The O.J. Simpson Verdict: Justice Served Or Travesty Of Justice Avenged?

The Juice is toast.
O.J. Simpson is facing a long, long time in prison because of his misguided and downright thuggish attempt to recover some of his football memorabilia from a cheesy dealer in Las Vegas. Operating under the assumption that the stuff was in fact his – or used to be, anyway – and he wanted it back you can understand his motives.
It’s just a little harder to go along with the part where he takes a bunch of other big guys with him, waves guns in the dealer’s faces, and takes the stuff by force. The jury agreed with operating in that mode constitutes robbery and even kidnapping. And now he’s headed for a long stretch in prison along with one of his co-defendants.
But O.J.’s lawyer, Yale Galanter, said that this wasn’t justice. This was revenge:

“This was just payback,” Simpson lawyer Yale Galanter said Saturday. “They were on an agenda.”
Galanter said he plans to appeal.
[...]
Galanter said he felt badly for Simpson but even worse for co-defendant Charles “C.J.” Stewart who he said got dragged along in the campaign to convict Simpson.
Simpson’s close friend, Tom Scotto, who wept in court when the verdict was announced, called it “a public lynching.”
[...]
He added: “This case has taken on a life of its own because of Mr. Simpson’s involvement. You know that. I know that. Every cooperator, every person who had a gun, every person who had an ulterior motive, every person who signed a book deal, every person who got paid money, the police, the district attorney’s office, is only interested in one thing: Mr. Simpson.”

A lot of people strongly feel that Simpson got away with the double murder of his wife and Ron Goldman. So…..was the jury’s verdict about revenge? Was the jury predisposed to find Simpson guilty because they thought he’d escaped justice once before and they weren’t going to let him get away again?
I doubt it.
The evidence, including audio tapes of the incident, was pretty compelling. And my personal feelings are that Simpson probably presumed that he could get away with something like that as long as he had friends who would lie for him and and a relatively Simpson friendly media reporting on him. The jury reached the verdict they needed to reach and weren’t swayed by Simpson’s past – or his race. That particular card’s expiration date had evidently passed.
Simpson got what he deserved in this this case, and that’s just it. It’s about this case that he’s going to jail, not about the last one. Is there some satisfaction for a lot of people that he didn’t get away this time? Sure. But he was convicted on the merits of what happened in a Las Vegas hotel, not for what happened on a dark Los Angeles street many years ago.
There will be, of course, some who will howl “revenge” and even some who will dig out their dusty race cards and wave them at us. Okay. We’ve been there before. Have at it.
In the meantime, he’s going to jail.
Just like you or I would if we’d have done the same thing.
By the way, there’s an interesting article in today’s Los Angeles Times on this. Even more interesting are to reader’s comments following the piece. He doesn’t seem to be getting the overwhelming sympathy even there that he did before.
As one of the commenters put it, he was off the radar. He should have known to stay off.