Did OJ Do It?

9/1/95 at 9:27

While everyone grouses about how the OJ trial is not about discovering whether he "really" did it but about the lawyers trying to mislead the jury in their particular directions. Still, all such discussions assume that there is a "really" in the matter. Either he did it or he didn't.

Here's what TRUE. OJ doing it or not doing it doesn't exist now. The conversation is all about the "past." Since we can't go to the past, the conversation is actually about how we create the past in the present. At the very least, there is no way we can KNOW the past for certain. Consider these possibilities.

OJ has said he didn't do it. But he could be lying.

The prosecution has provided massive circumstantial and reasonable grounds for believing OJ did it, but it is not certain. As the defense alleges, there could be other explanations for the evidence; e.g., Thurman framing OJ.

Suppose we had an eye witness who said that they saw OJ do it. They could be lying. The same would be true if an eye-witness reported seeing OJ elsewhere at the time of the murders.

Suppose someone turned up a video-tape of OJ doing it (or of being somewhere else)--tapes can be fabricated.

Suppose OJ confessed? People confess to crimes they didn't commit all the time.

Does OJ know? Unfortunately, we know that humans screw with their memories to an extent that he could have blocked out doing it or created a memory of doing it.

Bottom line: it's not just that we won't know. We CAN'T know. It doesn't exist.

ID: 43617