active practice in America

[jim bell]

At 08:45 AM 9/30/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote:

>(Legal purists will point out that the second trial was for "Federal civil
>rights violations." Harummphh. What would the Founders think of this logic:
>"First we try them on ordinary criminal charges. If they are found Not
>Guilty, we charge them in the next higher court with more abstract charges.
>If they are still found found Not Guilty, we hit them with "civil rights"
>and "being disrespectful to women" charges. And if that doesn't work, we
>charge them in the World Court. We've only had one guilty party get past
>them, and for that guy we appealed to the Pope and he put a Papal Hex on
>the guy and ordered him burned in oil.")
>
>Double jeapardy means the system gets one shot at proving charges, not two
>or three.
>
>(And, yes, even though I am sure O.J. Simpson killed those two people, I am
>not happy with what appears to be a _second_ trial. For sure, it's a
>_civil_ trial, for damages, but to this layman it looks like a second trial
>on the main charges. I suppose I always thought that being found "Not
>Guilty" on the act itself made it essentially impossible for a civil trial
>to redecide the same issue. Boy, was I wrong.)

As usual, I have a solution to this problem!   (AP, for the relatively 
unitiated out there.)

If people really believe OJ is guilty, just pool your shekels and see him 
dead.   Or, if you believe the cops planted evidence, buy THEIR deaths via 
donation. (No cop would have dared risk AP to jump the wall...particularly 
if by doing so he risked having the evidence thrown out due to illegality.  
Nor would they have risked trying to frame an innocent person, or at least 
one believed innocent by a few million citizens.)  Or do both.  And so on...

Notice, however, that if AP were operational, a lot might have turned out 
differently.  First, if you assume that OJ is guilty, he would have KNOWN 
that he would be the first person suspected if Nicole were murdered.  This 
would have been an enormous deterrent, because he would have known that he'd 
be a potential target even if he managed to commit the "perfect crime" and 
leave no evidence.

However, it's even a bit more complicated that this.  Anyone considering an 
AP donation against OJ would have to realize that he KNEW all this, and 
might have been appropriately deterred, and if Nicole was killed anyway it's 
quite possible it WASN'T OJ.

Sure, thinking about this can give anyone a headache.  That's because AP 
can't answer the question, "Is OJ guilty," but it could dramatically change 
the circumstances in which such questions are answered.  


Jim Bell
jimbell at pacifier.com