During a discussion about all the mistakes in the prosecution of the O.J. Simpson criminal case, Fox News’ Gregg Jarrett and Heather Childers left out the revelations of then-police officer Mark Fuhrman’s racism. It just so happens that Fuhrman is now a Fox News contributor.
Childers hosted colleague Jarrett, who had covered the case, to comment on a New York Post story that then-District Attorney Gil Garcetti had wanted a “more experienced attorney” than Marcia Clark to try the O.J. case.
Jarrett spent the entire segment ripping the prosecution.
JARRETT: Did Marcia Clark blow the case? Absolutely she blew the case. I thought she was inept, over-tried the case, made poor judgments, failed to properly prepare key witnesses. Of course, it didn’t help that – there you see Chris Darden, upper right, her co-prosecutor – I also went to law school with him – and, you know, the famous gaffe was having O.J. Simpson try on the bloody glove. That was Darden’s decision. They teach in law school now how not to prosecute a case and they use that as an example.
Jarrett went on to criticize Clark for picking eight black women for the jury, defense attorney Johnnie Cochran for “inserting racial unrest where it didn’t belong” and Judge Lance Ito for allowing it.
Jarrett also suggested that the case should have been tried in a white community with a white jury.
JARRETT: If Gil Garcetti is still looking, all these years, for a villain, he need look no further than his own mirror. He’s the one who sent the case downtown. The moment he did that, he lost the case. It should have been tried in Santa Monica where the crime took place but he sent it downtown, initially he told reporters, because well, he wanted the verdict, which he assumed would be guilty, to have more credibility with a racially diverse jury. I mean, that was simply foolish.
According to the Post, the courtroom in Santa Monica had been wrecked by an earthquake and downtown Los Angeles had a courtroom built for high-profile, high-security and high-media cases. But host Childers didn’t mention that.
Another prosecution problem not mentioned was Fuhrman. In a recent interview with “Furhman tapes” creator Laura Hart McKinney, Vanity Fair discusses their significance:
The “Fuhrman tapes”—as they became known—were part of a larger project McKinny undertook between 1985 and 1994. Attempting to craft a screenplay about the rampant sexism in the L.A.P.D., McKinny interviewed a number of male and female officers and captured 13 hours of uncensored content from Mark Fuhrman where he used the N-word 41 times when describing instances of police brutality perpetrated on black suspects. The tapes destroyed Fuhrman’s credibility as a witness, resulted in a perjury charge, and bolstered the defense’s argument that Simpson was the victim of a massive L.A.P.D. conspiracy.
Media Matters elaborates:
During the O.J. Simpson trial, a number of other witnesses testified that Fuhrman was a racist. Fuhrman, who testified during the trial that he had not used a racial slur in the past 10 years, pled no contest to perjury charges and was sentenced to three years of probation.
Despite omitting any discussion of Fuhrman, he was displayed in photos from the trial. You can see him above, on the witness stand, being questioned by Clark.
Fuhrman's racist past has never stopped Fox from presenting him as a neutral analyst in more recentl cases involving race and the police. So why should Fox think it matters now?
Watch Fox whitewash O.J. Simpson trial history below, from the April 12 Happening Now.
From what I’ve heard about everyday people describing the LAPD is that it is more like an occupying army than a local police force.
And most of all the if the LAPD hadn’t whupped the hell out of Rodney King, the jury wouldn’t have been the racial reverse of the Medger Evers jury.