Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away With Murder

Vincent Bugliosi tackles the mighty and famous O.J. Simpson affair that captivated a nation for an entire year. He does a fantastic job of showing how Simpson was without a doubt guilty of the double murder. He also shows how the prosecution blew a completely winnable case with their passive and imcompetent fight, ignoring many key pieces of evidence and not being more aggressive towards the defense. He also shows how ridiculous the defense theory was that the police had framed Simpson. A good read, but still could have been written better. The writing is at about a high school level. A few things wrong here and there though.
Bugliosi is often way too critical though of the prosecution. He does not realize how stressful the trail must have been for both sides. The mistakes made during the trial was because of the intense pressure and media coverage. Bugliosi himself may have made some major mistakes if he was under that kind of pressure too. I've also heard that Bugliosi was not present inside the courtroom during the trial. I think he did not attend a single day of the trial while it was happening. This does not help him either; if he is going to criticize the defense and prosecution, he should have been present in the courtroom! The book also includes the police interview with O.J. the day after the murders, Simpson's letter, and a few other extras to fill in some missing questions people might have.

I've been a fan of Vincent Bugliosi since he wrote HELTER SKELTER (the best-selling true crime book in publishing history) and can't hear the Beatles' song of that title without thinking of the crime it was used to signify. As I recall, it was the first book I can remember reading every word, as it was so hard to believe he was writing such horrendous things about real people who appeared to be under the influence of the Devil. The real life demon was a drug-crazed Charles Manson who mesmerized his women followers to kill indiscriminately in California, for no reason.

Here, we find an impartial account of another monster who felt he was bigger than God (and had a reason), and had learned from those crazy movies he was in how he could get away with murder. His timing was off, his alibi unsubstantiated, and all the incriminating evidence proved he did it. No one else was even questioned seriously except perhaps that silly Kato Kaelin (who had no reason) who seemed such a blockhead, didn't know his right hand from his left.

According to this book, some of the most vital pieces of evidence was never presented to the jury by the harassed prosecutors. Amazingly, it took this jury of his peers only four hours to come up with the "Not Guilty" verdict. The whole world knew he was guilty.

I'd watched 95% of the t.v. coverage and had wondered what had been in the suitcase he had when the police met his return plane and Robert Kardashian took from him. This is called tampering with evidence. When it turned up later empty, no one investigated -- or at least, the public was not informed. It had to hold his bloody clothes which vanished into thin air. Many people felt that he had an accomplice.

The way he thanked his saviors (the jury) made me feel they had been 'bought.' I've never been able to figure out why the son of O.J. broke into sobs when the verdict was read, and wondered at the time if he'd been the accomplice. He was escorted out of that courtroom pronto before reporters could ask why he'd cried.

The last picture shown in the photo section showed the disbelief and abject horror on the faces of viewers in the electronics department of a Sears store in Jackson, TN, when O.J. basked in his victory over death. The photo above was gross -- a waitress named Neely and a Chicago sales rep. cheered in a bar on the southside, where my eldest son was living as a student at the University of Chicago at that time. How can people react so differently to such an unjust decision by an uninformed group of jury members who'd fought among themselves?!

Called the Trial of the Century, it proved to be a farce over which a tyrant of a judge presided and pandered to the defense, always castigating and fining members of the prosecution team. Even though I knew O.J. was guilty, I thought Johnnie Cochran's closing argument was a classic. As a young mother, I had worked as secretary to some smalltown lawyers and learned from that experience, but I had never heard such rhetoric as in his presentation. I believed Mark Fuhrman and felt that he had been unjustly treated by the media.

Only an experienced prosecuting attorney could have come up with the five reasons why O.J. Simpson got away with murder. He shows how there could have been and should have been a different verdict. O.J. somehow was exonerated and free from a lifetime in prison, but his life changed drastically. No more movies or t.v. ads, no high-flying personna people could admire.

Bugliosi won Edgar Allan Poe awards for HELTER SKELTER and TILL DEATH US DO PART. His AND THE SEA WILL TELL was #1 on New York Times bestseller list. I read all three (thoroughly researched) and watched the movies made for t.v., but it was hard. I felt "let down" by the system for a long time after the O.J. fiasco of a trial and the outrageous, unbelievable verdict.

A smalltown police chief once told me, "Don't you know, there ain't no justice." This trial makes me believe him.

This book powerfully clears up the case against OJ Simpson for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. As Bugliosi explains, there was no mystery in the case itself. It was open and shut. The only mystery was how a jury managed to acquit a manifest double murderer. And this book supplies much of the answer to this mystery. It shows in detail how he would have presented the case against OJ.

Bugliosi assuredly would have presented a stronger case for the prosecution. And let's give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe he'd have won that case. But given the overwhelming evidence against OJ, what does that tell us? It tells us that in cases where a criminal has good lawyers, you'll get better justice by flipping a coin than by having a jury trial. And if expensive trials are worthless, what does that say about cheap trials? It puts the entire American criminal justice system in doubt. That is one reason to read this book and see some of the places where the system failed.

Even had OJ been found guilty, there were plenty of high profile cases that already cast grave doubt on the usefulness of jury trials. But this one took the cake, particularly since so many observers felt that there would be a conviction after reasonable jury deliberation, not an acquittal after virtually no deliberation at all. Again, this book helps show why so many observers were so convinced that even the case as presented was airtight.

Some people believe that, as in the Rodney King case (another grave miscarriage of justice), the issue was race. But the defense in a criminal trial almost always comes up with an issue other than guilt. So I agree with the author's claim that a conviction was obtainable with the actual jury. I also agree that the actual result "had an injurious effect on Americans' faith in the jury system." And I even agree that there is still hope for the jury system. However, I think this case shows that dramatic changes still need to be made for the jury system to be worthwhile. And it is sad that until that happens, we'll see an disgraceful and unnecessary number of guilty people going free and innocent people being convicted. Bugliosi thoughtfully discusses some of the recommendations to improve trials that were made at the time.

Read this book to see just how poorly the system performed here.

Ten years after the vicious slayings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, the last and best word on the O.J. Simpson murder case is OUTRAGE by Vincent Bugliosi.

Bugliosi never lets his rage and disgust overwhelm his razor-sharp legal mind as he tears into the dubious "Dream Team" of OJ's defense team, the astonishingly-incompetent prosecutors, the hapless Judge Ito and, the killer himself, OJ Simpson.

But you will be aware of Bugliosi's anger before he lays out a flawless case against Simpson.
I saw it in the last sentence of an early chapter when he uncharacteristically allows profanity into his writing: When describing OJ's defense team throwing a party for jurors after Simpson was acquitted--while Nicole and Ron lie in the ground--Bugliosi writes, "It's so (expletive) obscene there are no words for it."
And there are still no words for it.

In the first week of October 1995, only one person on the planet was angrier than I was - and that person was none other than Vincent Bugliosi - star prosecutor of the Manson gang. Thus, I was drawn to his account of the debacle known as the O.J. trial as if it contained the secrets of Tutankhamen. There are many attributes to this seething indictment of our legal system, the brain-dead jury who rendered the laughable verdict, and the bunglings of the prosecutors (and the eunuch-like judge) involved in this case. However......

Bugliosi gives an "F" grade to Marcia Clark, Chris Darden, et. al. A failing grade? Really now, Mr. Bugliosi. The same evidence that convinced you, me and millions of other non-retarded individuals was presented by the very prosecutors you excoriate in this book. Yes, they were clumsy. Yes, they made critical errors. But let's face some salient facts here. Forrest Gump could have presented the overwhelming (and irrefutable) evidence in this case - merely by calling in the DNA experts, who proved beyond ANY doubt that Simpson's blood was dropped at the crime scene. Virginia Woolf, in the midst of a lithium overdose, could have been convinced of the disgraced NFL star's guilt.

Mr. Bugliosi states, with the supreme confidence of someone supremely confident, that "he could have convinced the O.J. juty to convict O.J." Come again? Let's be reasonable here. The genius prosecutor of Manson and his trogledyte terrorists did not have a jury inflamed by Rodney King, nor were Manson and his co-defendants sports icons. The Manson jurors were reasonable, compassionate people who listened to the evidence, maintained a healthy respect for justice, and saw through the sophomoric antics of the defense team. (Anyone remember Irving Kanarek? If you don't, count your lucky stars.)

"Outrage" marked the first and only time I've ever been somewhat annoyed with Vince Bugliosi. He can't expect every prosecutor, especially someone with a mountain-sized chip on their shoulder (C. Darden) to perform to his standards. Lightning doesn't strike twice - and neither will Bugliosi's genius of the early seventies.

Bugliosi is absolutely correct in disdaining the woeful verdict that exonerated O.J. for his despicable behavior. His meticulous examination of the mistakes that pervaded the trial is beyond reproach. However, I believe he fails to recognize another irrefutable fact: His own staggering brilliance would not have swayed O.J.'s jury; rather, it would have worked against him. It's fairly obvious that this jury would not have convicted the wife-battering O.J. - not even if they had witnessed the crime first-hand. (Two words: "Brenda" and "Moran" come to mind. As Dominick Dunne so succinctly said, "Never underestimate the power of stupidity.")

Yes, there was plenty of blame to go around in one of the bleakest events in the history of American justice. Bugliosi is justifiably bitter; I too shall be saddened until the day I leave this earth. Like Bugliosi, I cannot regard the lives of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman as any less sacred than those of Emmett Till or Medgar Evers. I regret that I was not old enough to vote on those juries so many years ago, because I despise the mockery of justice and virulent racism that pervaded those proceedings. Like O.J.'s jury, those panels were populated by ignorant persons possessed of personal animus, limited intelligence and misdirected rage.

"We've got to protect our own," Carrie Bess allegedly belched to one her fellow jurors. Let's put the blame where it belongs, Mr. Bugliosi: on a defense attorney whose insipid blatherings shouldn't have scared a two-year-old; on a jury who refused to see the truth - and who deliberated for an appallingly short time - and a flaccidly foolish judge who couldn't control his own courtroom. It is Bugliosi's heavy-handed condemnation of the prosecution that detracts from an otherwise excellent presentation. Yet, I shall always admire and respect Mr. Bugliosi for his years of dedication to the cause of justice, and my loyalty is unwavering - now and for always.