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Depressing episodes in American race relations come and go, but this one may stick. As we write, the news of the verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial is still fresh, though a new drama has quickly replaced the original one. Race--not crime and punishment--is its theme. And, while the long-running show that ended on the third of October was part soap, part sporting event (with an array of television pundits keeping score), this one is no fun at all. Unforgettable images have flitted across our television screen: of cheers, hugs, and high fives among black crowds; of racist graffiti in Brentwood, the white, traditionally liberal, upscale neighborhood in which O.J. and Nicole both lived. Are we two nations or one? The question--long a staple in the rhetoric of the left--must now be taken seriously.
A man confronted with overwhelming evidence of guilt has now gone free. It has happened before; it will happen again. But, from day one--a Friday evening in June of 1994--this was a tale like no other. Remember the opening act: a doublemurder suspect on a leisurely cruise, with the police in tow and an armada of law-enforcement and media helicopters hovering overhead. Simpson--the product of a black ghetto, winner of the Heisman Trophy, National Football League star, and nationally known actor, sportscaster, and commercial spokesman--was a man on a jog from the law. Along the route taken by Simpson and a long-time friend, spontaneous crowds formed, chanting "Free the Juice." (The suspect had already become a victim.) Only at his Brentwood home was Simpson finally taken into custody. The charge was first-degree murder: His ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald L. Goldman, a waiter at a neighborhood restaurant, had been found dead in the blood-spattered courtyard of Nicole's condominium. Both had been stabbed repeatedly; Nicole's throat had been slashed through to the spinal bone.
Simpson quickly assembled a self-described "Dream Team" of lawyers, with Johnnie Cochran, Los Angeles's most prominent black attorney, as lead trial counsel, backed up by a nationally renowned battery of experts. Millions of dollars were available and committed to the defense. With a judge scrupulously attentive to the rights of the accused and the desires of the defense, the trial proceeded at a leisurely pace in a...