Then there's the Lockerbie case, which was weird on a whole number of levels; I can believe it was carried out by Libya but the actual evidence is unconvincing.
LAPD were still in the news for the Rodney King riots when the OJ Simpson trial kicked off. There were some pretty damning recordings of the lead detective (Fuhrman; had to look it up) with a lot of racist content and talk of planting evidence.
But opinions of the case, by my recollection, fell along predictable racial and political lines. There were an awful lot of people that were certain from the beginning that he was guilty, and they had among their spokespeople Rush Limbaugh, who started practicing talking out of both sides of his mouth right around then by refusing to talk directly about the OJ case but instead spending a lot of air time on the "cultural differences" between white people and black people.
I remember it somewhat distinctly because, unfortunately, both my dad and his dad were listeners of that show and that was about the time I first realized that they were a little bit racist.
Just racial. Hard to believe now, but polling on racial scandals in the 80s and 90s, including OJ, Rodney King, Goetz, etc. didn't show much difference between Republicans and Democrats.
The opposite is true now, of course. Basically the Limbaugh wing now dominates the Republican party.
Social politics aside, it is better for a criminal to go unpunished than for an innocent person to be punished wrongfully. If only everyone accused of a crime was given similar luxury of presumption of innocence, the media circus made a joke out of the process. It shouldn't have been televised.
This is why it is important for police and prosecutors to have integrity and good reputation, else it will be difficult to catch or punish criminals.
Yeah, and what a good thing it was that everyone was in agreement about the obviousness of him being lazily framed. It would have certainly caused a certain amount of discomfort and cultural strife if people disagreed on a matter of such importance. I can't even imagine what it would have been like if such lines were drawn largely based on race. Thank goodness it was all obvious to everyone.
Well, at the time, it was obvious to most people that OJ had murdered Nicole and Ron Goldman.