From: Jasper
Date: December 08, 2005
Time: 11:35 PM
Jean, …I know what you mean. My limited but memorable experience with massive blood loss pointed me in directions that people without that experience would not have looked in. Ditto with military tactics, design and engineering. As much as I’ve posted about these experiences that led me to question the evidence and the testimony against O.J., I know that most people without similar experience will either not buy it or not get it. Or not buy it because they don't get it and don't want to. ………..Berry Scheck PROVED through the witnesses he examined and the evidence he produced during their testimony that O.J. Simpson was not the Bundy murderer. No way. Physically impossible. I watched all of that stuff as it happened thinking that he made some strong points. However there was enough confusion in my mind to allow for the possibility that I missed something significant – perhaps significant enough to weaken the points he made that I thought were so strong. Years after the O.J. trials I went through parts of what he did several times and weighed them against the rebuttals. Only then did I get the full measure of what I saw and heard. I did not have Berry Scheck’s life experience to guide me. …………..Part of my problem was his fault. The clear thrust of his presentation was to create reasonable doubts about the blood evidence. Unfortunately, he was successful. I say “unfortunately” because he had much more than evidence. He had proof. When you fit his work into the tapestry of the entire case against O.J. you get a scientific contradiction in every thread. It was not “smoke and mirrors” as Marcia Clark kept saying. It was real science matched against real science with only the threads of the prosecution’s rhetoric to hold its case together. The science on both sides was the same. The interpretations were different only because the prosecution and the pundits misrepresented what was actually presented in court. I suspected that this was true but I didn’t know it until I fully understood it. …………..I don’t have to have your life experience to understand everything you say. Sometimes I need more than you tell me to get the full measure of it. It might be your fault or mine but if I truly want to understand I can understand and it is my responsibility to keep digging until I do. “Life experience” is used too often these days to excuse prejudice. I’ve reached a point that before I can accept life experience as a good reason for discounting disagreeable evidence I have to discount it as a handy excuse for nurturing a prejudice. –Jasper