“If it doesn’t fit, you must aquit.” That famous phrase crafted by the star of O.J. Simpson’s dream team lawyers, the late Johnnie Cochran, is probably the only thing most people remember about the case other than that he was found not guilty.
But, it turns out, it wasn’t just the fact that O.J. was wearing plastic gloves underneath as he tried on the killer’s gloves for the jury that caused them to not fit. Or the fact that the gloves had most likely shrunken because they were made of leather and had been exposed to the elements. Or even that O.J. was using his acting skills when trying them on. Those may have all been factors but their was one more giant key to really selling the entire charade, and it was revealed in the new ESPN documentary, “O.J.: Made In America.” (trailer above)
The former Los Angeles district attorney during the Simpson murder trial told Good Morning America’s George Stephanopoulos, “What we didn’t know until I saw it on this film was that O.J. Simpson was taking arthritic medication for his hands and he was told, ‘If you stop taking this arthritic medication, your hands will swell. Your joints will stiffen.’ My God.'”
So Simpson stopped taking the pills.
“Simpson’s legal team was led by Cochran, along with Robert Kardashian and Robert Shapiro. Garcetti said the defense team may have “baited” Clarke and Darden into asking Simpson to try on the glove.
“Did it tick me off? And I would use a different word. Yes, it did,” Garcetti said. “But I can’t say it’s really crossing the line. They did everything in their power. They got away with a lot, but we were baited into perhaps even having him try on the glove in the first place.”
Garcetti told Inside Edition that Simpson got a raw deal in serving his current 33-year sentence for kidnapping and robbery. “I don’t feel sorry for him that he’s behind bars,” Garcetti says, “But 33 years doesn’t appear to be the appropriate sentence for the crime he committed.”
He also told the reporter that president Jimmy Carter told him weeks before the verdict that the jury would never find Simpson guilty. Garcetti says Carter, “just looked me in the eyes as I’m looking at you and said, ‘Gil, they’re coming back not guilty…..many innocent black men have been convicted, some even executed, Gil, this is payback time.”
Click below for Inside Edition’s interview with Garcetti…
Garcetti also spoke to the NYDailyNews telling the publication about a disturbing moment he had during the trial at a dinner party where he began to see the “deeper” racial trouble his prosecution would face in the search for true justice.
“I was at a very small dinner party, maybe 11 people. They were all white except for one African-American couple.”
He recalled that the husband had a PhD in engineering and operated his own firm. As partygoers started speaking, Garcetti, who was involved in the trial, could only listen.
“I can’t say anything about it and I’m just listening and everyone is saying, ‘He’s guilty.’ And this African-American man says, ‘he’s guilty, he did it.’ But then there’s a pause and then he said, ‘But I would vote not guilty if I was on the jury.’”
Obviously that got Garcetti’s attention.
“I bored into him. I said, ‘Wait a minute. You just said he’s guilty but you’d vote not guilty. Why?’”
What happened next was a preview of things to come.
“I don’t know,” the man replied. Earlier that evening, Garcetti says the gentleman had told him he had two sons.
“So I played prosecutor and said, ‘If you believe he’s guilty and voted not guilty, how would you explain that to your sons?’” he asked the man.
According to Garcetti, the man shook his head, looked up and said, “I don’t know what I’d tell them, but I’d still vote not guilty.”
Garcetti was stunned into a state of silence.
“I realized then, ‘Whoa, wait a minute. This is not just an issue of innocence or guilt. This goes a lot deeper,’” he said.
Garcetti is still convinced he prosecuted the right guy, even if the jury and Simpson himself believe otherwise.
“I think he’s convinced himself that someone else did it,” he said.
Exit thought from disgraced former NBC Nightly News reporter Brian Williams who’s…
