Better late than never, I guess.
OJ Simpson was free in large part, I think, because the War on Drugs has greatly eroded faith in the police and courts, especially among urban blacks. Rather than protectors of our rights, police are often seen as a repressive, incompetent enemy by much of the community, as police resources are increasingly misallocated toward suppression of consensual transactions rather than pursuing violent violators of our safety and property.  Ed Morissey has a great post over at HotAir on the futility of this destructive war on individual freedom.Â
Clearly, what we have been doing hasn’t worked. At the margins, it impacts behavior, but overall, Americans still create a huge demand that gets fulfilled by criminal enterprises. That is no different than what Prohibition created, and the effects have been the same: rampant violence, large wealth transfers to organized crime, dilution of law-enforcement efforts, exploding prison populations, and so on.
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Not that I necessarily disagree, but the mob did pretty well after the repeal of prohibition, too – just by moving into other markets. Â Is there any reason to think the same won’t happen here? Â In other words, has the damage been done?
The mob didn’t do all that well after the end of prohibition; some of them gave up, some went into other lines of business. Some even went legit. The mob was at the height of its power during the prohibition years.
Then of course by the 1960s they discovered how big the illegal drug market was, and off they went. Often in partnership with street gangs.
There will still be crime, organized and disorganized, no matter what. But there’s every reason to think that the power of crime lords will be seriously eroded, as all they’d have left is prostitution, loan sharking, theft, fraud, etc. Which I think can keep them busy if they need work.
 I am no fan of the WOD, but I think it’s a stretch to tie OJ’s first acquittal to the WOD.
I thought back then back then, and still do today, that I would not have convicted OJ based on the evidence the jury saw.  Now, if they had seen everything we the public saw, it might have been different. Â
IMO, the blame goes to the incompetent (and probably corrupt) law enforcement agencies and the equally incompetent DA’s office.  Their performance was appalling.Â
And for the record, I am a semi-rural, mostly white guy….
Had I sat on the jury in this latest O J Simpson case, I would never have voted to convict him of more than a misdemeanor for the way in which he chose to contest the taking of his property by souvenir hunters.
As for his first case more than 10 years ago, he was acquited. Therefore, nothing from that case should have carried over to the recent court process.
In the american system of justice, a defendant either is guilty or innocent, and in a trial by jury, only that 12-person body can determine guilt or innocence.
And no, I have no personal concern for O J Simpson, never having been a football fan or even much of a television viewer. And celebrities in general mean nothing to me.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I was at home today, so I got to watch it live, and see a lot of the talking heads dissect the case.  The judge was pretty good about it all, I thought.  She went out of her way to state that the previous case had no impact on this one. Â
She also said it is one of the most cut and dried cases in her entire career, because every bit of the deed, from planning, to execution, to the “post wrap party†was caught on video and audio tape.  Â
A lot of the talking heads thought the charges were a bit lame, but since it was all on video, the conclusion was the DA didn’t have much of a choice but to file all the charges, and the jury didn’t have much choice but to convict.  Â
And apparently, if a gun hadn’t been involved, most everything else would have been misdemeanors.  But the gun changed everything. The longest sentence came on the kidnapping charge.  And apparently there is pretty clear audio of OJ busting in and saying something like “Ain’t nobody leaving this room!†And that was that.Â
As you probably know, I am a big gun rights guy. Â But I also support throwing the book at anyone who violates current gun laws, so I am OK with the way this worked out. I hope something similar happens with Plexico Burress.Â
All in all, this was literally the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. It doesn’t appear to be a set up. One of OJ’s buddies secretly recorded it all because he thought he could sell the tapes for big bucks. And he did exactly that.Â
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The judge called it a mixture of ignorance and arrogance. Â Even though they might not have intended to kidnap anyone, or even necessarily break any laws at all, the recordings showed that they most certainly did. Â Â And in the end, she basically gave him the absolute minimum sentence allowed by law. Â Â
It’s also interesting that if it had of happened in many other states, nothing might have ever come from it.  The tapes wouldn’t have been admissible in some states, and his actions might not have been illegal in others. Â
The War on Drugs is a thorny dilemna. Drug use wrecks minds and lives. Particularly, young vulnerable kids. The natural societal instinct is, therefore, to prevent this harm and prohibit it.
The problem, though, is that the ensuing, black market Drug Trade, may become worse than the Drug Use.
The Bootlegger loves the Abolitionist.
No, easy answers……..
HB
p.s. O.J. killed Nicole. This delayed jail sentence is cosmic justice.
Well, all he had to do was stay put and live his life in obscurity. However, criminal behavior tends to be habitual and he went way over the deep end on this. I’d like to call it cosmic justice, but in reality he was only charged with these crimes. For the murder, he has never been punished. Still, there was no defense for this crime, none whatsoever. If there had been a shred of doubt, he probably would have gotten away with it again.
Did the War on Drugs erode our faith in the justice system? Absolutely. I could not agree more.
And now Boy George gets convicted of kidnapping, too!
What’s up with all the celebrity kidnapping?
John_B’s last blog post..Interesting Cartoon
The War On Drugs is a sympton of the problem, not the cause. Faith in the justice system exists because the justice system keeps doing stupid stuff. And then there’s the laws that keep getting passed.
Like requiring a teenage boy to register as a sex offender for life because the female teen with whom he had sex lied and was just barely a teen rather than being old enough to hold a learner’s permit.
The justice system fails us because, like Congress, it’s trying to do too much and does little of it well.
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