Wednesday, December 3, 2008

A Stacked Deck in Vegas? The O.J. Case

Frank Farley, Ph.D

Temple University, Philadelphia

O.J. Simpson is about to be sentenced in Las Vegas after being found guilty October 3 on all counts of kidnapping and robbery.

Let me get this right. In the American judicial system, you are to be tried by a jury of your peers. Peers, according to Webster's dictionary, refers to "a person of the same rank, value, quality, ability, etc."

So, the ill-reputed Simpson, a black male, age 61, got a jury of 9 women, 3 men, all white. The issue of female jurors is particularly important because he lives in a nation where most people believe he killed his (white) wife in the 1990's and got away with it. In Vegas he was assigned a female judge, white. Take a closer look at that jury. At least 5 of the jurors apparently admitted in writing on a questionnaire during the selection process that they disagreed with the 1995 verdict finding O.J. not guilty, yet these clearly biased jurors were allowed to remain on the jury!

A growing body of psychological research suggests that people can be subtly biased or prejudiced despite their statements to the contrary. Its believed by some scientists to be an unconscious process--the person isn't even aware of it. The big 'isms where bias and prejudice are concerned are sexism, racism, and ageism. O.J. may have been the (unconscious) target in this Vegas trial of at least two of these. If the judicial system was fair, or at least trying to be fair, that jury should have been better balanced between men and women, and would have had one or more black members. Does responsibility for this lie with the defense attorney, the prosecutor, the judge, or all, who should want a fair trial?

It is interesting to note that the judge denied O.J. bail. This was not a murder case, no one was hurt. If she was worried about him skipping the country, one frequent reason for denial of bail, why didn't she require he surrender his passport? Presumably he needed to be out of jail to go home and begin work on his appeal. Being restricted to a Nevada jail might potentially have hurt his appeal preparation, given the frequently tight deadlines for appeals.

A potential source of bias in this trial, that reflects an often outrageous process frequently seen in our judicial system, was to arrange plea deals with some of the other defendants, sweetheart deals, where they would turn upon one defendant--O.J.--and that one defendant would become the main target of prosecution. Is this justice being blind? Absolutely not, its justice with eyes wide open and fixed on one defendant over the other defendants. We often see this unfair process in trials, but in the Vegas case, the sweetheart quid pro quo went to some notably unsavory co-defendants, two of whom had the only guns in this crime! If you believed O.J. was a murderer from 1995, then you might weigh his background more than those unsavory accomplices and therefore target him. But if you had no bias or belief one way or the other concerning O.J. in 1995, then you might want to treat all those defendants a bit more evenly, perhaps giving some weight to O.J.'s alleged leadership role but no sweetheart deals for anyone.

The coda to my concerns is that, whether you like him or not, or believe him or not, did O.J. get a fair trial in Vegas? Did the subtle, possibly unconscious but widespread belief that he is guilty of murder and escaped our justice system, corrupt and corrode that courtroom? Every defendant deserves an impartial process. Our society is awash in bias in the workplace, the media, and elsewhere, but of all institutions, we fervently hope our courts will rise above that. The Vegas case might suggest otherwise.