OJ Simpson Frontline Film

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Central Michigan University *

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Sociology

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Feb 20, 2024

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SOC 100, Spring 2023, Frontline - O.J. Simpson Video Dr. Smith This film illustrates the importance of race/ethnicity, social class, and inequality for understanding policing, court processes and the criminal justice system. 1. Why did L.A. police officer Mark Fuhrman play such a crucial role in the case? Think about immediately after the murders and during the trial. Furman had found the 2 gloves that the persecuting team was using as a large source of their evidence against OJ. He found the first one before he had been asked to leave the crime scene, and then went on to find the second matching glove on OJ’s property. Some speculated that Furman had simply found the gloves and planted them as evidence but due to these finds, Furman was able to remain in the case as a focal witness. 2. Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law professor, asked "in what game is it off-limits to talk about racial bias?" What is she talking about? In that statement, Crenshaw is talking about how it is very suspicious (at the least) that Furman, a man who was openly racist, was the one who had found those particular pieces of evidence. She is talking about how many will say that it would be bad to play the ‘race card’, but to her, that is a very biased and ‘white’ perspective. To follow that narrative would be to treat race as if it were not relevant when that is clearly not the case. 3. Marc Watts, the CNN correspondent at the trial said, "Everything's about race; black people deal with race every day." He added: "Whites haven't been on the receiving end of injustices." How was this significant for how people perceived the trial? Because racism is not something that white people deal with on a regular basis, they often do not think that situations are about race. They are able to block it out of their minds. While white people may have perceived this trail as simply being another trial, black people were more likely to see it for what it was and the injustices that were happening all throughout the case. 4. David Perel said that the Mark Fuhrman's tapes proved a "head-nodding moment for black people." Explain why. Many white people only began to understand how great a factor race played when Furman’s tapes were exposed of him blatantly and casually using the n-word. This may have been ‘shocking’ and felt like a great turn of events for while people, but for the black community, this was just a confirmation of what they had already known. It was nothing new. 5. Professor Crenshaw states that the jury was ‘framed’ according to stereotypes? How so? They were made into an ‘all black’ jury even though it was indeed multiracial. Then they were painted as being ignorant, having a lack of attention, prone to swooning, etc. They were all stereotypes that mainly apply to black women and were all used in this case. 6. According to Jeffery Toobin, why did the jury have ‘reasonable doubt’? Toobin thinking that the case fit into their conseptions of how the LAPD acts towards black people – a viewpoint that very well may be true and fair. He states that while that may be true in general, he very firmly believes that was not the case in the OJ trial.

7. According to Jeffery Tobin, what would have happened if the jury was white? He believes that OJ would have been convicted without a doubt. 8. Michael Eric Dyson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said that black people celebrated the verdict because of what O.J. represented, that O.J. was ‘beyond his body’. Explain. To much of the black community, OJ was a term that represented every black person who had been ‘beat up’ or taken advantage of by the criminal justice system. With OJ’s ruling being not guilty, many black people felt they had found some sense of vindication. In the end, it wasn’t really about OJ. It was about their family members, their uncles, their fathers, their brothers, their mothers, people who had been done wrong and had never received justice. 8a. Professor Dyson added that O.J. was the "very guy you (whites) thought was so perfect." Explain. The black man that much of the black community had found vindication through was the very man that many white people loved. It was through the man that many white people had claimed ‘wasn’t like the rest of them’, better than them. He wasn’t a troublemaker – he didn’t cause racial consternation or act in a way that was controversial. The very one who many white people thought to be perfect was the one who ended up turning the tables on it all. 9. According to Professor Ogletree, what were African-Americans ‘celebrating’ about the verdict? It was not in any way a reflection of lack of concern for the victims who had been murdered. Rather, it was a celebration of the many black men who had gone through that justice system who didn’t have good lawyers who found themselves going to jail rather than going home. 10. According to Professor Boyd, what were African-Americans ‘applauding’ about the verdict? They were applauding the fact that the system itself was finally dealt an even response. That someone finally got over on the system. 11. Why is Johnnie Cochran’s role viewed as so significant? He was the one who had ‘gotten it right’. He was the one who had extracted justice from a system from which there had been no justice before. Furthermore, he did it by playing by ‘your rules’ and still managed to win. He was an African American lawyer who was energetic, articulate, well defined, and a reflection of what the system truly is all about. He was a black man with skills making the system work. 12. According to Professor Boyd, O.J. got the ‘breaks’, that is ‘bottom-line’ - what does he mean? He got the same ‘breaks’ a rich white man would get because he could ‘buy’ them. Boyd did not doubt that OJ was guilty and did not reject the fact that he got away with it, but he simply believed that OJ got the same treatment that many white people have gotten when the also get away with murder time and time again.

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