Johnny Cochran at the O.J. Trial Claiming a Police Conspiracy
Now, it would have been very convenient for Judge Ito and Marcia, for him to stand up and say, "I say so, God told me." They would have laughed him out of court. He wouldn't dream of doing that, not at the salary he's paid, which is a lot better than movie stars.
These people are experts at concocting the arbitrary and concealing that it's arbitrary. He doesn't stand up and say, "I made this conspiracy up out of whole cloth; we're desperate." On the contrary, he drenches you with this worldly fact—some of them actually true—and impeccable inferences—sometimes—and here's just a few examples:[1]
- Furman planted the bloody glove.
Is that a fact? What's your basis for that, Johnny? Well, what about F. Lee Bailey's statement that Marines know how to do these things? Furman was a Marine, so that's evidence, right? What about the fact that Furman couldn't have done it according to the circumstances that were revealed, including all the witnesses? Oh, but they're part of the conspiracy, so he could have done it. And he's motivated to do it because we had a conspiracy.
- The police lied about why they entered the O.J. property in Brentwood.
True, they did. But why did they lie? He's automatically saying that's part of the conspiracy against O.J. and they're covering up or did they a lie because they didn't want to go through the hassles of getting a search warrant; and maybe letting a killer on the premises get away; and this kind of lying is routine for all police officers across the country because given the so-called exclusionary rule(another example of something made up by the supreme court with no basis whatsoever), they're constantly in the position of lying or letting killers get away.
- The police being sloppy about blood collection and storage.
Again, absolutely true. The only thing is the L.A. police, from what I can gather, are sloppy about everything in every case. The question is, did this sloppiness and carrying around in their back pocket and playing soccer with it and so on, did that change the DNA evidence? And experts proved that it was impossible to have all those O.J. indications by sheer collection of accidental manipulations. It's beyond the laws of probability. Vince Bugliosi, in his book "Outrage," takes this apart completely. If you took the DNA and hammered it, poured acid on it, the most you can do is obliterate it. You couldn't take someone else's DNA and have it come up O.J.'s everywhere.
Here we have a series of irrelevant data and/or groundless interpretations of data, piled up, obviously, in the hope that the sheer accumulation will qualify as a basis, even though every single one of the constituent items is irrelevant. This is just exactly like saying, "France is a brilliant country, but every Frenchman is retarded."
Contrast Cochran to a reasonable situation. A defense team who would claim a police conspiracy and then produce an affidavit or, better still, direct testimony on the stand from, say, five or ten policemen involved in the case. They would name the leaders, their motives, how many people knew about it, and how they all arranged to keep it secret. Now you would have a real basis to allege a police conspiracy. It wouldn't yet be foolproof, but it would be a hell of a starting point.
Notice here that precisely because the basis is given, there is a way, in theory, of refuting it, assuming it's false, whereas the actual Cochran allegation is irrefutable because there's nothing whatever to refute. You can't go on anything. But, if Cochran put forth all these witnesses on the stand, then, theoretically at least, the DA could come back and put on another witness who testifies that Cochran paid a million dollars apiece to each of these five or ten policemen. Then the DA produces deposit slips from their bank accounts and then frisks them in court, finding tickets to Brazil in each witness's pocket for a plane that's leaving at 4:00. Then you can say there wasn't a conspiracy, they're being paid off to save O.J. The message is that if you have a basis, even a mistaken basis, that is the opposite of spouting only irrelevant data and groundless interpretations, even if no supernatural or sixth sense is involved.