From: Jasper
Date: 5/1/02
Time: 12:28:30 AM
Charlie,
The more I think about this, the more I feel like kicking myself in the butt for not seeing it sooner.
Just as the name of the game for the defense was "Reasonable Doubt," the name of the game for the prosecution was "Plausible Guilt."
They wedded themselves to a "wailing dog" start time for the killing of 10:15 in the trial by media that preceded the preliminary hearing. The whole world heard that story and the prosecution was doing everything it could to make it stick. When you think about it, what was the real value of Eva Stein's testimony? The last time she looked at a clock was 10:00 and here methodology for figuring out when the barking woke her up is about as valid as pulling a time straight out of the air. "It seemed like a half hour" before her boyfriend got home. Really…
It seems totally irrational until you consider the practical consequences of their testimony. Then it makes a whole lot of sense. It wasn't the testimony that mattered; it was THE IMPRESSION that was left AFTER the testimony.
The impression Stein left was that she heard the barking being as 10:15, giving independent, corroborating support for the testimony of Pablo The impression Karpf left was that he saw Steven Schwab much earlier than 10:55. That was the impression I got, and I had a devil of a time getting past it because it was such a STRONG IMPRESSION and because I didn't know anything about a conflicting timeline until seven months later. And I didn't actually hear any of it for myself until a full year later.
That's a long time for an impression to take root as well as a good reason (as opposed to a good excuse) for believing for all that time that O.J. was as guilty as a fox with chicken feathers in his teeth - and that the cops framed a guilty man.
Facts count but sometimes impressions, true or false, count more. If you're not looking at the practical consequences, you're not seeing the whole picture.
Thanks Charlie. --Jasper