Part II: O.J. Simpson Murder Case

Other than, of course, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, where the accused killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, was never brought to trial, the O. J. Simpson murder case in Los Angeles (murders in 1994, trial in 1995) received more publicity than any other murder case in American history. Only the Lindbergh case (murder in 1932, trial in 1935) approached it, and perhaps even exceeded it in the percentage of then-available media. Although the Manson murder case and trial would unquestionably have received more publicity than it did if it had been televised (as the Simpson case was), I still don’t believe it would have come too close to the Simpson case.

But the Simpson case, unlike the Manson case, was for the most part simply a media creation, receiving a vastly disproportionate amount of publicity. Although it was a highly sensational murder case, this was so for one reason and one reason only, O. J. Simpson. When you remove him from the equation, there is simply no way that this case can be considered an unusual or exceptional murder case. Simpson killed his former wife, Nicole (and her acquaintance, Ron Goldman, since he needed to eliminate a witness to his murdering Nicole) out of some passion and rage induced by jealousy, frustration, taunting or what have you. But that couldn’t possibly be more common. Every year, approximately 30 percent of all female homicide victims in America are killed by their husbands or boyfriends. To illustrate what I mean about this case being, apart from Simpson, a garden variety murder case, substitute a mechanic for Simpson. The case probably wouldn’t have made page 20 of the Los Angeles Times.

And yet from the very beginning the media treated this case as if it had everything, everything [stet] that anyone would ever want in a murder case. A typical remark from the media that was uttered ad nauseam was “This case has everything: sex, violence, mystery, celebrity, affluent lifestyle, etc.”

But let’s examine this statement. Sex did not play any part at all in this case, and if I’m not mistaken it was not even mentioned once in the entire trial. The media must have been confusing what they read in the tabloids about Simpson’s and Nicole’s private sex life as being a part of this case, which it was not. Violence. I have to hand it to the media there. That’s a point I can’t rebut. A murder case with violence. Highly unusual. Mystery. To anyone who thinks this case was a mystery, my only response is that it was only a mystery to them. Some members of the media were a little bit more specific, and they spoke “of all the mysteries in this case. For instance, if O.J. did it, how did he dispose of the knife and his bloody clothing?” But I always thought a murder mystery was one where you didn’t know, until the end, who the murderer was. Of the thousands upon thousands of movie, television, and book murder mysteries, how many were cases where it was obvious, right from the beginning, who the murderer was, but the two-hour movie, one-hour television production, or 300-page book concerned themselves with the “mystery” of how the known killer disposed of the murder weapon and other indicia of guilt? Celebrity. That’s all this case had. O. J. Simpson. Affluent Lifestyle. No. 1, Simpson and Nicole’s lifestyle wasn’t that affluent, and more importantly, their easy lifestyle did not come into play as a factor in this case, nor was there even testimony about it.

Actually, this case was lacking in two ingredients that have traditionally been necessary in spousal or relationship murder cases to attract the interest of people: a love triangle, or, at least, a suggestion of a mistress or lover (e.g., the Sam Sheppard murder case in Cleveland, Ohio; the Klaus von Bülow case in Newport, R.I.; the Dr. Bernard Finch case in Los Angeles; and many, many more), where the third party is either the reason for, or somehow involved in, the murder; and mystery. Here there was no love triangle and no mystery, since we know Simpson committed these murders. How interesting can such a case be?

But the media would have no dissent from the orthodoxy they were preaching. Even when a July 7-8, 1994, Newsweek poll showed that 85 percent of Americans thought the media was giving far too much coverage to the Simpson case (only 12 percent said it was about the right amount), and just 1 percent said the media coverage wasn’t enough, the media would have none of it. They were hell-bent on seeing that the 1 percent got their way. The other 85 percent just didn’t understand. And by telling the public over and over that there had never been a case like it, and by inundating the airwaves with coverage on the case, the public eventually came to agree with the media, whereupon the media said, without blushing, “See? We only blanket the news with the case because this is what the people want.” In law school, they call this picking yourself up by your own bootstraps.

Does anyone really believe that if the trial had not been televised, and if the media had treated this case in a responsible way, that at the time of the reading of the verdict “the entire nation” (from coffee shops, bars, and offices to Wall Street and the White House, President Clinton interrupting a meeting in the Oval Office) would be holding its breath, as was so frequently reported? Of course not. It would simply have been another sensational murder case and it would not have become anywhere near the cultural event it became.