and its mentioned in the documentary that "the dream team" got $50,000 a day (& that OJ made $3 million in autograph sales, while on trial

Barry Scheck went on to found the Innocence Project which has overturned 342 wrongful convictions. The Cochran Firm has provided defense to innumerable people in need.

And yet Barry Scheck clearly knew his client was guilty and that none of the evidence was actually tainted/planted and yet still proceeded to help a murderer go free by putting forth the theroy that it COULD have been. He couldn't even answer a straight forward question because he knew he did the wrong thing (morally not legally).

And he founded it BEFORE the OJ case. Don't get me wrong, I think that group has done a lot of great things, but that doesn't excuse Barry's actions as a human being on the OJ case. As a lawyer he is awesome, no doubt.

What do you guys expect them to do? Stand up in front of Ito & the jury and say that they agree OJ was guilty? They have a job to do, regardless if they agree with it or not. The whole point of being a good defense attorney is to leverage whatever you can to get your client an acquittal. Not throw the case cause you think your client is guilty.

When I've actually watched 2 black guys get shot to death for selling DVDs and a having a taillight out in the last day and a half I feel pity for the people who still carry a grudge about OJ being found not guilty.

I feel pity for the people that feel the need to protest the death of a man that has a rap sheet several pages long including offenses for raping and sexually molesting minors.

Uoop, just about crossed.

Didn't Robert Shapiro publicly distance himself from the other defense attorneys afterwards? Offering some sort of apology or feeling of guilt.

Probably too little, too late. If he was even sincere.

I saw this being sold at Best Buy when I went there a few days ago.

I checked the back of the packaging (kind of bulky by the way) and it didn't list any extras.

I don't know for a fact if it's barebones, but if you haven't seen this movie yet and don't have access to it via streaming, you really don't need any extras TBH. It's one of the best and most comprehensive sports documentaries ever. 7 1/2 hours is a shit load of content even for a movie only release.

I haven't seen the special but I do remember that. Going from memory at the time; He didn't approve of the race card being played. He actually thought it would backfire since OJ really all but abandoned the black community prior to that. Plus he felt the race card was a manufactured defense.

Cochrane always felt that his job was to get him off period. And he definitely pulled out all the stops. He knew how to exploit the overconfidence of the prosecution.

FYI, in case any of you missed it this past June, the entire series is now available on Hulu.

http://www.hulu.com/oj-made-in-america


You don't have to be a sports fan or NFL fan to watch it. It's one of the most compelling documentaries I've ever watched.

I understand that they were "doing their job" but, a couple of points. First there's professional ethics that members of the bar are expected to adhere to. It has been asserted that members of the "Dream Team" crossed the ethical line several times during the trial. Then there's the double standard. If you listen to Carl Douglas throughout the documentary it becomes very clear that everything the defense did was okay but he's very critical of Christopher Darden for doing his job which, from what I can tell, was done in a very straight and narrow manner.

What struck me in the verdict episode was how people were so explicit about how the acquittal was "payback" for Rodney King or for the all of the injustices perpetrated against blacks. I believe it was the civil rights activist who said of the acquittal: "now white America knows what if feels like to be the victim." White people were the victims in O.J. going free? Society was victimized by that verdict. Not just white society, ALL of society.

Looking back, I can see that there was no other likely verdict. I'd like to believe it would be different today but with all of the unjustified police shootings that have been in the news lately, I think we might still be in the same sorry place.

I have watched this series a good few times now and it was incredibly well done. OJ's defense team were such a bunch of slimy low live scumbags. They seem to openly gloat about the lengths they would go to not break the law, but bend it to the nth degree in order to get a Not Guilty verdict. Sure they are doing their job, but it also shows what kind of people they are. They knew damn well that he was guilty, but they knew they would come out of this super rich and super famous and it would set them all up for life, becoming world famous. It was despicable.

It was a shame for the prosecution team, but Darden fucked it up for them a lot. The whole glove agenda and asking OJ to put it on was him pushing it. I really don't get why he wanted to push this so much. It was such a huge gamble, and the chances of it paying off were minimal. As someone mentions in the documentary, if you are gonna do, do it behind closed doors in the court, not center stage with the cameras rolling. That and Fuhrman screwed the pooch for the prosecution. The Defense team used him to introduce the race card and from that point on it was a no win situation. The killings were no longer even the issue, it was one mans character and a race battle on the stage. It was disgraceful.

Hulu? That sucks. Every other 30 For 30 streams on Netflix. I got Part 1 for free on Amazon; might just go ahead and buy Parts 2-5 rather than pay for a month of Hulu to watch this.

Darden's glove strategy was potentially a blockbuster that could have won him the case. All of the DNA evidence in the world wasn't going to get him the win. Short of a selfie of O.J. smiling next to the bodies the prosecution was pretty sunk. While I'm not sure of the exact sequence of things, they were going against the tide of the Furhman debacle (the racist audio tapes), O.J.'s blood (Vanatter took O.J.'s blood samples to the crime scene to hand over to lab criminologist), and the "race card" tactics in general. The defense was playing big and broad and impressing the jury. I'm sure Darden felt like he needed something big to win jurors over to his side.

It was a dangerous ploy for sure but if he went into it more prepared and informed it would have been more of a calculated risk. He should have been aware Simpson's medical details and the medications that he was on. I would hope that prisoners' drugs are monitored in jail (but with O.J. I bet things were pretty loose) so that he'd know whether or not O.J. was taking his arthritis pills. When the gloves didn't fit he should have had information showing that Simpson stopped taking his drugs. Or he should have coordinated with the jail to make sure the drugs were being administered under supervised conditions.

Speaking of the gloves...his agent said that he told O.J. "if you're worried about the gloves fitting then just stop taking your arthritis medication." I know Simpson told him that he didn't do it but the guy admits that he always suspected that O.J. killed them. I don't know how you can help a guy you suspect of horrifically killing two people literally get away with murder. It boggles my mind.

Yeah the investigators at the crime scene did a number of things that helped lose the case. Being caught on the stand lying about it after the fact didn't help when they had photographic proof that evidence was not collected in the proper fashion.

I totally understand why Darden wanted OJ to try on the glove, but he must have realized the implications if it didn't fit. The fact that the gloves themselves were expensive, rather unique and OJ was confirmed to own a pair would have been forgotten if they didn't fit. And thats exactly what happened.

Judge Ito was to blame for a lot of the shit that the Defense team got away with. I mean who has ever heard of taking the jurors for a tour of the defendants house/crime scene.

Touring a crime scene isn't unheard of if there's a feeling that it will help the jury better understand the testimony or the prosecution's theory on how things went down.

I certainly don't understand touring O.J.'s house though. Especially after Carl Douglas explained how the defense took down all of the pictures of Simpson with his white friends and replaced them with pictures of black family and friends. And how they hung Rockwell's segregation print that belong to Cochran in a very prominent spot. Then he relished in explaining how he denied to Marcia Clark that they did anything to manipulate the jury's perception of O.J.

I can see Ito approving bringing the jury in to see where the glove was found and where the cars were parked but the house seemed overboard.

I had recorded the series but then deleted it to make room before I watched it. Is the whole series about the trial or is it about OJ in general? I thought it was all about the trial (interested) but then the episode descriptions made it sound as if it was more of a biography and then the trial in just a few (not interested).

^It is about OJ in general, Los Angeles racial tensions at different points in time, the crime and the trial plus more. All the backstory about OJ and the city in general help to paint a much more chilling picture of the events and add greatly to the impact of the piece.

It's about everything. OJ's life, playing career, acting career, the trial and race relations pre and post trial. That's why it's 7 1/2 hours long.

It's about his whole life. But the stuff early on really helps with understanding how things escalated to the trial/the rest of his life.

I'm not a legal adviser anymore than a lawyer, but how is changing the household with particular 'approved pictures' not jury tampering.

I would call it evidence tampering before jury tampering.

It was their job to influence the jury to O.J.'s side. Changing the contents of the house was akin to Johnny Cochran wearing African patterned ties in front of the jury.

As they explained: it was his house, it was no longer a crime scene, and he could redecorate just as any other homeowner could.