Tomorrow is, amazingly, the 20th anniversary of the O.J. Simpson murder trial. I don't know about you but I came to two pretty firm conclusions after it…
- O.J. Simpson murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, and probably did so exactly as alleged and with no hanky-panky on the part of the police and —
- I spent way too much of my life watching this trial and reading about it and talking about it and just thinking about it.
If you disagree with #1, fine. Because of #2, I have no interest in debating any part of #1. I will say though that just as a spectator sport, I found the second trial — the civil one — more interesting.
And the best bit of reporting on that second trial was done for Slate in a series of first-person accounts filed by the Renaissance Man of Show Biz, Harry Shearer. I kinda disagree with Harry that the L.A.P.D. "enhanced" the evidence against Orenthal in order to make sure an obviously-guilty man was convicted. But that aside, Shearer's 36 dispatches offer fascinating insight into our judicial system and the way the media intersects and interferes with it.
Slate still has the pieces up but they're in a format that makes them awkward to read in sequence. I have therefore gone to the trouble — no, no, don't thank me — of compiling links to each chapter so you can read the articles in the right order by clicking on these links…
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Part 23, Part 24, Part 25, Part 26, Part 27, Part 28, Part 29, Part 30, Part 31, Part 32, Part 33, Part 34, Part 35, and Part 36.
That I went to the trouble to do this should give you some idea how valuable I think Mr. Shearer's reporting is. The least you can do is go read it.