Without a Doubt

Decades ago many of us watched Al Collins drive O.J Simpson's Bronco down interstate 405 in CA. He says to go to Nicole Brown's grave where he planned to say goodbye and to commit suicide. Instead he got back in the Bronco. Now everyone started to surmise he was making a run for the border. Despite having all the supplies to do so, he apparently was getting police escort to his home so he could turn himself in.Macia Clark writes an enthralling, detailed, and extremely honest book. She pulls no punches in her writing, takes credit where credit is due, but more times than not gives credit to others. She is vitally honest in her and others missteps as well as when someone does something great.This is not book you can read in one day, but it is one the reader will pick up as soon as possible and try not to put down until the last possible moment.The authors writes from her notes, her recordings, from newspaper articles, and from the heart. She is brutally honest about herself and others positively and negatively, as well as the justice system. She is a strong woman who deep down has a soft heart.While I have always believed that O.J Simpson is guilty of double murder, I can also say as a law geek, that if just one thing didn't feel truthful or didn't feel proven or puts doubt in a jurors mind, then they cannot find the defendant guilty. Again, as a law geek, I can find areas where the jury could have used this premise if they had truly taken the time to deliberate.To come back with a non guilty verdict after just two hours, I would tend to believe what most pundits believed, as did Marcia Clark and some of her team, that a guilty verdict was not in the cards. Simpson's own lawyers believed that the verdict would be guilty. I think a good majority of society was just as shocked by the non guilty verdict as they were angry at the acquittal of the white police offers less than a year ago in Rodney King's verdict.There were so many other issues brought into this trial that did not belong there. I agree that a stronger judge, gag orders, and better news containment would have helped a lot.In many ways this verdict and that of Rodney King really showed the downsides of the criminal justice system in regard to race, jury of your peers, etc. There will always be positive and negative in the justice system, but finding ways to make it more fair to every defendant should be a goal toward revamping the system as should the use of televised hearings and the use of gag order, etc.Reading this memoir brought back a lot of memories: the drive on the 405; the craziness under which O.J turned himself in; the rush by the defense to start the trial asap; the bias by the judge from the very beginning; his inability to control his courtroom; the circus the trial turned into; all those misleading and unneeded press conferences by Johnnie Cochran after each days testimony; the use of race at different times throughout the trial, where Judge Lance Into would overrule his own rulings about race, and slang words, and so many other topics.Not many of my memories and thoughts differ much from this memoir, although blanks and some alternate perspectives and detail are provided and added a lot in a relatively unbiased manner.While I just this book up on a whim and because the topic interested me, I am glad that I did so. It was well worth the read.HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

WITHOUT A DOUBT by Marcia Clark is a definitive book about the O.J. Simpson trial and, in a way, a Marcia Clark memoir on her private reflections 20-plus years after the “Trial of the Century” where she played the role of lead prosecutor. Nicole Brown, O.J. Simpson’s former wife, and an acquaintance, Ron Goldman, were slaughtered on the steps of Nicole’s condominium on the night of June 13, 1994, two years after Nicole and O.J. were divorced. At the time of the trial, Marcia Clark was not a novice prosecutor. Except for a one year stint as a defense attorney and a year in management, she had spent 14 years in the Special Trials Unit as a deputy district attorney for Los Angeles County. Three years earlier she had successfully prosecuted Robert Bardo who murdered actress Rebecca Schaeffer. She put Bardo away for life. Despite the preponderance of hard core evidence against Orenthal James Simpson (AKA O.J.)—his celebrity, his coddling by worshipping LAPD cops, a star-studded defense team, an incompetent and spineless judge, Lance Ito, adored by a mostly black jury with an attitude that it was payback time for the Rodney King trial—he slaughtered two people and walked free past the most massive and compelling body of physical evidence that matched material ever assembled against a criminal defendant. Chief prosecutor Clark had personal problems of her own. She was in the middle of her second divorce while attempting to manage the trial of the century and be a mother to her two very young children. All of a sudden, she was thrown into celebrity. She tells the story of stopping at a grocery store after a hard day. At the checkout counter, the girl looked up at her and said, “What are you doing here yourself?” Meaning a big shot like you must certainly have people doing this for you. Marcia felt like saying, “Look honey, I live in a rat hole with a leaky roof, a window in my car is broken and I’m having trouble paying my mortgage. Who do you suppose runs my errands?” A preponderance of unique problems made the prosecutor’s case even more difficult. To mention a couple, the criminalist/analyst, Colin Yamauchi and Dennis Fung performed a sloppy job of collecting evidence and later provided inept and befuddled testimony as witnesses. Clark discusses conflicts between the LAPD Robbery-Homicide Division and the County District Attorney’s office. She felt that the LAPD drug their feet on many key and very timely issues. Clark also got a bum rap from the media, who for the most part were celebrity driven and on O.J.’s side. After seventeen months of media circus, O.J. Simpson was found not guilty. The good part is that the real killer, O.J. Simpson, is now locked up in a Nevada prison on a conviction in a botched second-rate robbery in a Las Vegas hotel. After reading this book, I don’t know how anyone can doubt Simpson’s guilt. He is guilty of slaughtering two innocent people and leaving them sliced-up, bleeding and very dead. I believe Marcia Clark wrote a clearly definitive book, pragmatically laying out the facts of O.J. Simpson’s guilt. I give Marcia Clark’s book a 5-star rating. I enjoyed the read.

This was the first book about the O.J. Simpson trial I read. I have read it five times. I picked it because while reviewing the many books out there, one reviewer said this book was the least self-aggrandizing of the books written by the principals. Since then I have read others. I would recommend Jeffery Toobin’s book (Run of His Life), Evidence Dismissed by the two lead detectives (excellent, excellent book, until the rebuttal section, that got a little old) Raging Heart and Dan Petrocelli’s book about the civil case.

Even 25 years after the event it is shocking to think how Simpson got away with a double murder. This book goes a long way in making sense of it,and also as a British reader it gives a good account of how the American justice system works, which is very different to here. All in all an excellent read.

Amazing biography by Marcia Clark. Interesting till the end, however it makes you incredibly frustrated to read about the undebatable evidence she presented which was shut down completely. Shocking to see how this case was dealt with by an incompetent judge and jury. Marcia Clark is a brilliant, strong and devoted woman and prosecutor who wrote an amazing biography of the hardest case she had to endure.

Am fascinated by the case. This is the 5th publication by different authors I have read. I would not recommend it. Possibly the best way to define is some type of therapeutic exercise for the author who clearly failed at multiple points to present the case.She appears to be whinging and whining at every step that was the fault of 'others'.Would look at other attempts to explain it by other authors.A poor purchase on my part!

In what other book would you be able to gain first-hand insight into an event which gripped as many people as it did. Marcia Clark provides, firstly, an objective view to the trial but also scatters scathing points about the defence team and Judge Ito. While she rightfully does not condone the previous behaviour of Mark Fuhrman, she does exonerate him of any evidence tampering through a rational discussion of the facts. An interesting take on a case which surely received a perverse verdict.

Marcia I hope you got a deserving pay rise at some point in your career.I remember the case and remember not caring too much about it at the time. Only now and looking back do I realise how historic this case is. A massive shame that those murdered have been forgotten and not much has changed for the black communities who made such a stand.