Disclaimer here - I’m not claiming to know all the facts.  But hooray for OJ going to jail!  Who’s with me? 

Way back, when the bloody crime was committed on Gretna Green, when the dog made the ‘plaintive wail’, when the public was introduced to Kato Kailen, things got a little out of order.  The world stopped for a minute when the verdict came down.  Orenthal James Simpson -  somehow, someway, was pronounced, for all the world to see -  not guilty of a bloody and gruesome double murder.

Where were you when the verdict was read?  I remember being at Costco with my dad, standing in front of the big demo tv’s for sale.  When the not guilty verdict came, I expected a kind of uproar, a heated round of ‘Hey! No Fair!’  But what surprised me, and what felt hurtful even, was the quiet disbelief.  The utter shock and disappointment in what we had all expected due process would and should deliver.  Instead of loud and bitter cries of protest, it was more a chorus of heavy sighs, of heads falling a bit, looking to the ground.  The quiet said more than anything.  If this was justice, then our world had just shifted, and shifted in such a significant way that us folks shopping at Cosco couldn’t find words.

Who remembers the dream team?  The glove that ‘didn’t fit, so you must acquit?  How about the long slow motion, surreal ‘chase’ of the white ford bronco, diving down the freeway, mile after mile, with Mr. Simpson crouched in the back?

It was fixating and fascinating.  And truly a moment in time.  I remember the names as easily as I remember santa’s reindeer.  Ron Goldman.  Nicole Brown Simpson.  Robert Shapiro, Johnie Cochran,  F. Lee Bailey.  Remember Judge Ito?  Officer Furman?  The other characters involved, if I don’t remember their names, I surely remember their broken and crushed, anguished faces.  I think Ron Goldman’s father is a hero, a true American crusader.  Plagued with a cause no parent wants to bear, he has never let go of the idea of OJ, the ‘juice’, getting justice.  In some form or another. 

Under ordinary circumstances, this hold up in Vegas, to secure the return of items that may or may not be rightfully his, would possibly have amounted to not more than a blip on the radar, a bulletin on the local 5 o’clock news.  But this was far beyond the bounds of ordinary.  This was in incident that Mr. Simpson, by virture of his own action, history, reputation, even cockiness, created.

Locked up for murder?  No.  Locked up?  Yes.  This time, the answer was yes.  Guilty -  yes.  Serving time?  Yes, mercifully, somehow, after all this time, yes.  To the families involved directly, while history can’t be rewritten, I hope this feels like some small mercy.

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