TV news today is all OJ Simpson’s parole hearing all the time. Quite frankly, I think he was sent to prison not for stealing his own property back but because they were trying to get him for murdering Nicole Simpson & Ron Goldman. A jury found him innocent of those 1994 murders. He probably did murder them but if the police hadn’t planted evidence to nail him & the forensics team hadn’t mishandled evidence the overwhelming evidence would have been more persuasive to a jury. If he hadn’t had the resources for a dream team of lawyers & was a Black working class kid, he’d have been sent up the river for life without parole.
What to me is most memorable about the 1995 verdict is that media immediately began beating the drums of polarization about the incompatibility of Blacks & whites. This incited racists to come out from under their rocks which was a very scary phenomenon to witness. Serendipitously, just two weeks after the verdict, Black organizations held the Million Man March in Washington, DC which had conservative politics but was a show of Black power that drew at least a million people. The racist crap in media stopped on a dime & the racists went back under their rocks. That is why I am an advocate for Black power.