Re: OJ Simpson and the Question of Blaming...

Cal Eastman (shiva@FREENET.SCRI.FSU.EDU)
Thu, 7 Jul 1994 09:52:32 18000

>
> A minor whooops is order here since i mentioned simpson and the question
> of blaming....
>
> i was not asking about the merits of the focus on the process of
> accusation rather than on the evaluation of evidence in determining
> culpability...what has struck me is that the current hearing is not about
> whether simpson did anything, whether anyone has evidence that he or
> anyone else did anything...instead the hearing is about how he came to be
> accused, arguing that the act of accusing simpson was illegitimate in
> itself...i find this focus on how the decision to blame is arrived at [
> and especially the arguments over formal procedures like whether the
> police used proper forms] to be fascinating precisely because the issue
> of who killed mr. goldman and ms. simpson is irelelevant to the argument
> about to be decided on by the judge....
>
> let me ask another, slightly different question....is the focus on how
> simpson was blamed, and especially the claim that he was blamed
> illegitimately,
>
> a] evidence of the sophistication of American justice, which
> takes into account all stages in the process of discovering a crime,
> ascertaining evidence of the crime, and ascribing blame as means testable
> or rebuttable stages
>
> b] evidence that Americans are terrified by the prospect of
> government malfeasance and abuse
>
> c] simply an extension of victimology to the effect that the act
> of accusation, if shown to be somehow technically in error, transforms
> the accused into a victim as well...
>
> i ask these questions, the list of which is hardly complete, in a kind of
> vacuum because in watching the several high profile trials on television
> recently [ bobbitt and bobbitt, the amy fisher debacle, the reginald
> denny trial and the rodney king trial and the menendez brother trials]
> what strikes this northern exposure is that victimization has become a
> cornerstone of defense strategy, even extending to the question of how
> the decision to blame is arrived at...this is not a criticism but a
> query...what does this tell us about how blame is defined, at least in
> the legal system, in the US....
>
> dougl
>

emember this is teh prelim hearing....
its purpose is not to judge simpsons guilt but whether there is
justification to bring him to trial

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