Ted Herrmann writes to me about the O.J. Simpson case…
The footprints point to his guilt…his past actions point to his guilt…the Bronco chase points to his guilt…the DNA evidence is too technical for me, but let's assume it points to his guilt…
… but, weren't you even the least bit suspicious when the glove was discovered by the biggest racist in the entire city? To me, that trumps guilt and sets him free, no matter how guilty he appears to be.
Well, I don't agree Mark Fuhrman was "the biggest racist in the entire city." That would probably be someone who'd beaten up or even killed minorities, denied them civil rights, donned Klan robes and lobbied for White Supremacy, etc. There's no evidence Fuhrman ever did any of that and I kinda suspect the O.J. legal team searched high and low for such examples and couldn't find any. They couldn't even find any complaints among the hundreds of suspects Fuhrman had arrested over the years…and often when minorities are arrested, they charge that, just in the hope it will put the arresting officer on the defensive.
What O.J.'s investigators did find were tapes of Fuhrman using the "n" word…and they came up with these after he swore he never had. That's despicable but it doesn't quite rise to the level of racial violence.
However, even if Fuhrman was all that, I wouldn't buy that it made O.J. not guilty. The glove was just one thing and I think the suggestion that Fuhrman planted it is ridiculous. The theory is that he arrived at the murder scene, found the second glove there and decided to hide it on his person and move it to O.J.'s home. Other officers had been searching the area for more than an hour before Fuhrman got there so he'd either have to be certain none of them had seen it or enlist all the other cops in his scheme.
Why would police officers do such a thing? I can imagine maybe framing a two-bit thug no one cares about…but it is a crime to falsify evidence like that. In the state of California, it could lead to life imprisonment or even the death penalty and if accused, they had to know that Simpson would mount (and could afford) the best lawyers in town, the kind who would scour every square inch of the case against their client.
And Fuhrman and any accomplices would have had to decide to frame O.J. almost at the start of the investigation before they knew what kind of evidence would turn up. Maybe there would be solid evidence implicating him, in which case there was no need to break the law and take that risk.
Or maybe there would be incontrovertible evidence that Simpson was innocent, in which case hard questions would be asked as to how that bloody glove got there. And who would have been Suspect Numero Uno? The guy who found it, Mark Fuhrman.
At that moment early in the morning after the bodies were found, the cops did not yet have a firm reading on the time of death and they had no idea where Simpson was at that moment. Suppose Fuhrman planted evidence and then it turned out O.J. was in New York at the time, surrounded by credible witnesses?
The police had not yet gone around knocking on doors in the neighborhood, asking if anyone had seen or heard anything. Suppose they found witnesses who identified fleeing suspects who were definitely not O.J.?
Suppose all the blood at the murder scene, which had not yet been typed, turned out to not be Simpson's but it led them to another suspect? Suppose other clues were found which exonerated O.J.? A lot of murders are solved because the killer walks into the police station the next day and confesses or a friend or relative turns them in. What if that had happened?
Fuhrman may have had racist views but no one ever thought he was stupid. He was way too smart to set up a frame and then hope that O.J. didn't have a good alibi, hope that O.J. showed up with cuts on his hands, hope that the killer's footprints found at the scene turned out to be the same size as Simpson's feet, hope that blood samples found at the scene didn't rule O.J. out, hope that no other evidence or witnesses turned up that proved Simpson didn't do it, etc. (Another point: Fuhrman went inside O.J.'s home at the time to look around. If he was out to frame Simpson by planting a bloody glove, why didn't he plant it inside the house, instead of outside where it wasn't tied as closely to the guy he was framing?)
There are other reasons to not believe the "planted glove" theory but I'm doing this from memory and I've blanked a lot of that stuff out of my cranium.
Oh, yeah: And Fuhrman would also have known that the bloody glove he found on Simpson's property would never have been sufficient to get a conviction if not for all the other evidence that pointed to Simpson. Why risk going to prison to try and frame a guy who might turn out to be inarguably innocent…or might be convicted without your fake evidence?
And finally, there are the two most important questions of all which is why, twenty years after the fact, I still remember most of this stuff? And why am I still debating this with someone?