much more than a hunch, e.g., hearing a scream--then they were required to go get a search warrant from a judge before snooping around OJ's property. And for those who think the defense played the "race card" out of nowhere, remember that Fuhrman had said many shockingly hateful and racist things, and eventually had to plead the 5th Amendment after the defense team showed that he had lied on the witness stand, and even uncovered evidence (and presented it to the jury) about his prior boasts about beating up and planting evidence on black suspects (many pages). (Toobin's rejoinder is that there is ample evidence of OJ receiving sickeningly preferential treatment due to his celebrity (see especially the history of non-arrests for repeated complaints of domestic violence by his ex-wife when they were still together), so he's an unworthy beneficiary of the jury's understandable and justified outrage about racism in the LAPD.)
This book chronicles a famous and divisive trial, and I think includes enough facts supportive of either side (one more inclined to believe he should have been convicted vs. one who believes the LAPD reaped what it sowed) to escape the adjective "biased." While Toobin has a viewpoint, he doesn't let it affect every sentence of the book. And I appreciate his passion, because I think it makes the writing more energetic; he's opinionated and still scrupulous, which makes it a best-of-both-worlds account of the trial.
The trial itself provides great fodder for a book, with seemingly everyone a larger-than-life character. Clark and Darden, the outmatched prosecutors battling a super-team of defense attorneys; Cochran, the star trial lawyer; Scheck, the DNA-expert lawyer, founder of The Innocence Project; Dershowitz, the motion-filing-and-arguing law professor; Shapiro, the frustrated egotist, losing his control over the case to Cochran; F. Lee Bailey, the veteran cross-examiner; and Judge Ito, the overwhelmed referee. And that's leaving aside the witnesses, such as Mark Fuhrman, who were mercilessly picked apart by the attorneys. Toobin gets many of the key players to talk to him (many of them are either media-savvy or media-obsessed, depending on one's perspective), providing an inside scoop into many of their thoughts about each other. This, along with Toobin's background research into each of their pasts, help adds context to everyone's actions at trial.
As for the bigger questions--Did OJ do it? Should he have been convicted?--Toobin answers Absolutely Yes and Yes. He's convincing on the first one, but not on the second. In fact, after finishing the book, I'm left thinking that should he have been convicted, an appellate court might very well had to reverse said conviction. Although controversial, the Supreme Court has interpreted the 4th Amendment to require exclusion of illegally obtained evidence, and some of the prosecution's best evidence was (arguably) illegally obtained: when police found out OJ's ex-wife had been murdered, they went to his house to tell him in person, and (according to them) when he didn't answer, and they saw what looked like blood on a car parked outside his house, they became worried that perhaps the "killer" was after him, too, so they jumped the fence and (looking for him, ostensibly) searched around his property, finding a bloody glove, among other things (34-38). Among this group (in fact, the one who saw the stain in the car, and the one who hopped the fence) was detective Fuhrman, who knew that OJ had a history of domestic violence with his ex (53-56). Basically, if the officers didn't reasonably believe that there were actually worrisome "exigent circumstances" (e.g. OJ getting attacked by whoever attacked his ex-wife)--and this normally requires much more than a hunch, e.g., hearing a scream--then they were required to go get a search warrant from a judge before snooping around OJ's property. And for those who think the defense played the "race card" out of nowhere, remember that Fuhrman had said many shockingly hateful and racist things, and eventually had to plead the 5th Amendment after the defense team showed that he had lied on the witness stand, and even uncovered evidence (and presented it to the jury) about his prior boasts about beating up and planting evidence on black suspects (many pages). (Toobin's rejoinder is that there is ample evidence of OJ receiving sickeningly preferential treatment due to his celebrity (see especially the history of non-arrests for repeated complaints of domestic violence by his ex-wife when they were still together), so he's an unworthy beneficiary of the jury's understandable and justified outrage about racism in the LAPD.)
This book chronicles a famous and divisive trial, and I think includes enough facts supportive of either side (one more inclined to believe he should have been convicted vs. one who believes the LAPD reaped what it sowed) to escape the adjective "biased." While Toobin has a viewpoint, he doesn't let it affect every sentence of the book. And I appreciate his passion, because I think it makes the writing more energetic; he's opinionated and still scrupulous, which makes it a best-of-both-worlds account of the trial.
August 27, 2019
4.5 stars! WHAT A TRIP! HOLY EFFING CRAP!
Review to come!!!
Review to come!!!
October 14, 2016
GUILTY! GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY
ok, now that I've gotten that off my chest , I'll share my thoughts.
Darden is a buffoon
Ito is a media hungry fool
Cochran could argue race discrimination in a trial of any crime ANY or really he doesn't need a crime, he just needs a soapbox (or should I say needed)
I had such respect for Scheck because of his Innocence Project, but he just twisted tye DNA evidence here. He knew that juries in the 1990s would never comprehend the science. Makes me wonder what would happen now that so many watch CSI...
For example, the infamous glove of Rockingham would have required Fuhrman to do all of the following to have planted DNA evidence: take the glove with all of the residue from the murder scene (hair, blood and fibers from Nicole and Ron) to OJ's house, find some of OJ's blood somehow and wipe it both on the glove as well as on the inside of OJ 's LOCKED Bronco, all of this already knowing OJ had no alibi. The flashbacks to the wearing of the glove during the trial were immediate. It was as horrific to read as it was to watch.
I was impressed by the description of Cochran's opening statement, though-"a Potemkin's village of assertions", most of which never were brought to fruition during the defense. They only served to cause doubts on jurors' minds from the get-go.
OJ, we now know, perfectly fits the author's portrait as "an uneducated, semiliterate, ex-athlete who barely understands the legal proceedings against him".
The jurors should be ashamed of themselves. It saddens me that a murderer can go free simply because the race card is played. I almost think the 90's were the beginning of this new wave of race hatred being expressed.
ok, now that I've gotten that off my chest , I'll share my thoughts.
Darden is a buffoon
Ito is a media hungry fool
Cochran could argue race discrimination in a trial of any crime ANY or really he doesn't need a crime, he just needs a soapbox (or should I say needed)
I had such respect for Scheck because of his Innocence Project, but he just twisted tye DNA evidence here. He knew that juries in the 1990s would never comprehend the science. Makes me wonder what would happen now that so many watch CSI...
For example, the infamous glove of Rockingham would have required Fuhrman to do all of the following to have planted DNA evidence: take the glove with all of the residue from the murder scene (hair, blood and fibers from Nicole and Ron) to OJ's house, find some of OJ's blood somehow and wipe it both on the glove as well as on the inside of OJ 's LOCKED Bronco, all of this already knowing OJ had no alibi. The flashbacks to the wearing of the glove during the trial were immediate. It was as horrific to read as it was to watch.
I was impressed by the description of Cochran's opening statement, though-"a Potemkin's village of assertions", most of which never were brought to fruition during the defense. They only served to cause doubts on jurors' minds from the get-go.
OJ, we now know, perfectly fits the author's portrait as "an uneducated, semiliterate, ex-athlete who barely understands the legal proceedings against him".
The jurors should be ashamed of themselves. It saddens me that a murderer can go free simply because the race card is played. I almost think the 90's were the beginning of this new wave of race hatred being expressed.
March 5, 2016
So like many I remember watching (parts of) OJ Simpsons murder trial, the case where it seems the majority of people believe he was guilty and got away with it. I was interested therefore to read this and see the entire picture so to speak, hopefully told without too much legal speak and I went in with my mind open to see what was what.
The book is excellent – it looks at every layer of the trial, the people within, the ups and the downs, where it all went wrong for the prosecution and gives a huge amount of insight into the US legal system and was interesting and fascinating throughout.
There were a lot of twists and turns within that most famous of cases – Jeffrey Toobin looks at them all, giving perspective and reality to the outward drama, his own professional insight into the nuances, the things that happened behind the scenes, the picture painted by the defence – there are a lot of facts in here that I had zero knowledge of before reading this book. I like the way Mr Toobin writes, he assumes intelligence in his reader but also allows for the fact that most of them will not be legal eagles, therefore this is a very accessible resource for anyone interested in the case.
Truth is stranger than fiction. Having read this I can see why the jury went with an acquittal, yet am still with the majority of people in my own beliefs. To say this was an interesting real life drama would be to put it very mildly. However Mr Toobin never loses sight of the fact that right back at the beginning of it all, two innocent people lost their lives and despite all the bells and whistles that came afterwards, to date nobody had been brought to justice for that terrible act. This, as much as anything, should not be forgotten.
Highly Recommended for anyone interested in this case or indeed in real life cases generally. Well written and informative.
The book is excellent – it looks at every layer of the trial, the people within, the ups and the downs, where it all went wrong for the prosecution and gives a huge amount of insight into the US legal system and was interesting and fascinating throughout.
There were a lot of twists and turns within that most famous of cases – Jeffrey Toobin looks at them all, giving perspective and reality to the outward drama, his own professional insight into the nuances, the things that happened behind the scenes, the picture painted by the defence – there are a lot of facts in here that I had zero knowledge of before reading this book. I like the way Mr Toobin writes, he assumes intelligence in his reader but also allows for the fact that most of them will not be legal eagles, therefore this is a very accessible resource for anyone interested in the case.
Truth is stranger than fiction. Having read this I can see why the jury went with an acquittal, yet am still with the majority of people in my own beliefs. To say this was an interesting real life drama would be to put it very mildly. However Mr Toobin never loses sight of the fact that right back at the beginning of it all, two innocent people lost their lives and despite all the bells and whistles that came afterwards, to date nobody had been brought to justice for that terrible act. This, as much as anything, should not be forgotten.
Highly Recommended for anyone interested in this case or indeed in real life cases generally. Well written and informative.
May 20, 2016
actually I'm happy to read this book and to know more about o.j. simpson
June 26, 2020
I was too young to know anything that was going on when OJ Simpson was arrested and tried for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her very unlucky friend Ron Goldman. I remember it being all adults talked about (most of it going way over my head). I remember the night of the car chase, because it interrupted T.G.I.F. on ABC, and I was trash for T.G.I.F. as a nine year old, even though it was June and all my shows must have been in re-runs. Watching that Bronco drive endlessly down the highway is my earliest memory of TV-related fury. This is so boring, bring back Urkel! Honestly one of my most vivid childhood memories. And I remember sitting in music class almost a year later when the verdict was read. They played it over my (private, Catholic, very white) school's intercom! Why? I don't know! That's just the kind of thing that happened in 1995.
All that to say, I certainly missed the nuances of this case at the time, but I'm not really alone there, as most of America seems to have as well, so caught up in the pageantry and the tabloids and the endless news cycle over the most trivial new bit of evidence, not to mention the incompetence and arrogance of the prosecution, who botched one of the most obviously guilty murder trials ever to have occurred, and the scummery of the defense, who used (real) racial issues and the (justified) hatred and frustration Black people had (have) with the LAPD to mask the brutality and narcissism of their obviously guilty client. (When I got to the part where it described how Nicole was murdered, his boot on her back, holding her head up by her chin so he could slit her throat, I swear half the contents of my stomach threatened to crawl up my esophagus.) The victims of these murders were almost completely lost in the everything else of the "trial of the century."
It was a very compelling book.
Toobin reported the case at the time, was in fact the one to break the story in the New Yorker that Robert Shapiro and the defense team were planning on using a race-based defense, and afterwards interviewed hundreds of people over the course of the two years he spent writing this book. He is up front in his beliefs that OJ is guilty, so the book isn't about proving that guilt. That's a given here. Instead, this book is about the investigation and the trial, and how so many people's agendas collided with the mass media and racial tensions in LA and corruption in the LAPD, and a handsome, once beloved professional football player who famously once said, "I'm not black, I'm O.J." He focuses particularly on the dual forces of the prosecution and the defense, how the prosecution could have lost so badly, and how the defense turned around their case and managed a victory when all they hoped for at the beginning was a hung jury at best.
If you're a true crime fan, this book is a feast, but it's also frustrating. I found myself shouting back in time at many people in this book out of sheer frustration. I also found it fascinating to see a time I lived through in such a different perspective. Things I recognized (the glove, for instance) suddenly meant something entirely different. The world is a very different place when you're a sheltered white nine-year old. And I am sorry to say that I agree with my parents about Johnnie Cochran, as much as it pains me to admit that. It honestly made me so angry to read about how he used the real, legitimate concerns of the Black community to help a murderer go free, and to make money and bolster his own reputation, knowing full well OJ was guilty as shit and the police did not frame him for murder. They played "the race card, from the bottom of the deck," as Shapiro later told the press (unethically, as it should have been protected by lawyer/client privilege). Much of this book felt extra relevant to what's currently going on America, especially the chapter on police brutality. I felt like I was reading an echo.
All in all, highly recommend this one, and now I'm finally off to watch the FX show from a couple of years ago.
All that to say, I certainly missed the nuances of this case at the time, but I'm not really alone there, as most of America seems to have as well, so caught up in the pageantry and the tabloids and the endless news cycle over the most trivial new bit of evidence, not to mention the incompetence and arrogance of the prosecution, who botched one of the most obviously guilty murder trials ever to have occurred, and the scummery of the defense, who used (real) racial issues and the (justified) hatred and frustration Black people had (have) with the LAPD to mask the brutality and narcissism of their obviously guilty client. (When I got to the part where it described how Nicole was murdered, his boot on her back, holding her head up by her chin so he could slit her throat, I swear half the contents of my stomach threatened to crawl up my esophagus.) The victims of these murders were almost completely lost in the everything else of the "trial of the century."
It was a very compelling book.
Toobin reported the case at the time, was in fact the one to break the story in the New Yorker that Robert Shapiro and the defense team were planning on using a race-based defense, and afterwards interviewed hundreds of people over the course of the two years he spent writing this book. He is up front in his beliefs that OJ is guilty, so the book isn't about proving that guilt. That's a given here. Instead, this book is about the investigation and the trial, and how so many people's agendas collided with the mass media and racial tensions in LA and corruption in the LAPD, and a handsome, once beloved professional football player who famously once said, "I'm not black, I'm O.J." He focuses particularly on the dual forces of the prosecution and the defense, how the prosecution could have lost so badly, and how the defense turned around their case and managed a victory when all they hoped for at the beginning was a hung jury at best.
If you're a true crime fan, this book is a feast, but it's also frustrating. I found myself shouting back in time at many people in this book out of sheer frustration. I also found it fascinating to see a time I lived through in such a different perspective. Things I recognized (the glove, for instance) suddenly meant something entirely different. The world is a very different place when you're a sheltered white nine-year old. And I am sorry to say that I agree with my parents about Johnnie Cochran, as much as it pains me to admit that. It honestly made me so angry to read about how he used the real, legitimate concerns of the Black community to help a murderer go free, and to make money and bolster his own reputation, knowing full well OJ was guilty as shit and the police did not frame him for murder. They played "the race card, from the bottom of the deck," as Shapiro later told the press (unethically, as it should have been protected by lawyer/client privilege). Much of this book felt extra relevant to what's currently going on America, especially the chapter on police brutality. I felt like I was reading an echo.
All in all, highly recommend this one, and now I'm finally off to watch the FX show from a couple of years ago.
June 26, 2022
riveting and a must read for anyone who, as myself, is fascinated with this case
August 15, 2008
Having enjoyed two of Toobin's other books, I had long wanted to read this one. What prompted me finally to pick it up was John McCain's accusation that Barack Obama had "played the race card" by saying that Republicans would say that Obama didn't look like all of the other presidents on the dollar bills. McCain's indignation was entirely hypocritical, since he'd in fact run an ad in June that mocked Obama by putting his face on a $100 bill. And as many commentators noted, McCain's accusation itself was a kind of reverse-English way of playing the race card. Adam Serwer, in an article in the American Prospect quoted on Hendrik Hertzberg's blog, had this astute analysis:
"The McCain campaign’s apparently race-neutral approach, and its subsequent accusation that the Obama campaign is playing the race card, is a well-thought-out strategy—it is pure Nixon. In his recent chronicle of conservative political history in The New Yorker, George Packer describes Pat Buchanan’s plan for exploiting political divisions, particularly ones of a racial nature. Buchanan’s assessment was that they could 'cut the Democratic Party and country in half; my view is that we would have far the larger half.'
"In a dispute about race, the McCain campaign knows it will end up with the larger half. For the most part, most white people’s experience with race isn’t one of racial discrimination. They can only relate to racial discrimination in the abstract. What white people can relate to is the fear of being unjustly accused of racism. This is the larger half. This is why allegations of racism often provoke more outrage than actual racism, because most of the country can relate to one (the accusation of racism) easier than the other (actual racism). For this reason, in a political conflict over race, the McCain campaign has the advantage, because saying the race card has been played is actually the ultimate race card."
I don't recall hearing the term "race card" before the O. J. Simpson trial, so I thought I'd read Toobin's book to get a deeper sense of the origins of the term. Toobin reported on the trial for two years for The New Yorker, interviewed over 200 people, and read virtually everything related to the trial. His book is fascinating in its meticulous detail, riveting in its narration. Toobin's thesis, which seems to have become the commonly accepted understanding of the trial, is that O. J. Simpson was clearly guilty, but that the defense team played the "race card" in order to make the trial a referendum on racism in the LAPD, which was real and significant. The prosecution's arrogance and missteps also caused them to blow their chance to win Simpson's conviction.
Twelve years later, it seems to me that the Simpson trial remains a significant setback in American race relations. As Serwer notes, most white Americans can relate to the idea of racism most easily through the fear of being unjustly accused of racism. The O. J. Simpson trial, I think, has become the paradigmatic example of opportunistic charges of racism. (The reality of the situation, as Toobin convincingly argues, is that there was real racism in the LAPD, most shockingly in the example of Mark Fuhrman, but that racism played little role in the O. J. investigation. If anything, O. J. was granted special favoritism because he was a celebrity who'd long been buddy-buddy with LA cops.)
But "the race card," as a term, it seems to me, has come mainly to imply a spurious charge of racism. The Simpson trial was a travesty of a civil rights trial, one that demeaned the ongoing struggle for racial equality. It's made all charges of racism subject to being undermined. And that's exactly what McCain did by accusing Obama of playing "the race card."
Moreover, McCain accused Obama of playing the race card "from the bottom of the deck," which I was startled to realize is another direct reference to the Simpson story. Robert Shapiro, who basically concocted the race card defense early on, gradually became alienated from the rest of the defense as Johnnie Cochran usurped his role at the center of the defense team. Additionally, his white friends gradually came to see the race-baiting defense as abhorrent. Shapiro began to make negative public comments about the defense during the trial, and afterwards he did an interview with Barbara Walters in which he told her, "Not only did we play the race card, we dealt it from the bottom of the deck." McCain's accusation, then, seems clearly designed subtly to resurrect white Americans' memory of the O. J. trial and their outrage at Simpson's acquittal, and to turn that resentment on Obama.
It's an entirely dispiriting story, yet Toobin's masterful writing makes for a deeply satisfying read. His level of detail is stunning, and he's organized the story brilliantly. Along the way, he provides fascinating little set pieces about LA and the justice system and biographical back-stories for all of the major players. The book is like a great New Yorker article that goes on for 450 pages.
"The McCain campaign’s apparently race-neutral approach, and its subsequent accusation that the Obama campaign is playing the race card, is a well-thought-out strategy—it is pure Nixon. In his recent chronicle of conservative political history in The New Yorker, George Packer describes Pat Buchanan’s plan for exploiting political divisions, particularly ones of a racial nature. Buchanan’s assessment was that they could 'cut the Democratic Party and country in half; my view is that we would have far the larger half.'
"In a dispute about race, the McCain campaign knows it will end up with the larger half. For the most part, most white people’s experience with race isn’t one of racial discrimination. They can only relate to racial discrimination in the abstract. What white people can relate to is the fear of being unjustly accused of racism. This is the larger half. This is why allegations of racism often provoke more outrage than actual racism, because most of the country can relate to one (the accusation of racism) easier than the other (actual racism). For this reason, in a political conflict over race, the McCain campaign has the advantage, because saying the race card has been played is actually the ultimate race card."
I don't recall hearing the term "race card" before the O. J. Simpson trial, so I thought I'd read Toobin's book to get a deeper sense of the origins of the term. Toobin reported on the trial for two years for The New Yorker, interviewed over 200 people, and read virtually everything related to the trial. His book is fascinating in its meticulous detail, riveting in its narration. Toobin's thesis, which seems to have become the commonly accepted understanding of the trial, is that O. J. Simpson was clearly guilty, but that the defense team played the "race card" in order to make the trial a referendum on racism in the LAPD, which was real and significant. The prosecution's arrogance and missteps also caused them to blow their chance to win Simpson's conviction.
Twelve years later, it seems to me that the Simpson trial remains a significant setback in American race relations. As Serwer notes, most white Americans can relate to the idea of racism most easily through the fear of being unjustly accused of racism. The O. J. Simpson trial, I think, has become the paradigmatic example of opportunistic charges of racism. (The reality of the situation, as Toobin convincingly argues, is that there was real racism in the LAPD, most shockingly in the example of Mark Fuhrman, but that racism played little role in the O. J. investigation. If anything, O. J. was granted special favoritism because he was a celebrity who'd long been buddy-buddy with LA cops.)
But "the race card," as a term, it seems to me, has come mainly to imply a spurious charge of racism. The Simpson trial was a travesty of a civil rights trial, one that demeaned the ongoing struggle for racial equality. It's made all charges of racism subject to being undermined. And that's exactly what McCain did by accusing Obama of playing "the race card."
Moreover, McCain accused Obama of playing the race card "from the bottom of the deck," which I was startled to realize is another direct reference to the Simpson story. Robert Shapiro, who basically concocted the race card defense early on, gradually became alienated from the rest of the defense as Johnnie Cochran usurped his role at the center of the defense team. Additionally, his white friends gradually came to see the race-baiting defense as abhorrent. Shapiro began to make negative public comments about the defense during the trial, and afterwards he did an interview with Barbara Walters in which he told her, "Not only did we play the race card, we dealt it from the bottom of the deck." McCain's accusation, then, seems clearly designed subtly to resurrect white Americans' memory of the O. J. trial and their outrage at Simpson's acquittal, and to turn that resentment on Obama.
It's an entirely dispiriting story, yet Toobin's masterful writing makes for a deeply satisfying read. His level of detail is stunning, and he's organized the story brilliantly. Along the way, he provides fascinating little set pieces about LA and the justice system and biographical back-stories for all of the major players. The book is like a great New Yorker article that goes on for 450 pages.
May 15, 2016
Decades ago, when he was reporting on the Simpson trial for The New Yorker, Toobin came across in his “as it happens” articles like an elitist, racist jerk. In this book, his snotty, arrogant, dismissive, airily white-supremacist worldview gets a much fuller airing. I don’t argue that Toobin is wrong about Simpson’s guilt. Rather, the obnoxiousness of his authorial voice and his clear presumption that the way he—a wealthy, connected, white man—saw the facts was the only way they could have been seen, doom the endeavor. His meager attempts to give lip service to “understanding” why black people might have been predisposed to distrust anything and everything the LA police department said or did in those years ring deeply hollow and, in fact, are all but drowned out by the constant reinforcement of his belief that anyone who did not share his position on Simpson was “blinded by race.” He, of course, was clear-eyed throughout. The result is an odd and disturbing take on the claim that white people like Toobin are above "seeing color.” And yet arguing that others can’t see beyond their race—when your own race is so critical to your perspective—is far from convincing. Toobin has sharp and critical words for just about all the principals, which only adds to the sense that Jeffrey Toobin and only Jeffrey Toobin was smart enough to see things the way they really were. If Toobin had been the prosecuting attorney, I’d have voted to acquit Simpson, too—perhaps for no other reason than to protest the fact that Toobin is an obtuse and grating tool.
March 7, 2024
I enjoyed Toobin's The Nine, RE the Supreme Court,
much better. Toobin's background : trained attorney
+ author. He interviewed > than 200 people for this book.
This book explored many egos, that of : the author, the
judge, prosecutors, defense, jury, police, expert witnesses
and media, all of whom took part in the 1994 OJ Simpson
double murder trial. Prosecutors used the domestic violence
to murder strategy, & the defense race: they alleged the
LA cops and crime science guys didn't process the evidence
carefully/ correctly in a timely manner. And may have
planted a glove to frame OJ. Time of death for Nicole Brown
Simpson & Ronald Goldman was never established, as the
coroner examined them hrs after their bodies were 1st
discovered.
Judge Ito neglected to put a "gag order" on the prosecutors,
defense, witnesses, the end result: some discussed the case
outside of work or with the media. Even Ito gave the media
an interview! He allowed a camera in his courtroom. He
neglected to set time limits IE 1 expert witness was grilled
2 weeks on the witness stand!! Both the prosecutor and
defense engaged in "discovery failure"& withheld docu-
ments the other side was entitled to receive. The Judge
permitted OJ to mutter, start a running dialogue or respond
to witness testimony. From OJ's seat at the defense table.
What judge would allow this? OJ had on his jail visitor list
52 people. Ironically many on OJ's defense team + others
who worked for team thought OJ guilty!
Marcia Clark never should have used Det. Fuhrman on
the witness stand. He served on the OJ case less
than a day! Shouldn't the prosecutors have had
background info on each witness?
Toobin was best at discussing the domestic violence
aspect of this case & the preferential treatment the LA
cops gave to celebrities. Nicole Brown Simpson re-
ported OJ to the police 56 times for stalking, slapping
or beating her & the police never arrested him !!!
(Ironically attorneys Cockran & Kardashian were each
accused of domestic violence by their wives. Both denied
this) For years OJ was friends w/ LA cops, & allowed
them to use his tennis court & swimming pool, & hosted
some cook outs for them.
Toobin included irrelevant info IE about Marcia Clark her
parents + her 2 husbands, & Barry Scheck and his birth
family. I learned the hair & fiber samples proved OJ
murdered these 2 people. But by then the jury was way
too exhausted to listen.
much better. Toobin's background : trained attorney
+ author. He interviewed > than 200 people for this book.
This book explored many egos, that of : the author, the
judge, prosecutors, defense, jury, police, expert witnesses
and media, all of whom took part in the 1994 OJ Simpson
double murder trial. Prosecutors used the domestic violence
to murder strategy, & the defense race: they alleged the
LA cops and crime science guys didn't process the evidence
carefully/ correctly in a timely manner. And may have
planted a glove to frame OJ. Time of death for Nicole Brown
Simpson & Ronald Goldman was never established, as the
coroner examined them hrs after their bodies were 1st
discovered.
Judge Ito neglected to put a "gag order" on the prosecutors,
defense, witnesses, the end result: some discussed the case
outside of work or with the media. Even Ito gave the media
an interview! He allowed a camera in his courtroom. He
neglected to set time limits IE 1 expert witness was grilled
2 weeks on the witness stand!! Both the prosecutor and
defense engaged in "discovery failure"& withheld docu-
ments the other side was entitled to receive. The Judge
permitted OJ to mutter, start a running dialogue or respond
to witness testimony. From OJ's seat at the defense table.
What judge would allow this? OJ had on his jail visitor list
52 people. Ironically many on OJ's defense team + others
who worked for team thought OJ guilty!
Marcia Clark never should have used Det. Fuhrman on
the witness stand. He served on the OJ case less
than a day! Shouldn't the prosecutors have had
background info on each witness?
Toobin was best at discussing the domestic violence
aspect of this case & the preferential treatment the LA
cops gave to celebrities. Nicole Brown Simpson re-
ported OJ to the police 56 times for stalking, slapping
or beating her & the police never arrested him !!!
(Ironically attorneys Cockran & Kardashian were each
accused of domestic violence by their wives. Both denied
this) For years OJ was friends w/ LA cops, & allowed
them to use his tennis court & swimming pool, & hosted
some cook outs for them.
Toobin included irrelevant info IE about Marcia Clark her
parents + her 2 husbands, & Barry Scheck and his birth
family. I learned the hair & fiber samples proved OJ
murdered these 2 people. But by then the jury was way
too exhausted to listen.
February 12, 2016
Read Harder Challenge 2016: Read a biography (not memoir or autobiography)
(Spoiler alert. He totally did it.)
With thirty pages left in this insider's account of the Brown/Goldman murders and subsequent trials, I watched the criminal trial's verdict announcement on YouTube. When I saw OJ Simpson, I experienced that involuntary rush of tears and sweat and adrenaline that communicates fear. Yes, FEAR. As I recoiled from Simpson's entitled smirk, Kim Goldman's hollow wail, and Marcia Clarke's emaciated frame, I remembered watching this monster, my childhood Boogyman, get away with murder in my seventh-grade classroom during recess. Two decades later, Simpson still scares the shit out of me.
It was challenging to read about this case in the context of our current racial climate. While reading the transcripts of the Mark Fuhrman tapes, for example, I thought about Beyonce's "Formation" video, which features a young black boy dancing in front of riot police and a spray-painted plea to "stop killing us." Though he really doesn't deserve the credit, I despise Simpson for using race, a construct so unbelievably raw and real, to avoid the consequences for taking two lives.
And enter Steven Avery, a man who was totally framed by the police. Well, maybe? The dream team's explanation of the forensic evidence was absurd... yet isn't that exactly what the REAL dream team wants us to believe happened to Avery, hmm? Tricky, tricky.
If you ever time travel to the mid-nineties, consider catching Johnnie Cohran's closing argument. At one point, he puts on a knit cap and exclaims, "I'm still Johnnie Cochran in a knit cap!" His point--that witnesses would have recognized Simpson the night of the murders--leads the jurors to forget Simpson's hair was found INSIDE the knit cap found at the murder scene. WTF?!
And the best part? Toobin's thorough, thoughtful, and well-written account of the murders and their aftermath provided WTF?! moment after WTF?! moment. Reading this was a freaking delight, and I'm eager to explore his other work.
(Spoiler alert. He totally did it.)
With thirty pages left in this insider's account of the Brown/Goldman murders and subsequent trials, I watched the criminal trial's verdict announcement on YouTube. When I saw OJ Simpson, I experienced that involuntary rush of tears and sweat and adrenaline that communicates fear. Yes, FEAR. As I recoiled from Simpson's entitled smirk, Kim Goldman's hollow wail, and Marcia Clarke's emaciated frame, I remembered watching this monster, my childhood Boogyman, get away with murder in my seventh-grade classroom during recess. Two decades later, Simpson still scares the shit out of me.
It was challenging to read about this case in the context of our current racial climate. While reading the transcripts of the Mark Fuhrman tapes, for example, I thought about Beyonce's "Formation" video, which features a young black boy dancing in front of riot police and a spray-painted plea to "stop killing us." Though he really doesn't deserve the credit, I despise Simpson for using race, a construct so unbelievably raw and real, to avoid the consequences for taking two lives.
And enter Steven Avery, a man who was totally framed by the police. Well, maybe? The dream team's explanation of the forensic evidence was absurd... yet isn't that exactly what the REAL dream team wants us to believe happened to Avery, hmm? Tricky, tricky.
If you ever time travel to the mid-nineties, consider catching Johnnie Cohran's closing argument. At one point, he puts on a knit cap and exclaims, "I'm still Johnnie Cochran in a knit cap!" His point--that witnesses would have recognized Simpson the night of the murders--leads the jurors to forget Simpson's hair was found INSIDE the knit cap found at the murder scene. WTF?!
And the best part? Toobin's thorough, thoughtful, and well-written account of the murders and their aftermath provided WTF?! moment after WTF?! moment. Reading this was a freaking delight, and I'm eager to explore his other work.
March 15, 2017
Credo di avere ricordi "autentici" (cioè contemporanei agli eventi) del famoso caso O.J. Simpson (il duplice omicidio dell'ex moglie di Simpson, Nicole Brown, e di un amico di lei, Ron Goldman, il 12/6/1994 a Los Angeles, per cui O.J. Simpson, ex campione di football americano e attore, fu accusato, processato e infine assolto con molte polemiche): forse qualche immagine al telegiornale del celeberrimo inseguimento della polizia all'auto bianca di Simpson in fuga per ore nei dintorni di Los Angeles. Tuttavia, l'eco che ebbe qui in Italia il processo è nulla di fronte al gigantesco impatto sulla società americana di quello che sarebbe stato definito addirittura "il processo del secolo", uno psicodramma nazionale, visto che finì per toccare temi sensibilissimi per gli americani.
Tutti temi - la violenza sulle donne, la brutalità delle forze dell'ordine verso i cittadini afro-americani (una realtà vergognosa che però, nel caso di O.J., fu, totalmente a sproposito, abilmente sfruttata a favore dell'imputato dai suoi difensori), l'influenza dei media sulla percezione della "verità" dei fatti - che, già roventi negli USA nel 1994-1995, non hanno certo perso di attualità oggi, anzi. Hanno dimostrato dunque grandissimo acume i produttori televisivi che nel 2016 hanno deciso di trarre una serie TV dalle vicende del processo a O.J. Il risultato, American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson, è una serie strepitosa e giustamente pluripremiata: gli attori fanno a gara a superarsi in bravura, il ritmo è incalzante e la tensione altissima persino in una storia di cui... si sa già tutto (specialmente la fine!).
Ancora rapita dalla bellezza della serie, saputo che gli sceneggiatori avevano tratto gran parte del materiale da questo saggio, opera di un giornalista che seguì la vicenda fin dal principio per il "New Yorker" e uscito nel 1996, ho voluto leggerlo. Sembra in effetti di ripercorrere le puntate di American Crime Story, ovviamente con più approfondimenti e con più rigore (qualche dettaglio in TV è stato pur aggiustato per esigenze di spettacolo), e anzi averla vista prima mi ha aiutato a visualizzare meglio le scene, a comprendere meglio i passaggi-chiave della vicenda giudiziaria, nonché ad avere più chiari termini e procedure legali. Anche YouTube, dove si trovano numerosi spezzoni di telegiornali dell'epoca e di sedute del processo, mi ha aiutato a rivivere "in tempo reale" quello che leggevo sulla pagina.
Un bellissimo libro, e una bellissima serie che ora, quasi quasi, mi sta venendo voglia di rivedere dall'inizio.
Tutti temi - la violenza sulle donne, la brutalità delle forze dell'ordine verso i cittadini afro-americani (una realtà vergognosa che però, nel caso di O.J., fu, totalmente a sproposito, abilmente sfruttata a favore dell'imputato dai suoi difensori), l'influenza dei media sulla percezione della "verità" dei fatti - che, già roventi negli USA nel 1994-1995, non hanno certo perso di attualità oggi, anzi. Hanno dimostrato dunque grandissimo acume i produttori televisivi che nel 2016 hanno deciso di trarre una serie TV dalle vicende del processo a O.J. Il risultato, American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson, è una serie strepitosa e giustamente pluripremiata: gli attori fanno a gara a superarsi in bravura, il ritmo è incalzante e la tensione altissima persino in una storia di cui... si sa già tutto (specialmente la fine!).
Ancora rapita dalla bellezza della serie, saputo che gli sceneggiatori avevano tratto gran parte del materiale da questo saggio, opera di un giornalista che seguì la vicenda fin dal principio per il "New Yorker" e uscito nel 1996, ho voluto leggerlo. Sembra in effetti di ripercorrere le puntate di American Crime Story, ovviamente con più approfondimenti e con più rigore (qualche dettaglio in TV è stato pur aggiustato per esigenze di spettacolo), e anzi averla vista prima mi ha aiutato a visualizzare meglio le scene, a comprendere meglio i passaggi-chiave della vicenda giudiziaria, nonché ad avere più chiari termini e procedure legali. Anche YouTube, dove si trovano numerosi spezzoni di telegiornali dell'epoca e di sedute del processo, mi ha aiutato a rivivere "in tempo reale" quello che leggevo sulla pagina.
Un bellissimo libro, e una bellissima serie che ora, quasi quasi, mi sta venendo voglia di rivedere dall'inizio.
June 8, 2016
If I could, I would give this book a 3.5. I liked it, but I didn't consistently like it. At first, I could not get enough. I was so hungry for all the details this book provides. And Toobin leaves no stone unturned. The evidence quickly convinced me that OJ is actually guilty of those murders. But by the end of the book, I felt like one of the jurors in the criminal case. I just wanted it to be over. I became so irritated by the same attention to detail that I initially loved. Sometimes I was also bothered by Toobin's handling of the race issue. I do agree with Toobin that Cochran was not an emblem for civil rights. He clearly exploited the institutional racism within the LAPD, and his career and this case benefitted from it. Cochran's conduct has very little integrity. I definitely disagreed with Toobin's analysis of the Time magazine cover, though. Because editors of the cover didn't mean anything by darkening OJ's mugshot, he believes it is actually racist of the critics of this cover to interpret it as racism. Um, hello, Toobin. Colorism is a real thing. All he has to do is look back at all those Spanish paintings that classified people by like 15 different races depending on how light skinned or how racially mixed people were. Or take a critical media literacy class that points out how media uses darkness as a symbol of something sinister. Whether intentional or not, the editors of that magazine cover perpetuated a racist stereotype. Anyway, there were other moments where I just wanted to tell him, Toobin, it's not as easy for everyone (like the jurors, for example) to forget race, be "colorblind," and not factor it in as it seems to be for you. In the end, Toobin did create a pretty comprehensive and authoritative book on the OJ Simpson case. I would still recommend this book to folks. Specifically those that watch lawyery shows or have an interest in murder cases.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 24, 2016
I read this book with equal parts fascination and revulsion - it was an extremely good example of the power of the good legal representation and an example of turning the conversation from the murder of two innocent people to something much more politically charged - a classic case of diverting attention until you don't even remember what started the whole thing. To see the evidence so clearly spelled out and yet have that evidence play such a small role in jury deliberations is so sad. To hear some of the quotes in the courtroom and to see the clear injection of race into every argument to simply be able to win it was really hard to read. Whether you believe the verdict was the right one or not, I think you could agree that the way the final result was reached wasn't about trying to find out what happened to two people who were brutally killed, but instead served as a larger referendum on race, politics, police action and celebrity. OJ Simpson was the immediate beneficiary of that bait and switch. On another note - to the author, find a synonym for paradigmatic, I beg you.
June 28, 2016
This is a fantastic book from start to finish. Completely engrossing and very very truthful. ‘The People v. O.J. Simpson tells the whole story, from the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman to the ruthless gamesmanship behind the scenes of the trial of the century.’
The author, Jeffrey Toobin, was an assistant US attorney before becoming a staff writer at ‘The New Yorker’. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School.
Toobin just picks apart the testimony, O.J., the jury, the judge, the LAPD, the prosecution, the defence and anyone who has anything to do with the trial.
The author, Jeffrey Toobin, was an assistant US attorney before becoming a staff writer at ‘The New Yorker’. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School.
Toobin just picks apart the testimony, O.J., the jury, the judge, the LAPD, the prosecution, the defence and anyone who has anything to do with the trial.
September 8, 2012
An absolutely fantastic read and the definitive account of the OJ Simpson trial in my opinion. Attorney Toobin does a brilliant job of delivering inside information and taking the reader through the case. As someone who followed the both the criminal and civil trials closely and who has read as much as he could find about the case, I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone interested in the case specifically or how a high profile case travels through the justice system.
September 22, 2025
“The Los Angeles Police Department right now is actively searching for Mr. Simpson.”
An experienced group of reporters were gathered in that room, and yet none of them could ever recall having heard the sound they issued at that moment: a sort of collective gasp. And then one journalist, name lost to history, let out a long and very astonished whistle.”
I’ve said it before, but I really love when the homework kinda fucking rules. Like I’ve watched so many things based on this and always maybe thought it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting or as engaging as the elements pulled from it.
And then you actually start it and realize it’s even more insane and interesting and maddening and outlandish than even those stupid shows could ever hope to dream of being.
I think the real neater thing too about this is the sheer amount and correlation of the bonkers amounts of real deal evidence that just got straight up ignored in a lot of instances. Toobin does a great job of mapping all that out and then also devastatingly showing how it just got caught in this crush of either ineptitude or just outright manipulation, it’s wild wild wild.
I also think, for all the clinical and scientific details it really excels at, it’s a profoundly human book that takes the time to acknowledge the real people and deep cost of the crime and the trial. I think that’s something that kinda gets lost in this kinda non-fiction (one of the reasons I don’t like much to engage with it beyond certain specific things) so that was a real boon for the whole experience for me.
Very happy to have gotten around to it, but also very cognizant of how heavy and triggering it is/was to read. It’s very much a “put on the shelf for a while now and maybe do the audio in like 5-8 years” kinda deal.
An experienced group of reporters were gathered in that room, and yet none of them could ever recall having heard the sound they issued at that moment: a sort of collective gasp. And then one journalist, name lost to history, let out a long and very astonished whistle.”
I’ve said it before, but I really love when the homework kinda fucking rules. Like I’ve watched so many things based on this and always maybe thought it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting or as engaging as the elements pulled from it.
And then you actually start it and realize it’s even more insane and interesting and maddening and outlandish than even those stupid shows could ever hope to dream of being.
I think the real neater thing too about this is the sheer amount and correlation of the bonkers amounts of real deal evidence that just got straight up ignored in a lot of instances. Toobin does a great job of mapping all that out and then also devastatingly showing how it just got caught in this crush of either ineptitude or just outright manipulation, it’s wild wild wild.
I also think, for all the clinical and scientific details it really excels at, it’s a profoundly human book that takes the time to acknowledge the real people and deep cost of the crime and the trial. I think that’s something that kinda gets lost in this kinda non-fiction (one of the reasons I don’t like much to engage with it beyond certain specific things) so that was a real boon for the whole experience for me.
Very happy to have gotten around to it, but also very cognizant of how heavy and triggering it is/was to read. It’s very much a “put on the shelf for a while now and maybe do the audio in like 5-8 years” kinda deal.
January 2, 2022
We are informed by the ruling elite that this is the best book on the OJ Trial. And it certainly is a comprehensive look at the legal procedures involved in a murder trial. But Jeffrey Toobin is a mediocre journalist at best. He has no real feeling for language, and no empathy for people. He's also a moral coward, a privileged white male with an obvious interest in upholding the racial status quo. He is in fact exactly the kind of man who would write "important" journalism for an "important" magazine like the New Yorker, published by and for the wealthiest members of the white elite.
What all this means is that you'll hear an awful lot of tut-tutting about those childish black jurors, and their primitive need to protect their own. But you'll hear very little about the racism of the LAPD. Mark Fuhrman, we are given to understand, is a bad apple, a rogue cop, an aberration. And when Marcia Clark condemns him (at long last) we're supposed to stand up and cheer. But the real truth is that cops like Mark Fuhrman take orders from lawyers like Marcia Clark, and Jeffrey Toobin. And in the end, they're the ones who should be on trial, not for Nicole's murder but for the tens of thousands of state-sanctioned murders of black men, women and children (going back generations) that never made it into the news.
Some brilliant points about how everyone in LA is crazy about celebrities.
What all this means is that you'll hear an awful lot of tut-tutting about those childish black jurors, and their primitive need to protect their own. But you'll hear very little about the racism of the LAPD. Mark Fuhrman, we are given to understand, is a bad apple, a rogue cop, an aberration. And when Marcia Clark condemns him (at long last) we're supposed to stand up and cheer. But the real truth is that cops like Mark Fuhrman take orders from lawyers like Marcia Clark, and Jeffrey Toobin. And in the end, they're the ones who should be on trial, not for Nicole's murder but for the tens of thousands of state-sanctioned murders of black men, women and children (going back generations) that never made it into the news.
Some brilliant points about how everyone in LA is crazy about celebrities.
November 2, 2018
I was 18 and in between high school and college when the OJ case broke. I watched a few minutes of the chase and listened to my ex's mom offer her conviction that he was innocent. Two years ago, the FX series reignited my interest in the events I mostly avoided the first time around, and I got curious. Toobin's book is exhaustive but fascinating. It reads like a novel, and it provides an in depth look at the evidence of the case as well as the climate of LA and the nation at the time. If you're a fan of the FX series, it's worth it to read the book upon which it's based if only to see what was left out of the show and what made the series. Some of the most important characters in the TV series hardly factor into the book.
March 25, 2018
Extremely insightful and sticks to the facts of the case.
March 21, 2016
I've been wanting to read Jeffrey Tobin's take on the O.J. Simpson trial for a long time. With the miniseries being broadcast on FX, it seemed like the opportune moment to follow along with Toobin's commentary.
I was a kid in grade school when the Simpson trial was the talk of the nation for over a year in '94-'95. I remember the the Bronco chase and the magazine covers and nightly news analysis and late night jokes. I remember adults--seemingly every adult--having an opinion on O.J.'s guilt or innocence. And I vividly remember the verdict and side-by-side reaction shots of news networks emphasizing the role of race in the trial.
But aside from the glove (and Johnnie Cochran's famous line) and a few other stand-out moments, I realized a few years ago that I didn't know much else about the trial, let alone enough to form my own opinion on whether or not O.J. killed Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.
What I loved about this book is Toobin's brilliant way of weaving together legal and scientific analysis with the soap opera elements of the trial. In between passages on '90s DNA crime technology and courtroom regulations are anecdotes of Robert Shapiro's histrionics and Marcia Clark's harrowing experience of misogyny on the national stage and Cochran's sheer brilliance in mastering the media.
To be clear, there are no heroes in Toobin's outlook on the case. Clark and junior DA Chris Darden may have had the moral upper hand, but they took an overwhelming win and blew it through their own incompetence. Cochran, F. Lee Bailey, Shapiro, et. al., may have scored the win, but at what cost? Not through good legal work so much as pushing a frankly bullshit narrative of a racist cover-up.
And yet, I respect Cochran's strategy. The LAPD was a racist institution (still is in many aspects) and after case after case of racist police brutality, Cochran used their own Gestapo tactics against them. Yeah, maybe it wasn't so accurate in this case given that O.J.'s friends were white, he had an amazing relationship with the LAPD, etc. (all things Toobin explores at length), but the LAPD's bigoted operations--a modern-day KKK--was what ultimately screwed them over. Cochran just aptly led them to the cliff so they could drive themselves off.
Toobin has a lot to say about race in LA at the time, and much of it makes for one of the more interesting aspects of the book, especially in our own era when #BlackLivesMatter has renewed the fight against our racist criminal justice system.
All in all, it's difficult to think of how Toobin could have written this better. You will get a detailed analysis from before the murders to the process of the investigation to the trial to the aftermath with mini biographies of all the major players sprinkled throughout.
You will also get an utterly convincing argument that O.J. Simpson is guilty, so if you're still a fan or in denial, be forewarned.
Is it the same as the series? In most ways, yes, but there are some clear artistic manipulations taken by FX. For example, Clark and Darden did not have anything approaching an affair in Toobin's book although this is frequently hinted at in the series.
Still, it's incredibly informative and entertaining, and if you're looking to get the whole picture of this huge chunk of '90s news and culture, I highly recommend it.
I was a kid in grade school when the Simpson trial was the talk of the nation for over a year in '94-'95. I remember the the Bronco chase and the magazine covers and nightly news analysis and late night jokes. I remember adults--seemingly every adult--having an opinion on O.J.'s guilt or innocence. And I vividly remember the verdict and side-by-side reaction shots of news networks emphasizing the role of race in the trial.
But aside from the glove (and Johnnie Cochran's famous line) and a few other stand-out moments, I realized a few years ago that I didn't know much else about the trial, let alone enough to form my own opinion on whether or not O.J. killed Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.
What I loved about this book is Toobin's brilliant way of weaving together legal and scientific analysis with the soap opera elements of the trial. In between passages on '90s DNA crime technology and courtroom regulations are anecdotes of Robert Shapiro's histrionics and Marcia Clark's harrowing experience of misogyny on the national stage and Cochran's sheer brilliance in mastering the media.
To be clear, there are no heroes in Toobin's outlook on the case. Clark and junior DA Chris Darden may have had the moral upper hand, but they took an overwhelming win and blew it through their own incompetence. Cochran, F. Lee Bailey, Shapiro, et. al., may have scored the win, but at what cost? Not through good legal work so much as pushing a frankly bullshit narrative of a racist cover-up.
And yet, I respect Cochran's strategy. The LAPD was a racist institution (still is in many aspects) and after case after case of racist police brutality, Cochran used their own Gestapo tactics against them. Yeah, maybe it wasn't so accurate in this case given that O.J.'s friends were white, he had an amazing relationship with the LAPD, etc. (all things Toobin explores at length), but the LAPD's bigoted operations--a modern-day KKK--was what ultimately screwed them over. Cochran just aptly led them to the cliff so they could drive themselves off.
Toobin has a lot to say about race in LA at the time, and much of it makes for one of the more interesting aspects of the book, especially in our own era when #BlackLivesMatter has renewed the fight against our racist criminal justice system.
All in all, it's difficult to think of how Toobin could have written this better. You will get a detailed analysis from before the murders to the process of the investigation to the trial to the aftermath with mini biographies of all the major players sprinkled throughout.
You will also get an utterly convincing argument that O.J. Simpson is guilty, so if you're still a fan or in denial, be forewarned.
Is it the same as the series? In most ways, yes, but there are some clear artistic manipulations taken by FX. For example, Clark and Darden did not have anything approaching an affair in Toobin's book although this is frequently hinted at in the series.
Still, it's incredibly informative and entertaining, and if you're looking to get the whole picture of this huge chunk of '90s news and culture, I highly recommend it.
March 5, 2017
Everyone has a character flaw that is their undoing. People are shamelessly exploitative and cynical. The average person is easily duped and not very bright. Lawyers are at best a necessary evil. Cops are an unnecessary evil. Systemic racism is real, and it's hard enough to get people to notice it without trying to pretend it's something and somewhere it's not. It's extraordinarily easy to defame and slut-shame dead women. Celebrity and money will shield you from consequences.
May 12, 2016
Reviewed on www.snazzybooks.com
Everyone – unless you never used to follow current affairs back in the 90's or you've very young- remembers the trial in which O.J. Simpson was accused, tried and ultimately adquitted of murdering his ex girlfiend Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994. All the evidence pointed to Simpson's guilt- in fact, ridiculously so- and so it was a shock to many when, in 1995, he was found not guilty. I had heard about the case and knew a fair amount about it...or so I thought.
Turns out, there was so much I didn't know about! In The People VS. O.J. Simpson, author Jeffrey Toobin completely opened my eyes to just how much manipulation of the jury and the American legal system Simpson's lawyers managed during this trial. It's a real eye opener, and it's packed full of facts and information about the whole rigmarole, starting from when the murders happened leading through to Simpson's ultimate acquittal- and even afterwards, including the civil lawsuit the victim's families filed against him afterwards (something I wasn't really aware of)!
The level of detail in this book is astounding. At times I felt there was almost too much to take in; the book certainly could, in my opinion, have benefited by being cut down by about 50 pages or so. Despite usually being a really quick reader this took me ages to read- it's a pretty long book and there's a lot of detail to take in! However Toobin managed to include information about the jurors, the prosecutors, the defense team and Simpson himself, leaving the reader feeling like they've really learn a lot- the majority was hugely interesting stuff, too.
One of the key themes in this novel is, of course, race and racial relations between the Police and the black community in America at the time. Though the author is evidently completely convinced of Simpson's guilt, he manages to convey a fairly even, balanced presentation of the murders and subsequent trial. He effectively shows how the Police's past behaviour towards black residents in the area ultimately damaged what should have been an 'open-and-shut' case. He doesn't seem to really blame the jurors for ruling against what the prosecution wanted, either, due to errors in the presentation of the case and the slick expertise of the defence team. All topped off, of course, by the celebrity effect- and how someone famous can change the way even the most level-headed people act.
I don't tend to read a lot of non-fiction, but I really enjoyed this. Like many others I am planning on watching the incredibly popular TV show (I'm a bit behind the times, I know, but I missed it when it was initially on TV!) so really wanted to read this beforehand. I'm really interested to see how it translates onto the screen- it'll be truly gripping, I'm sure, judging by how interesting this book was!
Definitely recommended, particularly for fans of true crime!
* Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing a copy of this novel in return for an honest review *
Everyone – unless you never used to follow current affairs back in the 90's or you've very young- remembers the trial in which O.J. Simpson was accused, tried and ultimately adquitted of murdering his ex girlfiend Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994. All the evidence pointed to Simpson's guilt- in fact, ridiculously so- and so it was a shock to many when, in 1995, he was found not guilty. I had heard about the case and knew a fair amount about it...or so I thought.
Turns out, there was so much I didn't know about! In The People VS. O.J. Simpson, author Jeffrey Toobin completely opened my eyes to just how much manipulation of the jury and the American legal system Simpson's lawyers managed during this trial. It's a real eye opener, and it's packed full of facts and information about the whole rigmarole, starting from when the murders happened leading through to Simpson's ultimate acquittal- and even afterwards, including the civil lawsuit the victim's families filed against him afterwards (something I wasn't really aware of)!
The level of detail in this book is astounding. At times I felt there was almost too much to take in; the book certainly could, in my opinion, have benefited by being cut down by about 50 pages or so. Despite usually being a really quick reader this took me ages to read- it's a pretty long book and there's a lot of detail to take in! However Toobin managed to include information about the jurors, the prosecutors, the defense team and Simpson himself, leaving the reader feeling like they've really learn a lot- the majority was hugely interesting stuff, too.
One of the key themes in this novel is, of course, race and racial relations between the Police and the black community in America at the time. Though the author is evidently completely convinced of Simpson's guilt, he manages to convey a fairly even, balanced presentation of the murders and subsequent trial. He effectively shows how the Police's past behaviour towards black residents in the area ultimately damaged what should have been an 'open-and-shut' case. He doesn't seem to really blame the jurors for ruling against what the prosecution wanted, either, due to errors in the presentation of the case and the slick expertise of the defence team. All topped off, of course, by the celebrity effect- and how someone famous can change the way even the most level-headed people act.
I don't tend to read a lot of non-fiction, but I really enjoyed this. Like many others I am planning on watching the incredibly popular TV show (I'm a bit behind the times, I know, but I missed it when it was initially on TV!) so really wanted to read this beforehand. I'm really interested to see how it translates onto the screen- it'll be truly gripping, I'm sure, judging by how interesting this book was!
Definitely recommended, particularly for fans of true crime!
* Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing a copy of this novel in return for an honest review *
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