O. J. Simpson's Former Agent to Publish Book: How I Helped O. J. Get Away With Murder

Anyone who is still trying to milk more blood money from the deaths of these two people, are almost as sick as the "real murderers!" If this guy was so concerned, he should have talked, and faced the consequences. You know why this is all a bunch of crap? Anyone real human being, no matter how long the association with Mr. Simpson, would have cared enough about the children...(which have been made the scapegoats for everyone's "faux" concerns for years)to have come clean. I don't care who he is donating the money to. While The Make A Wish Foundation is a great organization, if they take this blood money, they should be ashamed of themselves.
By the way, I know that OJ is everyone's favorite whipping boy, so people will buy this crap just to make themselves feel good about their opinions. Isn't it funny that with all of the death and destruction we have caused by invading Iraq, we can't seem to pry ourselves away from two horrific murders because of the aspects of race, sex, and drama. Wonder if all of the people whose family members have been killed since Secretary of Defense Gates made his surprise visit to Iraq, are concerned about this sickening "sports agent!" If anything he says in this book could have solved this once and for all, he should be made to stand trial for helping to cover it up! But he won't. He knows it. And that's why he will earn his little blood money, get his 15 minutes, and make Regnery Publishing richer than ever. How sick for us all!

So why isn't Mike Gilbert an accessory to the murder of two people, if he knowingly either obstructed, concealed, or withheld the facts that would have allowed justice to be served (and Simpson sent to jail)-?

Can't he be prosecuted?
And can't O.J. Simpson be retried in Court if any new evidence emerges?

Why does justice not matter here?

Let's reflect on this title for a moment... A guy is going to make money on a book in which he explains how helped get a man get away with hacking to death to innocent people. The word "scumbag" seems appropriate

It is obvious to anyone who knows anything about Mike Gilbert knows that any evidence that he says he has was obviously planted and cross contaminated by an Anti-Semitic memorabilia dealer.

The prosecution was warned in no uncertain terms that black women on the jury would acquit OJ. Did they listen? Noooooo. Pollyannas that they were, they thought that being women, they would identify with the female victim of abuse, and black women wouldn't care that the victim was white. Specifically, a white trash golddigger mooching off of OJ, screwing around and taking drugs. The trial was about absolutely nothing except what a low-down ho Nicole Simpson was. Okay, true. But was being decapitated fair punishment? Not to mention poor Goldman, being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Uh--sorry Ron, but no, the California Rules of Evidence do not "instruct" jurors "to dismiss(?!) any testimony or evidence provided by proven liars." I don't know what they do in Scotland, and I don't care. I am an attorney and former prosecutor who was born, raised and educated in California. I know of what I speak. Without them (the rules) in front of me, I will paraphrase: A jury MAY (the operative word) DISREGARD such evidence, . . . yada yada yada. It's not mandatory. Even a liar tells the truth sometimes, and if a juror feels beyond a reasonable doubt that this is one of those times, the "liar" may be believed--unless of course he's been proven (to the juror) to have lied about the particular evidence in question. If the jury felt Fuhrman couldn't be trusted as to the relevant evidence, yes they could disregard the glove, etc., and so the case would be more difficult, but not unprovable. There was a LOT of other circumstancial evidence, which can be sufficient if accepted. Your last sentence about how our system is designed is absolutely true.

"A jury MAY (the operative word) DISREGARD such evidence". It's not mandatory."

Point taken. But you do agree that under the CRE, doing so is considered prudent and acceptable, right?

"Even a liar tells the truth sometimes, and if a juror feels beyond a reasonable doubt that this is one of those times, the "liar" may be believed."

Given what we know about Fuhrman's seething hatred of black men - especially those who date white women, as expressed on those tapes and in hos LAPD pssychological interview, do you think the jury should have believed him?

Professor writes: "The prosecution was warned in no uncertain terms that black women on the jury would acquit OJ."

By whom? Cite please. In fact, the black women on the jury didn't like OJ at all, according to jury forewoman Amanda Cooley's book.

She also said that if Marcia Clark, who knew all about Fuhrman's racism but decided it was 'too incendiary' for black female jurors and so decided to lie about it, got it all wrong. Black women in California are quite used to racist cops. Like Cooley said, "Being a racist doesn't make you a liar. Lying under oath to pretend you're not a racist does." if Clark hadn't chosen to conceal Fuhrman's racism she would have won her case, because Fuhrman's racism would not have tainted his evidence. Lying to them about his racism under oath in response to Clark's questions is what tainted his evidence in the jury's eyes.

Bottom Line: Marcia Clark looking through her white prism and deciding how black jurors will see things through their black prism was a risky venture. Marcia Clark got it wrong, told lies, and eviscerated her case by doing so because her most compelling evidence was rejected by the jury as a result.

The Akita, which is a most powerful and protective animal, would have torn any attacker of Nicole apart immediately . . . unless of course the attacker was its other master, namely OJ.

"The evidence against OJ was irrefutable. The only way you could acquit was if you were stupid or if you were racist (pro-black OJ)."

That's merely you looking through your white prism and thinking you know what the blac prism saw and how it affected their actions.

You are just a memeber of an ethnic sub-set seeing things through your ethnic prism, NOT the voice of objectivity and rationality you think you are, critiquing the decision of the supposedly 'subjective and irrational'black jurors. Stop trying to make non-whites the 'forced other' by positioning your white prism as 'neutral, rational and colour-blind'. It is not.

Proof? Your assertion that the jury was racist is evidence of your white prism and easily disproven: Why did the WHITE jurors vote to acquit too?? Why wasn't it a hung jury? Because the white jurors also felt that the evidence that remained after the Fuhrman evidence was disregarded was insufficient to base a conviction on. They also clearly agreed that Fuhrman's evidence should be disregarded, or they would have held out and it would have been a hung jury.

Ron C: The CA Rules of Evidence makes no such "instruction".
Face it, it was a putrid jury, an incompetent prosecution and a screwball judge (not to mention a guilty accused). I don't remember the jury saying later they thought OJ actually was guilty, but I do remember their partying with him post-verdict. When it comes to this case, it seems no matter how much time passes, there's always another scumbag poised to pop out of the woodwork in a quest to profit from it.

One more thing, RonC. One of the white jurors stated publicly after the verdict that she was intimidated by the rest of the jury and was too gutless to stand her ground. She went along to get along -- not a virtue on a jury.

The prosecution was incompetent, the judge was incompetent, and the jury was incompetent. Cochran played the race card because he knew his client was guilty. I did not see any jubilance on the part of his legal team, except Cochran. They knew their client was guilty, too.

Sounds like your own prism is pretty cloudy -- is your whole world defined by race grievance?

"Even without Fuhrman's evidence, there was evidence that the jury never saw, like the photos of the inside of the Bronco, which was covered with blood."

I see. So according to you the jury is at fault for not convicting based on evidence they never saw. Interesting...!

FYI: There was a defense witness, a police photographer, who was on the witness list and who was going prove that Fuhrman committed perjury by presenting photos he took of Fuhrman that were taken two hours before the time Fuhrman testified under oath that he arrived at Simpson's house. He never testified because the judge struck Fuhrman's testimony from the record when he perjured himself about being a racist.

"One of the white jurors stated publicly after the verdict that she was intimidated by the rest of the jury and was too gutless to stand her ground."

I think I would have remebered that. I just googled it and came up empty. Cite please. I don't believe you for one minute. Here's what I did find, in the NYT, from a dismissed juror:

Mr. Cravin said that the jurors -- black, white and Hispanic -- who, fairly or unfairly, had been cast as racial flash points were now all gone and that those who remained would be able to work well together and perhaps even reach a verdict. "Mostly all the women have a knitting circle, and they weren't like that before," he said. "It seems like they all have something in common. That keeps them kind of all on the same wavelength. I don't think there's a lot of racial tensions now."

Sounds like the jury were all on the same page. Amanda Cooley said in her book that there was no "leaning" done on anybody because after they all agreed to disregard Fuhrman's testimony the case fell apart, so they quickly reached a unanimous verdict with little deliberation. Offically, they took four hours, but actually it was two hours, then they waited two hours because they felt like people would think they were crazy if they decided the case hadn't been proven so quickly.

Once again you are attempting to position a white person as the 'voice of reason' sadly stymied by black 'prejudice/rage/anger' blah blah blah.

Of course you think the jury decided based on their race. You also think the only reason you hated the verdict is because you're not black, and therefore not prone to racial thinking. Baloney. You diagre with the jury NOT because you're ohso lucid and neutral but because you're WHITE, in fact. And what you saw through your INVISIBLE (to you, not to me) WHITE prism was a 'slam-dunk' case.

But since you don't know you have a WHITE prism, you can't POSSIBLY know that your opinion is really NOT objective, really NOT neutral and really NOT rational, and so you try to make those black jurors the Forced Others by accusing them of racial bias, racially tainted illogic, racially motivated subjectivity and racially generated irrationality.

Fortunately the jurors, black and white and hispanic, were able to see beyond their own ethnic prisms, unlike you, and collectively agree that even though they thought OJ probably did commit the murders, the case was not proven to the extent that the law requires.

That is the system WORKING.

"Face it, it was a putrid jury."

I disagree entirely. The jury made a decision based on the available evidence, which didn't include the hat, the gloves or the blood, which I thought was the correct verdict under those circumstances. Do you think they should have believed Fuhrman, who found the hat and the blood and the gloves, AFTER he perjured himself, and after they heard him on tapes bragging about how he likes to frame black men who date white women? I don't.

I also believe there WAS fabricated evidence in this case. there was Nicole's blood found on the socks OJ wore. But the blood was in perfectly formed concentric circles on BOTH sides of the socks - meaning it must have been administered when the socks were lying flat and not being worn. How else can you explain that? Also, even the judge said he didn't believe VanAtter and fuhrman's testimony under oath of why they hopped the fence into OJ's property without a search warrant - but he allowed their testimony to stand.

Bottom Line: … "I think that there were aspects of the case that could only be understood if you had some sensitivity to race. In other words, how is it possible that blood could get from a place that was supposed to be secure into O.J. Simpson's car, unless you're willing to believe that the police are capable of misconduct. And it's their experience which opens them to that possibility, which gives them an open mind. I think that many people who are white would just never have believed it and would never have considered the possibility.

… I think that there was a lot of jury bashing that went on. People felt that the jury, faced with overwhelming evidence, simply nullified the verdict as revenge for perhaps a hundred years of mistreatment. I think that does a disservice to the jury. And it misunderstands just the tremendous number of holes that were in the prosecution's case, which, part of it was incompetence and part of it was simply that this was a mystery resolved by a rush to judgment. Had they thoroughly investigated the case, maybe it would have come out a different way."
Professor Donald Jones

"The white population is responding to this whole thing like it's from another planet,'' said Smith, who avidly followed the Simpson trial. ``It's also the same behavior we all engage in. When someone does something that doesn't conform to our perceptions, we're incredulous, even if the behavioral process that gets them to their conclusion is the same one we would use."
jury Expert Donald H. Smith.

A law professor at UCLA Law School. Peter Aranella:

Why did most of the public view the verdict in that light?

First, I think the media itself is responsible for legitimating the jury-nullification explanation of the acquittal. I don't believe it was jury nullification. I think the jurors acted in complete good faith, and they acquitted because they found a reasonable doubt. While many of us might not have shared their reasonable doubts, I think it was inappropriate for the media to challenge the good faith of the jurors and to tell a very different story about their deliberations and their reasoning. ...

What do you think actually happened inside the jury deliberation?

In terms of the actual jury verdict, you have a case in which the jurors couldn't trust the messenger, and therefore they had a great deal of trouble believing in the message. Police lied from the beginning of this case to the end, and I'm not talking just about Detective [Mark] Fuhrman lying on the stand about making racist remarks. This case started with a preliminary hearing in which the lead detective made an obvious lie about why they entered Mr. Simpson's property -- pretending he wasn't a suspect -- when the average citizen probably appreciates that in a domestic murder case, the surviving spouse has to be a suspect [and] has to be eliminated.

And yet the police lied about their motivation for a warrantless entry on to Mr. Simpson's property, and they stuck with that lie throughout the trial. So when you have police officers who are lying on the stand, thinking they need to [invoke] Fourth Amendment purposes, and then their stories have to conform with their initial lies, you have a credibility problem. And the jurors correctly saw that some of the police were not testifying honestly. That meant, unfortunately, that when police officers and criminalists and others were presenting perhaps quite reliable evidence, physical evidence of guilt, it was easy for jurors to dismiss the probative significance of some of that evidence because they didn't trust the messenger.

Do you think Simpson was really guilty?

I think that the media framed the discourse about the trial from the very beginning, from its inception, as basically raising two questions: Either the police framed an innocent man and acted corruptly, or the police did everything right and O.J. Simpson was obviously guilty of murder. There was a third option, which I tried to suggest from the very beginning, which is more nuanced: that the police perhaps mishandled some evidence; there might have been some incompetence; there might have been some corruption; there certainly was police perjury on the stand. But that didn't necessarily mean that there wasn't some reliable, physical evidence of Mr. Simpson's guilt.

Is that what you think the jury came to believe?

Well, there really were three elements to this case. One was the timeline; one was the story of motive -- why Mr. Simpson would kill his wife; and finally, there was the matter of physical evidence linking him to the murders. The prosecution's most compelling case concerned the physical evidence. Unfortunately, the DNA evidence was extremely hard to follow. Indeed, most of the media slept through the dog days of the trial dealing with DNA testimony.

The jurors themselves did a terrific job trying to pay attention, but the prosecution's best evidence was the evidence that was most hard to understand [and] the most easily attacked by the defense. And the defense, especially Barry Scheck, did a terrific job of giving the jury little lifeboats to understand some of the evidence, metaphors like "garbage in, garbage out." And that allowed the jury, if it couldn't follow the technical aspects of the challenges to the evidence, to think about the problem very simplistically: If the police screwed up in gathering the evidence, if there were problems in collection, perhaps that meant that the evidentiary results were corrupted. Only a real expert in DNA evidence could discriminate between legitimate challenges to DNA evidence in that case and challenges that were based on speculation or exaggerated hypotheses. I don't think the jury could follow that, but neither could the media, so the jury focused more on the evidence they could understand: the timeline and motive evidence.

The domestic violence evidence was totally unpersuasive. It was a badly told story, and once the jury lost credibility with the story of how it happened, [it] became easier for them to dismiss [it]. ...

Do you blame the jury?

No, I don't blame the jury at all. I think that the average juror wants to know why someone would take a human life, especially in a case like this, where you have a well-known celebrity defendant that was if not respected, certainly looked at with some sense of affection by many segments of the community prior to this trial.

So you have the question of why would someone who seemed to have it all do such a terrible thing, and that's where the domestic violence evidence came in. And the evidence presented at the trial was incredibly weak, nothing like the domestic violence evidence presented by the media to the general public. The story of domestic violence at the trial only involved one incidence of violence five years before this incident. And the story of Simpson trying to control Nicole [Brown Simpson] was not very persuasive at all. Indeed, it came out that the last attempted reconciliation was initiated by Nicole.

So the prosecution told a really bad story about domestic violence that simply wasn't believable. And to the extent that you had jurors who had witnessed domestic violence in their own lives, if not been the victims of it, they might not have reacted with such incredible strength as perhaps some of the public might have reacted to the 911 calls and to the other evidence that was actually presented.

Do you think the outcome of the trial would have been different if the jury had been presented with the same evidence of domestic violence that the public saw?

In this particular case, the evidence of domestic violence was not overwhelming, and even some of the material not presented to the jury still wouldn't by itself lead to a conviction, because any juror could ask, if Mr. Simpson was so out of control, then why in fact had the acts of violence de-escalated during the last few years that they were separated? The pattern wasn't of escalating violence; the pattern was of violence that was decreasing in its incidence, and that is not a story consistent with someone using violence to control an ex-spouse.

Where did the prosecution go wrong?

Well, they went wrong from the very beginning of the case in terms of how they handled the initial decision to charge Mr. Simpson. There was no reason for the prosecution to rush to a trial. They could have started a grand jury investigation and then carefully got all their ducks in a row that looked at not only the physical evidence, but other evidence that could have been gathered. Evidence that was gathered for the subsequent civil trial could have been gathered in a reliable timely fashion for the criminal prosecution.

The problem once again was Mr. Simpson's celebrity status. His celebrity status explains why he wasn't arrested very early on in the case when the average defendant, given the blood evidence, would have been arrested immediately. Conversely, the average defendant might have been interrogated far more effectively by police officers after the arrest. Mr. Simpson waived his right to counsel, and the detectives handled him not like a criminal suspect, but like a celebrity. So this case went sour from its inception. From its very beginning, the prosecution simply botched it.

Why was the public so angry with how this case was handled?

The case became a metaphor for race relations in this country, primarily because the media itself generated that perspective before the trial ever started. Months before the trial, a New Yorker article talked about how the defense was going to play the "race card" and attack prosecution witnesses and police officers as racist. But the message was that this was a totally inappropriate thing for the defense to do; that this was all about jury nullification. The media didn't educate the public about the possibility that race could play very different nuanced roles in the case; that the racial composition of the jury might aid the jurors in making credibility judgments about the believability of witnesses. The media didn't educate the public about the possibility that race could do anything but play a negative role in the case.

... Race played a very complicated role in this case. On the one hand, the experience of African American jurors aided them in seeing through the lies of Detective Mark Fuhrman and Detective [Philip] Vannatter before the white media ever figured out that the witnesses were lying. That was positive. Perhaps because of their experience with police officers, African American jurors had a lower evidentiary threshold for believability in police conspiracy theories. Perhaps that's a negative. The point simply is that race played a nuanced role. That's not how the media described it.

How did the media discuss the role of race in the trial?

It's unfortunate when the media, instead of educating the public about a very complicated issue, simply repeats the public's own conventional wisdom and ignorance. What the media did in the O.J. Simpson case is it simply reflected back onto the white majority, what the white majority already believed. Public opinion polls made it quite clear that most white Americans believed Simpson was obviously guilty before the trial ever started. Most white Americans feared that the defense would do something unethical and use racism to get a black jury -- a predominantly African American jury -- to acquit an obviously guilty defendant. That was the frame of public discourse before the trial ever started. Everything was fit into that frame in terms of how the media covered the trial.

So what role did race play in the jury's deliberations?

Well, it's ironic that we have a constitutional right in this country to a jury, at least a jury pool that reflects the ethnic diversity from which the jury is drawn. That's seen as a constitutional good, and there's a good reason for that, because people's different social experiences, whether it's race, ethnicity, [or] their socioeconomic status, tremendously colors their socially lived experience. We all interpret facts not objectively, but through the social filters of our own experience. Growing up in South Central Los Angeles, you have a very different view of police authority, probably a much more complicated one in which the police can be your friend and the police can be your victimizer, than if you grow up in Pacific Palisades, where the police basically protect you as a victim of crime or perhaps on occasion give you a traffic ticket. ...

Can you give me an example of how a juror's race could help his or her understanding of the facts of the case?

A classic example of how race improved the jury's deliberations about the credibility of witnesses occurred during F. Lee Bailey's cross-examination of Mark Fuhrman, when Mr. Fuhrman testified for the prosecution. Bailey's cross-examination of Mark Fuhrman asked several critical questions, whose answers led the African American jurors to appreciate long before white America that Fuhrman was lying about his racist past.

Bailey asked Mark Fuhrman on cross-examination, "Do you care if people believe mistakenly that you have racist beliefs?" And Fuhrman said matter-of-factly, "No, I don't care." "Do you care that people mistakenly believe that you are willing to frame an innocent man by planting incriminating evidence against him?" And Fuhrman reddened and showed a sense of annoyance and anger and replied, "Yes, that matters to me." Two African American jurors immediately looked at each other with disgust, because they understood immediately that those differing answers reflected the fact that Fuhrman probably was a racist. They didn't need the tapes. White America and perhaps the one white juror needed to hear those tapes to understand that Mr. Fuhrman was lying on the stand, but the African American jurors already knew. ...

So white America and black America saw that piece of evidence very differently?

White America's reaction to F. Lee Bailey's cross-examination of Mark Fuhrman was "Where's the beef?" Big letdown. He hadn't touched his credibility. Yet in the courtroom, if one was looking at the African American jurors' reactions to some of Mr. Fuhrman's questions and answers to Bailey's questions, one saw that African American jurors had already concluded that Mark Fuhrman was lying on the stand and was a racist by his different answers.

For white America and for the one white juror on the jury panel, it took the tapes to demonstrate Fuhrman's racism, but Bailey's cross-examination was effective at the very moment it was made for those African American jurors. His questions, Fuhrman's answers, led the jurors to believe he was lying long before the tapes were presented in evidence.

The idea that another person is trying to profit off of the OJ Simpon, Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman is disgusting. It is really a desperate attempt to seek fame from of the lives of people who died brutally and a raving lunatic who doesnt have enough common sense to stay out of the spotlight.

A huge embarassment for this guy - how low can he go?

For all the juy- haters, here's how that jury reached their verdict. Note that one of the white jurors says she thought some of the evidence was planted, that Fuhrman couldn't be believed, that the case wasn't proven, and NO, she was NOT leaned on:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/index/nns070.htm

Jurors say acquittals were based on lack of evidence
When they finally got down to it, jurors in O.J. Simpson's murder trial said, their decision wasn't about race, domestic violence or Simpson's stature. It was about a lack of evidence.

Lionel Cryer remembers thinking deliberations would be lengthy, especially when he saw an overburdened evidence cart being wheeled into the jury's deliberation room.

Less than five hours later, counting the lunch break, the 10 women and two men who lived under guard for nine months were united.

Simpson was acquitted.

Panelist Brenda Moran doesn't think they decided a moment too soon.

"We've taken this case serious for nine months," she told reporters Oct. 4, 1995, the day after Simpson's acquittal was announced. "It didn't take us nine more months to figure it out. We're not that ignorant."

Since declaring Simpson innocent of killing his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman, about half the 12 jurors have spoken publicly about their decision. All are in seclusion, fielding a barrage of interview requests, some of them from tabloids reportedly offering up to $100,000.

Common themes in their statements thus far: evidence, specifically the lack of it, and witnesses, specifically their lack of credibility.

From the moment they left Judge Lance Ito's courtroom on Sept. 29, 1995, the jurors didn't spend a lot of time second-guessing themselves.

It took them just three minutes to choose a forewoman.

The next workday was the following Monday.

Clerk Deirdre Robertson wheeled in a cart heavy with bound trial exhibits. "This is going to take a long time," Cryer remembered thinking.

He was wrong.

At 10 a.m., Cryer told the Los Angeles Times, they took a straw vote. It was 10-2 in favor of acquittal. One of the two negative votes came from a 61-year-old white woman, Anise Aschenbach, who would later tearfully say that while Simpson may be guilty, the evidence didn't prove it.

The other dissenter has not been identified.

When deliberations began, everyone spoke at once, said Sheila Woods, a 39-year-old health inspector.

"I guess they were so full over the nine months with things to say, that everyone just started kind of talking at the same time," Woods said in an ABC "Nightline" interview broadcast Sept. 29, 1995.

After the straw vote, some questions were still unresolved. Forewoman Amanda Cooley, 51, sent a note asking for the testimony of limo driver Allan Park to be read back.

Among the questions that jurors said troubled them:

Where, exactly, did Park see a shadowy figure at Simpson's estate?
What was that unidentified person wearing?
How many cars were in the driveway?
While waiting for the reading, they voted again. Now it was unanimous. As for the initial holdouts, Woods said, "I think what they did, they listened to the other 10 explain why they thought there was reasonable doubt, and then in the next vote, it was a 12 unanimous not guilty (decision)."

The volatile issues of racism and domestic violence did not sway them, Woods said.

After hearing Park's testimony read back in court, jurors returned to the deliberation room and spent only a few minutes concluding his answers were contradictory.

They sent a note asking for verdict slips. Forewoman Cooley filled them out.

After they filed back into the courtroom, Ito ordered their verdicts sealed until Oct. 3, 1995 to give all trial attorneys time to return to court.

Monday night, jurors packed and had a little party at the downtown Inter-Continental Hotel, where they had lived since Jan. 11.

On Oct. 3, 1995, their verdicts were read.

Aschenbach, in an ABC telephone interview last week, tearfully explained why she changed her original guilty vote.

Lead detective Philip Vannatter "made misstatements" on the witness stand, she said. Former detective Mark Fuhrman, discredited as a lying racist, cast too much doubt on the most prized evidence - a bloody glove found on Simpson's estate.

"I thought it was possible it was planted," Aschenbach said. "And most of the evidence was DNA evidence and that's what was so shaky."

Moran dismissed the trial issue of domestic violence.

"This was a murder trial, not domestic abuse," Moran said. "If you want to get tried for domestic abuse, go in another courtroom and get tried for that."

Gina Rosborough, a 29-year-old postal worker, voiced her opinion on Oprah Winfrey's syndicated talk show "If he committed such a bloody crime, then there should have been more blood in that Bronco that this just little speck that we saw."

Beatrice Wilson, 72, said in a brief telephone interview with The Associated Press that jurors did not rush to judgment. "We was in there nine months," she said. "All the whole time we was there we had plenty of time to think."

This is just another example of where we are as a society. Just like the stock market with its historical ups and downs, we experience moral and ethical swings as a culture. The late 19th century had its lurid tabloid period, then we swung back to more conservative, serious news coverage, and now we seem to be back to sensationalism.

We have to face the fact that, as human beings, we have a dark, unpleasant side. That is not to say that we should indulge that part of our nature without restraint. I think that accepting ourselves for what we are while striving to be better is where we should be.