Gil Garcetti, former LA District Attorney during the infamous OJ Simpson trial, gave a lecture at George Pearl Hall last week, placing the case within a larger context of race relations at the time, and emphasizing that the case was a domestic violence issue.
“Let me ask you all a question. Why are you here?” Garcetti began. “I’m asking students, as well as community members, are you here because your professor suggested you should be here? Are you here because you’re one of those addicts of the OJ Simpson trial?”
“Some of you weren’t even alive when this happened, yet you know something about this case,” he said. “What is it that attracts you?” Garcetti asked the audience.
“What kind of a case was this?” Garcetti asked. One audience member called the case a “crime of passion.” Another responded, “Domestic violence.”
“That was the answer I was looking for,” Garcetti answered. “And yes, OJ Simpson was the poster child for domestic violence, but there is domestic violence throughout this country and throughout this world. You saw what the cycle was. Nicole Brown Simpson being beaten horribly a number of times, and ultimately ending in her death.”
Garcetti said after the verdict of the trial, he made a deal with broadcast television stations that wanted to interview him that he would be given time to address the larger issue of domestic violence.
He said he worried the verdict could discourage victims from leaving abusers upon seeing the justice system fail to convict Simpson.
Garcetti said race was a major factor in the verdict of the case, as the murder of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman was just two years after the beating of Rodney King by LA police.
“That was in the memory of the black community as they heard OJ Simpson could have been involved in a murder,” he said.
Garcetti said Simpson was a hero to the black community. People didn’t want to believe that a professional football player with seemingly so much going for him could commit the crime, even though evidence of his guilt was overwhelming.
“I heard again and again, ‘Not OJ,’” he said. “Members of the white community, but especially, the black community didn’t want to believe that OJ could do such a thing.”
Garcetti said he knew it would be a challenge to get a conviction before the case even went to the jury. A jury consultant on the case even advised against having African American women of a certain age sit on the jury panel.
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Garcetti added that the prosecution team should have done more research on Mark Fuhrman, the detective accused of planting evidence at the scene of the murder, before he took the stand.
“We would have known what a racist he was,” Garcetti said.
Mark Fuhrman taking the stand devastated the case, he said.
There was no proof that evidence was planted, but Fuhrman having made racial slurs in the past was enough to raise the issue of a conspiracy, he said, and Fuhrman was seen to be emblematic of everyone in LAPD.
Garcetti said he knew a not-guilty verdict would be horrible for race relations in the country.
He said in addition to overseeing the Simpson trial, he was the designated spokesperson for the DA’s office at the time, and sought advice from many as to what to tell the public if Simpson was found not guilty.
Everyone he sought advice from believed Simpson would be found guilty, except for former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who happened to be available to speak with Garcetti at the time.
Garcetti quoted Carter as saying, “Everyone knows OJ did it. Of course he did it. But he’s not a street thug. He’s never going to do this again. He’s not a danger to anyone else, and you and I both know that many innocent black men have been convicted in this country, and innocent black men have been executed in this country. This is payback time, and black and whites are going to divide.”
“He was right,” Garcetii said, “and it was a tough lesson for all of us.”
Garcetti said he has rebranded himself as more than “the guy who lost the OJ Simpson case.”
Along with many exceptional achievements over the course of his career, he has traveled to West Africa to document impoverished women and children who travel miles for water. He’s a cultural ambassador for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, as well as an adviser for Wells Bring Hope, a volunteer organization that drills wells for clean water in Niger and other West African countries.
Sara MacNeil is a freelance news reporter for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @sara_macneil.
