Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The news coverage is giving me PTSD. It’s so hard to convey to people not alive or aware of how all consuming the trial was. The networks led with the trial every single evening for a year. CNN had coverage 24/7. It was exhausting.
Agree.
I remember where I was when the verdict was announced. I was a 2nd year law student at UVA Law. I remember that many of the Black law students had gathered to hear the verdict and a huge cheer went out when it was read. I was shocked and stunned. Shocked that the verdict was "not guilty" and stunned that these fellow students -- who I thought looked at the case like I did -- they had studied criminal law and were taking Evidence as a class, they were smart/logical and at a pretty good law school --- they cheered when I thought it was a miscarriage of justice.
It was very surprising to me. They weren't people who followed OJ as a football player. They weren't people who had been in jail and wanted OJ to stick it to the man as a proxy for their legal revenge. It took me awhile to realize that while I thought we were on the same team ("team" being "law students"_ --- they actually had a bigger commitment/tie/attachment to the racial "team" victory that OJ represented.
It was a really shocking moment for me to see fellow law students CHEERING for a murderer being set free. OJ represented a victory over racism to them. We all came to law school to learn law, but we look at it through the glasses of our past experiences.