Wow-worthy moments from Part 4 of 'O.J.: Made in America'
ESPN’s five-part documentary, “O.J.: Made in America” continued with Part 4 on Friday night. Here are some wow moments from the fourth installment (and our review of the entire series is here, as well as wow moments from Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3):
O.J. Simpson lost his grasp of reality. Part 4 focuses on the so-called Trial of the Century, the one that was supposed to determine whether Simpson murdered his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman, a restaurant waiter at her home purportedly to drop off Nicole’s mother’s glasses. In the early moments, we hear a dispatch recording of one of Nicole’s frequent calls to 9-1-1, with Simpson yelling in the background. The dispatcher who took the call is on the stand and says since Nicole was in imminent danger, she put the call out to officers that there was a life-threatening situation in progress. And then we hear a recording of Simpson’s voice: “I’m being portrayed as a wife abuser and a violent person…Nicole is being painted as almost divine way by the prosecution.”
The prosecution hammering home Simpson’s decades-long abuse of Nicole was useless on at least one juror. As we see photos and hear testimony, an interview with Carrie Bess, Juror No. 9, is shown: “Let me tell you: I lose respect for any woman that takes an ass-whooping when she don’t have to. Don’t stay in the water if it’s over your head. You’ll drown.” We assume Bess has never been in an abusive relationship based on those words, but it’s not always that easy. Leaving is rarely, if ever, as simple for victims as just walking out the door.
The brutality of the murder of Nicole and Ron Goldman was stunning, and the images aren’t easy to forget. When you see the photos of the crime scene, with Nicole nearly beheaded and blood just everywhere in the courtyard, it provokes a visceral reaction: a racing heart, goose bumps, maybe even tears.
Simpson’s defense team was relentless. After seeing those pictures, and how they handled the trial, how do they sleep at night? LAPD officer Ron Shipp was a longtime friend to Simpson and Nicole but decided to testify for the prosecution after seeing photos of the crime scene, and on cross-examination, the defense painted Shipp as an alcoholic and philanderer who harbored desires of romantically pursuing Nicole. After the defense tore Shipp apart, numerous individuals who had said they were going to testify decided against it. Money must make a better pillow than I’ve ever realized.
Simpson was quite involved in how his team attacked. “He was a significant player within his own team,” L.A. Times journalist Jim Newton says. “O.J. was brilliant in terms of how things played,” attorney Carl Douglas tells us. Simpson “took me to the woodshed” for things as small as having spittle in the corners of his mouth as he addressed the court and jury, Douglas recalls.
Get this man a crystal ball. This is a little “inside baseball”, if you will, but in a montage of the over-the-top media coverage the trial received, we see a clip of then-Los Angeles Times media critic Tim Rosenstiel on a television show: “Our job is to tell people what happened today and what was important. We have lost sight of giving people the news in terms of its significance, we are giving it to them in terms of what we think simply is the most titillating the and most ratings grabbing.” Sadly, that hasn’t changed for a lot of media outlets 22 years later.
Mark Fuhrman’s involvement turned the trial from the prosecution of Simpson to the prosecution of Fuhrman. There were a lot of not-good things around Fuhrman in terms of his thoughts on African-Americans, and the defense pounced on them, determined to try to paint the officer as a white LAPD officer trying to frame a black man for murder. In his interview for cameras, F. Lee Bailey still, 22 years later, asserts that because Fuhrman once answered a domestic violence call between Nicole and Simpson and Nicole opted not to press charges, he was “inspired” to set up Simpson for her murder.
The jury ignored the blood evidence. Simpson’s blood was at the crime scene, and Nicole, Goldman and Simpson’s blood were in that infamous white Bronco. Heck, we even hear a tape of Simpson saying he believes in DNA evidence. But between the involvement of Fuhrman and the glove, it all went out the window.
Business was still booming for Simpson, even behind bars. This kind of stunned me: while Simpson was in jail during the trial, because he hadn’t been convicted, he could still make money off memorabilia. Dealer Bruce Fromong says during the trial, there was $3 million worth of O.J.-autographed memorabilia sold. Incredible.
“You could see the disaster coming.” Having Simpson try on the glove was one of several big mistakes by the prosecution – arguably the biggest. It was the decision of Christopher Darden; Marcia Clark says she and other members of the prosecution team did not want to have Simpson try the gloves on. Simpson wore latex gloves underneath, and his agent, Mike Gilbert, reveals a cunning masterstroke: he advised Simpson not to take his arthritis medicine for a couple of weeks before that day, leading to swelling in Simpson’s hands. They didn’t fit.
“Blacks and whites are even farther apart.” We hear news anchor Peter Jennings say this (at least, it sounds like Jennings; we don’t see his face), in regards to the racial breakdown of a survey: one month after the murders, 63 percent of whites thought Simpson was guilty and 65 percent of blacks thought he was innocent; at the end of the trial, 77 percent of whites thought he was guilty, and 72 percent of blacks believed Simpson innocent. Jennings was talking about a survey, but once the verdict comes, that distance is magnified.
Part 5 of “O.J.: Made in America” airs Saturday night at 9 p.m. on ESPN.
Podcast: ‘O.J: Made In America’: Assessing ESPN’s landmark documentary:
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