re: The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story series long thread

Starring John Travolta as Edward James Olmos

It's so fricking good

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The more I watch this show, the less I believe to be true. I think dramatic license went overboard and this story was plenty dramatic having followed every minute.

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I've been reading the Vanity Fair fact check column after each episode. The show has been pretty faithful to the events thus far.

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Shapiro's wife in the show looks like Caitlyn Jenner.

Travolta reminds me of the bad guy from The Mask

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And what a stupid stupid move to bring the charges in LA. Was that purely based on Clark's fantasy that black women responded well to her??

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They probably didn't want the image of OJ being convicted by an all white jury, on the heels of Rodney King and the LA riots. And with the amount of evidence they had, they thought the case was a slam dunk conviction.

But, supposedly, it was SOP to try lengthy felony cases downtown. According to Bill Hodgman, Clark's second chair:

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[T]here was a myth associated with the case, if you will, that somehow Gil Garcetti moved the case from the Santa Monica Judicial District or the West Judicial District downtown, and that was not the case. At the time, all long-cause cases in Los Angeles County were being tried on the very floor, in the very courthouse, here in downtown L.A. where the O.J. Simpson case was tried. Many, many cases, from Pomona to Long Beach to the Valley and elsewhere, which had a time estimate of three weeks or more all were being sent downtown, and unfortunately, it was a lot of murder cases, because the long-cause courtrooms could process those cases, try those cases faster. It was something that had been a subject of some dispute between my office and the courts.

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So, the prosecution could have petitioned to move the case to Santa Monica, but it would have been unusual and played into the theory of a racist frame-up.

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Interesting. Thanks.

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Darden, BTW, is setting up as a tragic figure.

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I think he is a tragic figure. Here was what he thought was going to be his big break into stardom and I guess regardless of the outcome, his name was certainly on a lot of lips. Not for the reasons he'd hoped, though.

He definitely gained fame and some fortune from the trial. He looked like the "token black" hired to get favor from the jury, though he and Clark dispute that.

He's been a legal commentator, taught in a law school, opened his own firm and in addition to writing the book on the trial, he has written some crime novels, I think. I have no idea of the success of any of those.

I'm hoping there's a twist and OJ is found guilty.