Filed under: News, Politics, Race and Civil Rights
One of O.J. Simpson's attorneys, F. Lee Bailey, says that there was strong evidence held back in the 1995 trial that would have proved Simpson's innocence in the infamous murders.
In a new 20,000-page manuscript, Bailey talks about four individuals whose testimony would have strengthened Simpson's case had it been presented to the jury. Years after the "Trial of the Century," Bailey is opening up and sharing more perspectives on the case that put the entire nation at a standstill.
The document is called 'The Simpson Verdict' and was written in 2007 as part of a book proposal. Bailey argues that it's time that the facts of the case be put before the American public so that others might learn more about what went on behind the scenes.
In his manuscript, Bailey mentions four individuals who did not testify at the trial. One is a forensic scientist and the others are a battered woman's expert, a blood expert and an eye witness. The eye witness claims to have seen the individuals who killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.
The witness is believed to have seen Nicole Brown Simpson arguing with two men, with neither of them being O.J. Simpson. None of the four witnesses were called to testify by the defense primarily because they feared that more jurors would be dismissed and that a mistrial would be declared because the trial being too long already; the O.J. Simpson trial lasted eight months.
Bailey says he believes that the killers were out to collect a drug debt and that they killed Ron and Nicole by mistake. He doesn't mention who might have actually owed the money.
Bailey goes on to argue that racism has fueled hatred toward Simpson over the years, and that he wrote the manuscript to help clear Simpson's name in the court of public opinion.
The O.J. Simpson trial was one of the most telling and provocative incidents in our nation's history. When the trial first began, everyone talked about it and everyone had an opinion.
Each day was spent mulling over the new details of the case, and every new rumor was mustered up by an overzealous media. It was unbelievable.
I remember the day I was walking across campus and someone told me that O.J. had been acquitted. As a student on a conservative campus like the University of Kentucky, one can imagine that many of my classmates were less than pleased with the verdict.
In addition to being a virtually unprecedented media circus, the Simpson trial was a compelling reminder that racial divisions continue to plague the United States. Just three years after the L.A. riots and the beating of Rodney King, the trial told America that a black man accused of killing a beautiful white woman is going to be dealt an entirely different style of justice.
Nearly every poll in the United States, split across racial lines, told a consistent story about how whites and blacks viewed O.J.'s guilt in completely different ways. Many of those racial divisions continue until this day, and we can only pray that we're making progress.
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and a Scholarship in Action resident of the Institute for Black Public Policy. To have Dr. Boyce's commentary delivered to your e-mail, please click here.