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From: Jasper
Date: 3/7/03
Time: 9:08:08 AM
Remote Name: 68.73.54.0
Kari,
Fuhrman didn’t have to have control over the entire justice system anymore than he had to have control over the media. All he had to know was how it worked.
California’s criminal justice system was not in the business of investigating the accusation, adjudicating the case with a presumption of innocence for the accused and holding police, prosecutors and judges accountable for official misconduct. Prior to the Bundy murders the LADA’s office had a conviction rate of 95%, far above the national average. That extraordinary rate could be achieved only with an extraordinary degree of cooperation between the LAPD, the District Attorney and the entire criminal judicial system including the State Supreme Court to convict the accused.
The only time cops were ever prosecuted was when they were caught red-handed committing a felony outside of their official duties. In practical terms, they had a license to whatever they pleased on the job without fear of prosecution as long as they knew what to say in their official reports and on the witness stand. That’s what Fuhrman was talking about on the McKinny tapes when he boasted about being able to “murder people and get away with it” and why he chided fellow officers who didn’t know how to testify. That’s what he was talking about in 1985 when he told Laura Hart McKinny (Laura Hart at the time) that he could arrest anybody he wanted to and make up the evidence later. He simply followed time-tested formulas that worked. That’s why Vincent Bugliosi was so bent out of shape about Fuhrman’s perjury prosecution. It was unprecedented.
Remember all the whining that Marcia Clark and Chris Darden did about Judge Ito allowing some portions of the McKinny tapes to be played before the jury and not allowing them to present a few items of evidence that were clearly tainted? Those actions by Ito were also unprecedented. Steven Singular’s source did not come to him because he or she thought that O.J. was innocent. The source did it because he or she was fed up with years of police misconduct, the DA’s suborning of perjury and using evidence that they knew was planted to get convictions. What we saw in the criminal trial of O.J. Simpson was not the way criminal prosecutions were normally conducted with the exculpatory evidence that O.J.’s criminal trial jury was allowed to see.
Normally the jury got to see very little exculpatory evidence and as much incriminating evidence as the prosecution could produce. Nobody in the system was used to seeing the prosecution’s evidence and witnesses weighed evenly against the evidence and witnesses of the defense. Thus, Lange and Vannatter’s book title Evidence Dismissed, Vincent Bugliosi’s book title Outrage and Chris Darden’s outraged comment, “We had enough evidence to convict Christ!” Apparently Darden forgot that Pontius Pilate did, too. --Jasper