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From: Junot
Date: 6/10/03
Time: 4:33:03 PM
Remote Name: 198.49.222.20
Jasper wrote, in part:
"Of course Fuhrman couldn’t say any of those things. That’s what the smirk was about. All intelligent, unbiased people knew that he was a cop at the time, not a criminal, and that his relevant testimony was unimpeachable. His momentary amnesia on a collateral issue just made it appear that he was lying. Even if he did lie it didn’t change the mountain of evidence against O.J. Simpson..."
There was no "mountain of evidence", as we all know.
or the facts that proved he was the greatest detective in the world. As Dominick Dunne put it, “…one of the great detectives of all time.”
Actually, the work of the LAPD detectives were so poor that they not only look like the Keystone Cops; they made the Keystone cops look like Sherlock Holmes.
Try this one for size, it always gets a great response: suppose I walk up to a cop walking his beat and say, "Office! Officer! I just heard strange noises coming from behind that tree over there! I just heard three loud thumps coming from behind that ree over there!
And the cop goes behind the tree and finds, say, a baggie of cocaine.
Am I going to jail, or what.
In the same way, it never occurred to Fuhrman to ask Kaelin: "Why did you want me to go behind your wall?" or even "How did you know that glove was back there."
Some "great detective", right?
Not that Fuhrman has a lot to be ashamed of. It didn't occur to anyone else, either.
"It’s different with true criminal defendants. The case is supposed to be about them. If THEY take The Fifth it is, of course, an indication of guilt. That’s just commons sense. –Jasper"
Actually, there are a number of reasons for a dfendant to choose to not testify in his own defense. In OJ's case, his lawyers ran him through practice cross-examination and discovered he would have been a disaster as a witness...which he was in the civil trial. Some people can't play football well, others can't give testimony. Same principle.
It NEVER happens that a defendant gets on the stand and says, "I refuse to answer on the ground the answer may tend to incriminate me." Rather, the defendant simply stays in his chair at the defense table. It is settle before trial that the defendant will not testify, and the judge then gives a jury instruction that they are not to hold his refusal to testify against him. Common sense says that many and even most jurors WILL hold his refusal to testify against him, but, hey, the system has done all it can.