The Trials of Oscar Wilde ..............................................
Old
Bailey, the main courthouse in London, had never presented a show
quite like the three trials that captivated England and much of
the literary world in the spring of 1895. Celebrity, sex, witty
dialogue, political intrique, surprising twists, and important
issues of art and morality--is it any surprise that the trials of
Oscar Wilde continue to fascinate one hundred years after the
death of one of England's greatest authors and playrights?
The Trials of Oscar Wilde: An Account
by Douglas O. Linder
Old Bailey, the main courthouse in London, had never presented a
show quite like the three trials that captivated England and much
of the literary world in the spring of 1895. Celebrity, sex, witty
dialogue, political intrigue, surprising twists, and important
issues of art and morality--is it any surprise that the trials of
Oscar Wilde continue to fascinate one hundred years after the
death of one of England's greatest authors and playwrights?
The events that would bring Oscar Wilde to Old Bailey began four
years earlier in the summer of 1891 when Wilde, then thirty-eight
years old, met a promising twenty-two-year old poet named Lord
Alfred Douglas ("Bosie") at a tea party. The two became
extremely close. Douglas took great pleasure in the interest shown
in him by Wilde, already a major literary figure. Douglas called
his elder companion "the most chivalrous friend in the
world." Wilde saw in Douglas not only a lively intellect, but
a young man with an Adonis-like appearance. Wilde made no secret
of his interest. Douglas later said, " He was continually
asking me to lunch and dine with him and sending me letters,
notes, and telegrams." He also showered Douglas with presents
and wrote a sonnet for him. They stayed together in each other's
houses and in hotels, and went on trips together.
The first serious problem for Wilde growing out of his
relationship of Douglas came when Douglas, still a student in
Oxford, gave an old suit to a down-and-out friend named Wood. Wood
discovered in a pocket of the suit letters written by Wilde to his
youthful friend. Wood extorted £35 from Wilde for return of most
of the compromising letters. Wilde later described the money as a
gift to enable Wood to start a new life in America. Two other
would-be blackmailers were given smaller amounts of money after
returning the remaining letters.
Wilde's downfall came not from blackmailers, however, but rather
the father of Alfred Douglas, John Sholto Douglas, the Marquees of
Queensberry. Queensberry was an arrogant, ill-tempered, eccentric
and perhaps even mentally imbalanced Scottish nobleman best note
for developing and promoting rules for amateur boxing (the
"Queensberry rules"). Queensberry became concerned about
his son's relationship with "this man Wilde." His
concern was temporarily alleviated at the Cafe Royal in late 1892,
when his son introduced him to the noted literary figure. Wilde
charmed Queensberry over a long lunch with many cigars and liquers.
By early 1894 Queensberry concluded the Wilde was most likely a
homosexual and began demanding that his son stop seeing Wilde:
"Your intimacy with this man Wilde must either cease or I
will disown you and stop all money supplies," Queensberry
wrote in April. "I am not going to try an analyze this
intimacy, and I make no charge; but to my mind to pose as a thing
is as bad as to be it." Douglas replied in a telegram:
"What a funny little man you are."
Queensberry began taking increasingly desperate measures to end
the relationship. He threatened restaurant and hotel managers with
beatings if he ever discovered Wilde and his son together on their
premises. In June of 1894 Queenberry, accompanied by a
prize-fighter, showed up without warning at Wilde's house in
Chelsea. An angry conversation ensued, ending when Wilde ordered
Queensberry to leave saying, "I do not know what the
Queensberry rules are, but the Oscar Wilde rule is to shoot on
sight." Queensberry's subsequent letters to his son, who he
had already ceased to support, grew increasingly intemperate.
"You reptile," he wrote, "you are no son of mine
and I never thought you were." Douglas answered, "If O.
W. was to prosecute you in the criminal courts for libel, you
would get seven years' penal servitude for your outrageous
libels."
On February 14, 1895, Wilde's new play The Importance of Being
Earnest was set to open at the St. James Theatre. Wilde learned
that Queensberry planned to disrupt the opening night's
performance and harrangue the audience about Wilde's alleged
decadent lifestyle. Wilde arranged to have the theater surrounded
by police. His plan blocked, Queenberry prowled about outside for
three hours before finally leaving "chattering."
Four days later at the Albemarle Club--a club to which both Wilde
and his wife belonged, Queensberry left a card with a porter.
"Give that to Oscar Wilde," he told the porter. On the
card he had written: "To Oscar Wilde posing as a somdomite
[sic]." Two weeks later Wilde showed up at the club and was
handed the card with the offensive message. Returning that night
to the Hotel Avondale, Wilde wrote to Douglas asking that he come
and see him. "I don't see anything now but a criminal
prosecution," Wilde wrote. "My whole life seems ruined
by this man. The tower of ivory is assailed by the foul thing. On
the sand is my life split. I don't know what to do."
The next day, Wilde, Douglas, and another longtime friend named
Robert Ross visited a solicitor, Travers Humphreys. Humphreys
asked Wilde directly whether there was any truth to Queensberry's
allegation. Wilde said no. Humphreys applied for a warrant for
Queensberry's arrest. On March 2, Queensberry police arrested
Queensberry and charged him with libel at the Vine Street police
station.
Travers Humphreys asked Edward Clarke, a towering figure in the
London bar, to prosecute Wilde's case. Before accepting the case,
Clarke said to Wilde, "I can only accept this brief, Mr.
Wilde, if you assure me on your honor as an English gentleman that
there is not and never has been any foundation for the charges
that are made against you." Wilde answered that the charges
were "absolutely false and groundless." Wilde left
Clarke's office to join Douglas for a quick trip to the south of
France before the trial.
About a week before trial was set to began at Old Bailey, Wilde
returned to London, where numerous close friends advised him to
drop his libel suit. George Bernhard Shaw and Frank Harris, two
well known friends of Wilde's from the literary world, pleaded
with Wilde to flee the country and continue his writing abroad,
possibly in more tolerant France. Douglas, who was also present at
the luncheon with Shaw and Harris, objected. "Your telling
him to run away shows that you are no friend of Oscar's,"
Douglas said, rising from the table. "It is not friendly of
you," Wilde echoed as he departed the restaurant with his
young friend.
On April 3, 1895, the first trial of Oscar Wilde--with Wilde in
this case cheering the prosecution--began at Old Bailey.
Queensberry, wearing a blue hunting stock, stood alone, hat in
hand, in front of the dock. Wilde, wearing a fashionable coat with
a flower in his button-hole, chatted with his attorney. Meanwhile,
in another room in the building, a group of young men--gathered by
Queensberry to substantiate his charge--laughed and smoked
cigarettes.
Sir Edward Clarke delivered the prosecution's opening statement.
Clarke's address impressed even Edward Carson, Queensberry's
attorney, who said "I never heard anything to equal it in all
my life." Clarke attempted to take some of the sting out of
on key piece of evidence that Queensberry planned to introduce. He
read one of Wilde's letters to Douglas that might suggest to many
readers the existence of a homosexual relationship. Clarke
admitted that the letter "might appear extravagant to those
in the habit of writing commercial correspondence," but said
it must be remembered that Oscar Wilde is a poet, and the letter
should be read as "the expression of true poetic feeling, and
with no relation whatever to the hateful and repulsive suggestions
put to it in the plea in this case."
After brief testimony from Sidney Wright, the porter at the
Albemarle Club, Wilde took the stand. He began by lying about his
age, which he said was thirty-nine (he was actually forty-one).
Under questioning by Clarke, Wilde, with easy assurance, described
his earlier encounters with--and harassment by--Queensberry. To
Clarke's final question, "Is there any truth in any of these
accusations [of Queesnberry]?", Wilde answered: "There
is no truth whatever in any of them."
After lunch, Edward Carson--a rival of Wilde since their days
together at Oxford College--began his skillful cross-examination.
The cross generally broke into two main parts: a literary part and
a fact-oriented part focusing on Wilde's past relationships. In
the literary part of the examination, Carson asked Wilde about
letters to Douglas and two of his own published works, The
Portrait of Dorian Gray and Phrases and Philosophies for Use of
the Young. Wilde defended the works against Carson's suggestions
that they were immoral or touched on homosexual themes.
"There is no such thing as an immoral work," Wilde
asserted in Dorian Gray, rather "books are well written, or
badly written." "That expresses your view?" asked
Carson, "a perverted novel might be a good book?" When
Wilde replied, "I don't know what you mean by a 'perverted'
novel," Carson said, "I will suggest Dorian Gray as open
to the interpretation of being such a novel." Wilde answered
indignantly, "That could only be to brutes and illiterates.
The views of Philistines on art are incalculably stupid."
Carson asked about a suggestive letter to Lord Douglas: "Was
it an ordinary letter?" "Certainly not," Wilde
answered, "it was a beautiful letter." "Apart from
art?" Carson wondered. "I cannot answer any questions
apart from Art," Wilde replied. And so it went. Wilde did his
best to turn the proceedings into a joke with flippant answers.
Always the artist, he seemed to be reaching for creative, witty
answers, even if they contradicted earlier ones. Though immensely
interesting reading, the literary part of Carson's cross was not
the most incriminating. Rather, one senses that Carson enjoyed
toying with his old rival.
When Carson began to ask Wilde about his relationships with named
young men, Wilde became noticeably uncomfortable. The jury
appeared astonished when Carson produced items ranging from fine
clothes to silver-mounted walking sticks that Wilde admitted
giving to his young companions. Suspiciously, the recipients of
the gifts were not, in Carson's words, "intellectual
treats," but newspaper peddlers, valets, or unemployed--in
some cases barely literate. Wilde tried to explain: "I
recognize no social distinctions at all of any kind, and to me
youth, the mere fact of youth, is so wonderful that I would sooner
talk to a young man for half-an-hour than be--well--cross-examined
in court." Soon after that confident response, Carson asked
Wilde about a young man, sixteen when Wilde knew him, named Walter
Grainger. Did Wilde kiss him? "Oh, dear no!" Wilde
replied, "He was a peculiarly plain boy." Carson zeroed
in on his prey. Was that the reason he didn't kiss him? Why then
did he mention his ugliness? "Why, why, why, did you add
that?" Carson demanded to know.
That afternoon the prosecution closed its case without calling, as
was widely expected, Lord Alfred Douglas as a witness. No
testimony that Douglas might give, no matter how forceful, could
save Wilde's case.
When Carson announced, in his opening speech in defense of
Queensberry, that he intended to call to the witness box a
procession of young men with whom Wilde had been sexually
associated, the atmosphere in the courtroom became tense. Edward
Clarke understood his client was in serious personal danger. An
1895 Act, the Criminal Law Amendment Act, had made it a crime for
any person to commit an act of "gross indecency." The
Act had been interpreted to criminalize any form of sexual
activity between members of the same sex.
After trial that evening, Edward Clarke met with his famous
client. "When I saw Mr. Wilde," Clarke later recalled,
"I told him it that it was almost impossible in view of all
the circumstances to induce a jury to convict of a criminal
offence a father who was endeavoring to save his son from what he
believed to be an evil companionship." Clarke urged Wilde to
allow him to withdraw the prosecution and consent to a verdict
regarding the charge of "posing." Wilde agreed, and the
next morning Clarke rose to announce the withdrawal of the libel
prosecution.
Queensberry's solicitor, meanwhile, had forwarded to the Director
of Public Prosecutions copies of statements by the young men they
had planned to produce as witnesses. At 3:30 p.m., an inspector
from Scotland Yard appeared before Magistrate John Bridge to
request a warrant for the arrest of Oscar Wilde. Bridge adjourned
the court for an hour and a half, apparently to give Wilde time to
make his escape from England on the last train to the Continent.
Wilde, however, had lapsed into "a pathetic state of
indecision." Meeting with Douglas and his old friend Robert
Ross at the Cadogan Hotel, Wilde wavered back and forth between
staying and fleeing until, he said, "The train has gone--it
is too late." When Wilde learned from a journalist calling at
the hotel that a warrant had been issued, Wilde went "very
gray in the face." He sat quietly in his chair drinking glass
after glass of hock and seltzer. Soon Wilde's name was removed
from the ads at playbills at the St. James Theatre, where The
Importance of Being Earnest was still being performed.
The first criminal trial of Oscar Wilde opened at Old Bailey on
April 26, 1895. Wilde and Alfred Taylor, the procurer of young men
for Wilde, faced twenty-five counts of gross indecencies and
conspiracy to commit gross indecencies. A parade of young male
witnesses for the prosecution testified regarding their roles in
helping Wilde to act out his sexual fantasies. Although Wilde was
not prosecuted for sodomy, there was little doubt by the end of
the trial that he might have been. Almost all of them expressed
shame and remorse over their own actions, and Wilde seemed to be
left conflicted by their testimony. (Later Wilde compared his
encounters with "feasting with panthers." Wilde wrote
that "the danger was half the excitement.") On the
fourth day of trial, Wilde took the stand. His arrogance of the
first trial was gone. He answered questions quietly, denying all
allegations of indecent behavior. The most memorable moment of the
trial came in Wilde's response to a question about the meaning of
a phrase in a poem of Lord Alfred Douglas. Prosecutor Charles Gill
asked, "What is 'the Love that dare not speak its
name'?" Wilde's response drew a loud applause--and a few
hisses:
"The love that dare not speak its name" in this century
is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there
was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis
of his philospophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of
Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep, spiritual affection
that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great
works of art like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those
two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century
misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as
the "Love that dare not speak its name," and on account
of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it
is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about
it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder
and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the
younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him.
That it should be so the world does not understand. The world
mocks it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.
Edward Clarke followed Wilde's testimony with a powerful summation
on behalf of his client. Clarke closed by asking the jury to
"gratify those thousands of hopes that are hanging on your
decision" and "clear from this fearful imputation one of
our most renowned and accomplished men of letters of today and, in
clearing him, clear society from a stain." Clarke's closing
speech left Wilde in tears, and he scribbled out a note of thanks
which he passed to his counsel.
The jury deliberated for over three hours before concluding that
they could not reach a verdict on most of the charges (the jury
acquited Wilde on charges relating to Frederick Atkins, one of the
young men with whom he was accused of having engaged in a gross
indecency.) On May 7, Wilde was released on bail to enjoy three
weeks of freedom until the start of his second criminal trial.
The Liberal government determined to go all-out to secure a
conviction in Wilde's second trial, even when people such as
Queenberry's attorney Edward Carson were urging, "Can you not
let up on this fellow now?" There is much speculation about
the government's aggressive position on the Wilde case. Prime
Minister Rosebery was suspected of having had a homosexual affair,
when he was Foreign Minister, with Francis Douglas, another one of
Queenberry's good-looking sons. It was shortly after Francis
Douglas was "killed in a hunting accident" (probably a
suicide), that Queensberry went on the rampage against Oscar
Wilde. There is plausible evidence in the form of ambiguous
letters to conclude that Rosebery was threatened with exposure by
Queensberry or others if he failed to aggressively prosecute
Wilde. It is interesting to note that during the two months
leading up to Wilde's conviction, Rosebery suffered from serious
depression and insomnia. After Wilde's conviction, his heath
suddenly improved.
Wilde's second prosecution was headed by England's top prosecutor,
Solicitor-General Frank Lockwood. Although the trial resembled in
many way the first, the prosecution dropped its weakest witnesses
and focused more heavily on its strongest. Lockwood had the last
word in the trial, and used it to offer what Wilde described as an
"appalling denunciation [of me]--like something out of
Tacitus, like a passage in Dante, like one of Savonarola's
indictments of the Popes of Rome." After over three hours of
deliberation, the jury returned its verdict: guilty on all counts
except those relating to Edward Shelley. Wilde swayed slightly in
the dock; his face turned gray. Some in the courtroom shouted
"Shame!" while expressed their approval of the verdict.
The Wilde trials caused public attitudes toward homosexuals to
become harsher and less tolerant. Whereas prior to the trials
there was a certain pity for those who engaged in same-sex
passion, after the trials homosexuals were seen more as a threat.
The Wilde trials had other effects as well. They caused caused the
public to begin to associate art and homoeroticism and to see
effeminancy as a signal for homosexuality. Many same sex
relationships seen as innocent before the Wilde trials became
suspect after the trials. People with close same sex relationships
grew anxious, concerned about doing anything that might suggest
impropriety.
Wilde served two years in prison, the last eighteen months being
spent at Reading Gaol. He came out chastened and bankrupt, but not
bitter. He told a friend that he "had gained much" in
prison and was "ashamed on having led a life unworthy of an
artist." In his prison writing, De Profondis, Wilde says,
" I became a spendthrift of my genius and to waste an eternal
youth gave me a curious joy."
After his release from Reading Gaol, Wilde traveled in Europe. He
died on November 30, 1900 in Paris.
All trials are trials for one’s life, just as all sentences are
sentences of death, and three times I have been tried. The first
time I left the box to be arrested, the second time to be led back
to the house of detention, and the third time to pass into prison
for two years. Society as we have constituted it, will have no
place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains
fall on just and unjust alike, will have clefts in the rocks where
I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep
undisturbed. She will hang with stars so that I may walk abroad in
the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my
footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse
me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole. [Oscar
Wilde, De Profundis]
Sex, Lies, and a Sealed Fate: The Fourth Trial of Oscar Wilde
[An argument that Wilde is largely to blame for his own tragic
fate.]
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Sex, Lies, and a Sealed Fate: The Fourth Trial of Oscar Wilde
by Douglas Linder
Fourth Trial of Oscar Wilde: Summation for the Prosecution
This summation was delivered as part of a community forum after a
production of Gross Indecencies: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde
at the Missouri Repertory Theater on February 20, 2000. The
purpose of the forum, which included this prosecution summation as
well as a defense summation, was to illuminate the issue of
whether Oscar Wilde was responsible for his own downfall. (The
views presented herein are not necessarily my own, but rather were
presented to stimulate debate.) To see a program for the event
click here: program. DL
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, more than a century has passed
since twelve jurors at Old Bailey in London declared the
defendant, Oscar Wilde, guilty of gross indecencies. Some of you
know the facts of that case; some of you don’t. Wilde’s
troubles started when he was 37 and began a relationship with
Alfred Douglas, then a 21-year-old aspriring poet. The intense
relationship attracted the concern of Alfred Douglas’s father,
the Marquess of Queensberry, who took increasingly desperate steps
to end it. Wilde frustrated and frightened by Queensberry, decided
to sue Queensberry for libel when the Marquess accused him
of posing as a sodomite. The suit backfired. Private
investigators hired by Queensberry turned up several young men
prostitutes, mostly--willing to testify that Wilde committed gross
indecencies, and soon the celebrated poet, author, and playwright
found himself convicted and sentenced to two years hard labor in
Reading Gaol.
You are not here today to reconsider that verdict of 1895. Your
task is a more difficult one. It will not be such a simple matter
as applying the law to facts as you find them, but to assess
responsibility for the tragic fate that befell one of England’s
most celebrated literary figures. Does the blame for Wilde’s
conviction and imprisonment lie primarily with the Oscar Wilde
himself, or does it lie with the late-Victorian society that
judged him?
In the minutes that I have with you this afternoon, I hope to
convince you that Oscar Wilde was not a man of heart stopping
honesty and courage, as Wilde’s defense attorney this afternoon
might have you believe. To the contrary, this theoretician of
decadence-- this apologist for hedonism, this celebrator of
idleness wasted not only his own considerable talents, but caused
great damage to the reputations and lives of many young men. Far
from being a man of honesty and courage, Wilde attempted to make
dishonesty a virtue and exhibited weakness of body, mind, and
spirit. Wilde was the instrument of his own destruction.
The defense will argue that anyone but Wilde is to blame for his
fate: his nemesis Queensberry is to blame; his lover and
Queensberry’s son, Lord Alfred Douglas is to blame; homophobic
Victorian England and overzealous prosecutors are to blame. No. As
tempting as these other targets are, Oscar Wilde has no one to
blame but himself. Five sins, I submit one for each letter of his
name led to his downfall.
W, dear jury, is for WASTEFUL. Wilde wasted his great talent. At
the very height of his talents after Salome, Dorian Gray what does
Wilde do? He spends evening after evening chasing young men half
his age, and with not a fourth of his artistic sense or
intellectual firepower. Rather than seeking intellectual
stimulation or aspiring for truth and beauty, Wilde seeks sex. He
chases, he eats excessively, he chases, he smokes, he chases, he
drinks too much, he chases some more. As Wilde himself
admitted, Desire in the end became a malady.
What works might readers and theater-goers of his and future
generations been able to enjoy if he had been able to focus on his
God-given talents as an artist? Three years out of prison Wilde is
dead, as a result of complications from an ear infection developed
in prison. What a waste!
That Wilde was guilty of the sin of waste there can be no doubt.
Don’t take my word for it--take Oscar Wilde’s. Writing from
prison Wilde had this to say:
I became the spendthrift of my genius and to waste an eternal
youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of being on the heights, I
deliberately went to the depths in search of a new sensation.
Because of his what Wilde called his perverse pleasures
he was he said regretfully--forced to send long lawyer’s letters
instead of making beautiful and colored musical things. Waste:
that as Wilde saw it, was his REAL CRIME.
Wilde once again, in his prison letter De Profundis: I am really
ashamed of having led a life unworthy of an artist. My weakness
has narrowed my imagination and dulled my more delicate
sensibilities.
I, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is for INDECISIVE. Uncertain
about how to respond to Queensberry’s slur To Oscar Wilde,
posing as a Sodomite --, a statement published only on a card left
with a club porter, Wilde allowed himself to be egged into an
ill-advised libel suit by his Lord Alfred Douglas. Against the
advice of true friends men of letters such as George Bernhard Shaw
and Frank Harris Wilde lets his young lover make the call to sue.
As Harris tells the story, Shaw, Harris, Lord Douglas, and Wilde
were having lunch at the Café Royal shortly before the libel
trial was to open. The suit is pure folly, Harris and Shaw argued.
You must go, the two writers tell Wilde. Then Douglas, getting up
from the table says, You’re telling him to run away shows that
you are no friend of Oscar’s. Wilde, following his young lover
out of the restaurant agrees. It is not friendly of you, Wilde
says. Even more revealing is Wilde’s indecisiveness at the
conclusion of his libel trial Queenberry’s lawyer had revealed
his trump hand: a bevy of young men waiting to testify as to their
sexual encounters with Wilde. Wilde sits in a chair in Room 53 at
the Cardogan Hotel. Everyone knows what will happen next if Wilde
fails act quickly: he will be arrested at charged with gross
indecencies. His friend Robert Ross tells him to catch the train
to Dover, then the ferry to the safety of France. His wife,
Constance, urges him to go. Meanwhile, the magistrate, in an act
of sympathy, has delayed issuing Wilde’s arrest warrant to allow
him to catch the last train to Dover. Wilde sits in his pathetic
state of indecision, immobilized as the precious minutes of his
freedom tick away. He drinks glass after glass of hock and seltzer
to steady his nerves. Then its too late, the knock comes at the
door.Get up, Oscar. Get on the train, Oscar. Go, Oscar. It’s too
late, Oscar.
L stands for LAWLESS. Wilde thought himself, as a great artist,
above the law; a Nietzchean superman. He tried to secede from
society. He fled from what he saw as the banality of ordinary life
into his own solipsistic universe; a paradise of his own design.
Oscar Wilde wanted to live in a place and time such as Ancient
Greece, with its ideals, values, and toleration of same-sex
passion between older and younger men. But he lived in Victorian
England, and was bound by its laws.
In De Profundis, Wilde writes: I am one of those who are made for
exceptions, not laws. Laws are for ordinary people, Wilde
believed, not those with his great intellect, taste, and talent.
Aesthetics are more important than ethics. Wilde once wrote:
“Even a color scheme is more important in the development of an
individual than a sense of right and wrong. That’s a remarkable
statement. Let me read it again: “Even a color scheme is more
important in the development of an individual than a sense of
right and wrong. With priorities like that, is it any wonder that
Victorian Society saw Wilde as a threat to its moral evolution?
Wilde not only convinced himself that he was immune from the
criminal laws of England, but he showed a contempt for anyone who
suggested otherwise. Wilde’s scofflaw attitude his contempt for
English laws and values--is apparent from his trial testimony. He
does his best to turn his trial into a carnival, a big joke. He is
not just witty, he is flippant.
D stands for DISHONEST.
The job of an artist is to lie, Wilde declared: the world is too
depressing to write about. The job of a trial witness, however, is
to tell the truth. Wilde didn’t. Wilde was barely on the witness
stand for one minute when he uttered his first lie, declaring
himself to be 39 when his true age was 41. A common lie, a
harmless lie, perhaps in most circumstances, but not in a trial.
The first thing Queensberry’s lawyer did on cross-examination
was to expose Wilde’s little lie and make the jury wonder just
what else he might have been lying about.
One of those other things he had been lying about was precisely
what Queensberry accused him of doing: seeking sexual pleasure
from young men. Had Wilde only been forthright about the matter,
his downfall might have been avoided. When Wilde visited his
lawyer, Edward Clarke, to ask him to press a libel suit against
Queensberry, Clarke had one final question of Wilde before he took
on the task.. I can only accept this brief, Mr. Wilde, if you can
assure me on your honor as an English gentleman that there is not
and never has been any foundation for the charges that are made
against you. Wilde replied that Queensberry’s charges were
absolutely false and groundless. Not only did Wilde’s dishonesty
contribute to his own downfall, but it caused deep embarrassment
to one of England’s most respected solicitors.
Finally, E, dear jury, stands for EXPLOITATIVE. It was perhaps the
greatest of his five sins. Wilde exploited young men, some less
than half his age, then left them to endure the shame and
humiliation that accompanied his downfall. As witnesses in a
celebrity trial, their reputations were irrevocably damaged; guilt
and shame were a part of the rest of their lives. Parker, Wood,
Atkins, all the boys of Wilde. The Monica Lewinskys of Victorian
England. And what of Constance Wilde, Oscar’s wife, and Vyvyan
and Cyril, Oscar’s two young children? Wilde exploited them too.
Writing from prison after his conviction, said this of his sexual
encounters with boys or young men half his age:
They, from the point of view through which I, as an artist in life
approached them, were delightfully suggestive and stimulating. It
was like feasting with panthers. The danger was half the
excitement. I used to feel as the snake-charmer must feel when he
lures the cobra. They were to me the brightest of gilded snakes.
Their poison was part of their perfection.
Feasting with panthers Luring the cobra. Wilde understood the
danger of what he was doing. Danger to his reputation, danger to
the happiness of his wife and small children even danger, it turns
out to his liberty. Yet, he feasted, he lured and he paid the
price. Many people may understand the psychological impulse. Many
may have similar impulses But most people consider the
consequences of their actions, the harm that they would bring
those around them. For he who lives more lives than one,
More deaths than one must die.
It is no defense, I submit, that Oscar Wilde intended no harm to
the panthers. He may have treated them at the time--with kindness
and decency. But he did belong in their wild world. He was from
another. Wilde was a middle-aged man. A married man. A man of
intelligence, talent, wit, and accomplishment. Like the traveler
who accidentally introduces a non-indigenous species that wreaks
havoc in a new ecosystem, Wilde brought an infection from his
world to that of his panthers.
How do we know that the boys of Wilde felt shame and humiliation?
We know because they said so. The words of his victims. And yes,
they were victims, though they may have willingly participated in
satisfying Wilde’s sexual fantasies. Wilde exploited these
down-on-their-luck boys, boys who did what they did because of
their economic circumstance.
Wilde: Wasteful, Indecisive, Lawless, Dishonest, Exploitative. The
Five Sins of Oscar Wilde.
Finally, let me say a word about Queensberry, the villain of the
play. Ill-tempered and unpleasant? yes. Eccentric? yes. Paranoid?
probably. But there is an important fact about Queensberry not
mentioned in the play that puts his hostility to the relationship
between Wilde and his son in a different light. Queensberry had
another son, his eldest, named Francis Douglas. Francis Douglas
also was (most likely) involved in a homosexual relationship. His
lover was believed to be none other than the Prime Minister of
England, the Liberal Pary Leader, Lord Rosebery. At the time of
the suspected relationship, Roesbery was Foreign Minister; Francis
Douglas his private secretary. Francis Douglas died in October
1894 just before Queensberry went on his rampage against Wilde.
His son’s death was called a hunting accident. We know now
is was that his son most likely committed suicide and that the
rumored scandal was the cause of it. This background may not make
you like Queensberry or like what he did he did to Wilde but it
may help you understand him.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do your duty. Convict Oscar
Wilde of being responsible for his own downfall.
Response to Defense Summation
Society is to blame, says Wilde’s able defense attorney. My
client was merely a radical individualist Oscar Wilde was just
doing his thing.
How easy it is for one generation to judge another! From our
vantage point at the start of a new millennium, the defense asks
us to see Victorian English society as homophobic, intolerant,
constraining, even cruel. Even if it was all those things and I
don’t suggest that it was how does that compare to American
society in 1895, the year the case of Plessy v Ferguson was argued
before our Supreme Court with the Court upholding a state law that
forced black citizens to ride in second-class railcars? And I
wonder what judgments those in the 22nd century will make about
our society and its laws? Will they condemn our society as immoral
for allowing experiments on primates? Call us shortsighted for
destroying forests and wetlands? Find us homophobic for not
permitting same-sex marriages? Label us cruel for locking up young
people who experiment with drugs? They might and they might be
right about all those things.
Let us not lose sight of the fact that the people of Victorian
England in 1895 were, on the whole, decent folks who were neither
especially backward nor especially intolerant. Interestingly, the
Criminal Amendment Act of 1885, the act under which Oscar Wilde
was charged and which made illegal the committing of gross
indecencies, was progressive legislation. Prior to 1885, sexual
assaults on boys over the age of 13 and falling short of rape were
not crimes. The impetus for the new law its main purpose was to
protect boys, not to punish consenting adults. Interesting also is
the fact that prosecutions for consensual homosexual conduct prior
to the Wilde case were about as rare as they are in the United
States today and that homosexual conduct at the time (especially
in English boy’s schools) was widespread. The conduct may have
been illegal indeed, in some American states it remains illegal in
the year 2000 but it was almost never prosecuted. What offended
Victorian Society about Wilde’s conduct was not so much that
involved sex with other males as that it involved sex with a
considerable number young male prostitutes. Wilde, let us not
forget, was not prosecuted because he was the lover of a social
equal who happened to be male he was prosecuted for his
participation in a not-very-discreet prostitution ring. Had Wilde
merely pursued a relationship with a male of his own age
especially one in his own social class he never would have found
himself in the dock at Old Bailey..
So jurors, Oscar Wilde must bear responsibility for his own
downfall. More than that, Wilde is to blame for bringing down with
him the toleration such as it was that homosexuals previously
enjoyed. What before Wilde was in the mind of the English
public--foregiveable sin, after Wilde became perversion. After the
Wilde trials, every male-male relationship of any intensity became
suspect, every effeminate gesture raised an eyebrow, and the arts
and homosexuality became firmly linked in the public mind. That is
what Wilde brought on.
And all men kill the thing they love,
But let all this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word:
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword.
Oscar Wilde killed the thing he loved. He killed himself. Jurors,
do your duty and convict Oscar Wilde of being responsible for his
own downfall!
The Trial of Orenthal
James Simpson ...........................................................
by Doug Linder (2000)
Although the 1995 criminal trial of O. J. Simpson for the murders
of Nicole Brown
Simpson and Ronald Goldman has been called "a great trash novel
come to life," no one can deny the pull it had on the American
public. If the early reports of the murder of the wife of the
ex-football-star-turned-sports-announcer hadn't caught people's
full attention, Simpson's surreal Bronco ride on the day of his
arrest certainly did--ninety-five million television viewers
witnessed the slow police chase live. The 133 days of televised
courtroom testimony turned countless viewers into Simpson trial
junkies. Even foreign leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and Boris
Yeltsin eagerly gossiped about the trial. When Yeltsin stepped off
his plane to meet President Clinton, the first question he asked
was, "Do you think O. J. did it?" When, at 10 a.m. PST on October
3, Judge Ito's clerk read the jury's verdict of "Not Guilty," 91%
of all persons viewing television were glued to the unfolding
scene in the Los Angeles courtroom.
June 12, 1994
Exactly what happened sometime after ten o'clock on the Sunday
night of June 12, 1994 is still disputed, but most likely a single
male came through the back entrance of Nicole Brown Simpson's
condominium on Bundy Drive in the prestigious Brentwood area of
Los Angeles [LINK TO MAP]. In a small, nearly enclosed area near
the front gate, the man brutally slashed Nicole, almost severing
her neck from her body. Then he struggled with and
repeatedly--about thirty times--stabbed Ronald Goldman. Ronald
Goldman was a twenty-five-year-old acquaintance of Nicole's, who
had come to her condominium to return a pair of sunglasses that
her mother had left earlier that evening at the Mezzaluna
restaurant. (A person would later post a sign outside the
Mezzaluna reading, "Don't forget your sunglasses.")
Just after midnight, Nicole's howling Akita, with blood on its
belly and legs, attracted the attention of a neighbor, who then
discovered the two bodies. The ill-fated investigation of the
Brown-Simpson and Goldman murders began.
Nicole Brown Simpson's ex-husband, former football great and media
personality O. J. Simpson, meanwhile, was aboard American Airlines
flight #668 to Chicago. Simpson had taken off from Los Angeles at
11:45 after receiving a ride to the airport in a limousine driven
by Allan Park, an employee of the Town and Country Limousine
Company. The limousine had left the Simpson estate on Rockingham
Avenue[LINK TO MAP OF SIMPSON ESTATE] about half an hour late,
after Park called to report at 10:25 that no one answered his ring
at the door. Park observed a man he assumed to be Simpson enter
his house at 10:56.
Police called Simpson early Monday morning at the O'Hare Plaza
Hotel in Chicago, where Simpson had planned to attend a convention
of the Hertz rental car company. When informed that his wife had
been killed, Simpson did not ask how, when, or by whom. He
did--according to his later testimony--smash a glass in grief,
badly cutting his left hand. Prosecutors would have a different
explanation for the injury. Simpson boarded the next flight to Los
Angeles, arriving home about noon to find a full-scale police
investigation underway. Police tape stretched across his front
gate and cardboard tags marked bloodstains on the driveway.
The Investigation Focuses on Simpson
Los Angeles police questioned Simpson for about a half hour that
day. They asked Simpson a number of questions about the deep cut
on his right hand. Simpson initially claimed not to know the
source of the cut. Later in the interview he suggested the hand
was cut when he reached into his Bronco on the night of the
murders, then reopened the cut when he broke a glass in his
Chicago hotel room after being informed of Nicole's murder. From
the standpoint of the police, the interview was remarkably inept.
Officers did not ask obvious follow-up questions and whole areas
of potentially fruitful inquiry were ignored. So unhelpful was
this interview that neither side chose to introduce it into
evidence at the trial.[LINK TO SIMPSON'S STATEMENT TO POLICE].
Eventually, however, police accumulated enough evidence indicating
Simpson's guilt in the murders that they sought and obtained a
warrant for his arrest. Under an agreement worked out with
Simpson's attorney, Robert Shapiro, Simpson was to turn himself in
at police headquarters by 10:00 on the morning of June 17, the day
following Nicole's funeral. When Simpson didn't show by the agreed
upon time, police told Shapiro that they would be driving to his
Brentwood home to pick him up. Sometime after one o'clock, four
officers knocked on Simpson's front door. Soon they and Shapiro
discovered that Simpson had disappeared--off, it turned out, on
perhaps the most famous ride in American history since Paul Revere
warned Bostonians of the arrival of the British. Simpson left
behind a letter. Addressed to "To whom it may concern," it had all
the markings of a suicide letter. It ended: "Don't feel sorry for
me. I've had a great life, great friends. Please think of the real
O. J. and not this lost person. Thanks for making my life special.
I hope I helped yours. Peace and love, O. J." Around 6:20 a
motorist in Orange County saw Simpson riding in the white Bronco
of his friend, A. C. Cowlings, and notified police. Soon a dozen
police cars, news helicopters, and some curious members of the
public were following in pursuit of the Bronco. The slow-motion
chase would finally end with Simpson's arrest in his own driveway.
After making the arrest, police discovered $8,750 in cash, a false
beard and mustache, a loaded gun, and a passport in Cowlings'
vehicle.
For the prosecution, the biggest mistake of the trial may well
have been to file the Simpson case in the downtown district rather
than--as is normal procedure--in the district in which the crime
occurred, in this case Santa Monica. Implausibly, the prosecution
explained its decision as an effort to reduce the commuting time
of prosecutors and better accommodate the expected media crush.
More likely, the decision was a political one, based on concerns
that a conviction by what would be a largely white jury in Santa
Monica might spark racial protests--or even riots similar to those
that occurred following the trial of four LAPD officers accused of
beating Rodney King. The prosecutors probably believed that their
case against Simpson was so strong that even the more racially
diverse jury likely in downtown Los Angeles would have no choice
but to convict.
Filing downtown would be only the first of many decisions that may
have cost prosecutors the case. The decision of prosecutors not to
seek the death penalty cost prosecutors the advantage of not
having a "death-qualified" jury, which numerous studies suggest,
would be more likely to convict. (A death-qualified jury is one
from which all jurors whose opposition to capital punishment might
prevent them from imposing a death sentence have been excluded.
Typically, excluded jurors are disproportionately black and
female.) Prosecutors also would be criticized for ignoring the
advice of their own jury consultants, who urged them to use their
peremptory challenges--to the extent that they might do so
constitutionally--to exclude black and female potential jurors
[LINK TO INFORMATION ABOUT SIMPSON JURY AND ITS SELECTION]. ( Once
the trial began, there would be other blunders. To name just a
few: the decision to have Simpson try the glove used in the
murder, the decision to call Mark Fuhrman to the stand, and the
strategy of presenting so much evidence from so many witnesses
over so many weeks that the case lost much of its force.)
On July 22, 1994, Simpson answered the question " How do you
plead?" at his arraignment with "Absolutely one hundred percent
not guilty, Your Honor." Months of discovery, jury selection, and
hearings on issues such as whether to permit cameras in the
courtroom and the admissibility of DNA test results followed.
The
Trial Begins
The opening day of trial--Tuesday, January 24, 1995-- finally
came. Under drizzling skies, reporters and camera person converged
for what writer Dominick Dunne called "the Super Bowl of murder
trials." Judge Lance Ito in his opening remarks told those
assembled in the courtroom that he expected to see "some fabulous
lawyering skills." Christopher Darden led off the prosecution's
opening statement by portraying Simpson as an abusive husband and
a jealous lover of Nicole Brown Simpson. Darden told jurors, "If
he couldn't have her, he didn't want anybody else to have her."
Marcia Clark followed with a statement laying out the facts
proving Simpson's guilt that the prosecution would establish
during the trial. The next day Johnnie Cochran gave an opening
statement for the defense in which he presented a confused
timeline of events and suggested that Simpson was so crippled by
arthritis that he couldn't have possibly pulled off a double
murder. Cochran told the jury that the defense would prove that
the evidence against Simpson was "contaminated, compromised, and
ultimately corrupted."
Over the next 99 days of trial, the prosecution put forward 72
witnesses. The first set of witnesses suggested that Simpson had
the motive and opportunity to kill. The second set of witnesses
suggested that Simpson had in fact used his opportunity to kill
his ex-wife and Ronald Goldman.
The first group of witnesses included relatives and friends of
Nicole, friends of O. J., and a 9-1-1 dispatcher, all produced to
demonstrate Simpson's motive and his history of domestic abuse.
Nicole's sister, Denise Brown, described seeing O. J. at the dance
recital of his daughter, Sydney, on the day of the murder. She
testified that Simpson looked "scary," like a "madman." She told
of a dinner attended by her, Nicole, and other friends in which O.
J. grabbed Nicole's crotch and said, "This is where babies come
from, and this belongs to me." Tearfully, she told of an incident
in which an enraged Simpson picked up her sister and threw her
against a wall. Ron Shipp, a friend of O.J.'s, testified that
Simpson told him, "I've had some dreams of killing Nicole." A
9-1-1 dispatcher took the stand so that the prosecution might play
for the jury a terrifying 9-1-1 call from Nicole describing an
ongoing assault by Simpson.
The prosecution next produced a set of witnesses--including
limousine driver Allan Park, Kato Kaelin, and officers of the LAPD--to
establish a timeline of events that left Simpson with ample
opportunity to commit murder. Limo driver Allan Park proved to be
one of the prosecution's most effective witnesses. Park testified
that he arrived at the Simpson home on Rockingham at 10:25 to pick
O. J. up for his scheduled flight to Chicago. He said he rang the
doorbell repeatedly, but received no answer. Shortly before 11:00,
according to Park, a shadowy figure--black, tall, about 200
pounds, and wearing dark clothes-- walked up the driveway and
entered the house. A few minutes later, Simpson emerged, telling
Park he had overslept. Park testified that as he entered the limo,
he carried a small black bag (which the prosecution hoped the jury
would conclude contained the murder weapon). Park testified that
Simpson would not let him touch the bag. The bag has never been
seen since. A skycap at the Los Angeles Airport testified that he
saw Simpson near a rubbish bin.
Simpson house guest Kato Kaelin, one of the trials more colorful
characters, testified that he and Simpson returned from a run for
Big Macs and french fries at 9:36. After that, Kaelin couldn't
account for Simpson's whereabouts. He told of hearing thumps on
his wall just before 11:00, about the same time that Park
witnessed the shadowy figure enter the house. The prosecution also
produced telephone records that show Simpson used his automobile
cell phone to call his girlfriend, Paula Barbieri, at 10:03. The
defense did not attempt to explain why Simpson would make a call
on his car cell phone at a time he claimed to be in his backyard
practicing his golf stroke.
Finally, the prosecution began to put forward witnesses directly
tying Simpson to the two murders. The evidence was technical and
circumstantial, relating mostly of the results of blood, hair,
fiber, and footprint analysis from the Bundy crime scene and
Simpson's Rockingham home. The most compelling testimony--if one
assumed the accuracy of the testing--concerned two RFLP tests. The
first indicated that blood found at the crime scene could have
come from only 1 out of 170 million sources of blood--and that O.
J. Simpson fit the profile. The second came from blood found on
two black socks at the foot of O. J.'s bedroom. According to
prosecution testimony, only 1 out of 6.8 billion sources of blood
matched the sample. Nicole Brown Simpson might well be the only
person on earth whose blood matched the blood found on the socks.
On cross-examination of the prosecution's DNA experts, the defense
had little choice but to begin to develop the theory that either
the blood samples were contaminated or they were planted by
corrupt police officers [LINK TO SUMMARY OF KEY PROSECUTION
EVIDENCE].
The LAPD officer who found a bloody glove outside Kato Kaelin's
bedroom turned out to be a godsend for the defense's
corrupt-police theory. The officer, Mark Fuhrman, testified for
the prosecution on March 9 and 10. In his book about the trial,
Robert Shapiro wrote: "A suddenly charming Marcia Clark treated
him like he was a poster boy for apple pie and American values."
Three days later, F. Lee Bailey began a bullying cross-examination
of Fuhrman in which he asked the detective, whether, in the past
ten years, he had ever used "the n word." Fuhrman replied that he
absolutely never had done so. It was a lie.
A second prosecution disaster followed. Prosecutor Christopher
Darden, confident that the bloody gloves belonged to Simpson,
decided to make a dramatic courtroom demonstration. He would ask
Simpson, in full view of the jury, to try on the gloves worn by
Nicole's killer. Judge Ito asked a bailiff to escort Simpson to a
position near the jury box. Darden instructed Simpson, "Pull them
on, pull them on." Simpson seemed to struggle with the gloves,
then said, "They don't fit. See? They don't fit." Later, it would
turn out that there were good reasons why they didn't fit--the
gloves may have shrunk because of the blood, photos would turn up
showing Simpson wearing ill-fitting gloves--but the damage had
been done. Later, Cochran would offer the memorable refrain, "If
it doesn't fit, you must acquit."
A field trip that included the judge, the jury, lawyers for both
sides, the defendant, and a bevy of trailing media types
illustrates how the defense early on in the trial saw the race
issue as playing to its advantage on a jury that included nine
African- Americans. The trip to the Bundy Avenue crime scene and
Simpson's Rockingham home was intended to provide the jury with a
better basis for understanding testimony concerning locations of
bodies, gloves, and socks. The defense saw it as an opportunity to
put a favorable spin on Simpson's life. Before the jury arrived at
Simpson's home, down came a picture of Paula Barbieri, O. J.'s
girlfriend. In its place, up went a Norman Rockwell print from
Johnnie Cochran's office that depicted a black girl being escorted
to school by federal marshals. Pictures of Simpson standing with
white golfing buddies were replaced with pictures of his mother
and other black people. A Bible was installed conspicuously on an
end table in the living room. The tour seemed to go wonderfully
well for the defense. As the group toured his home, Simpson
pointed to a backyard play area and said, "That's where I
practiced my golf swing."
The
Dream Team Takes Center Stage
The strategy of Simpson's defense team, called the "Dream Team" in
the media, was to undermine the prosecution's evidence concerning
motive, suggest Simpson was physically incapable of committing the
crime, raise doubts about the prosecution's timeline, and finally
to suggest that the key physical evidence against Simpson was
either contaminated or planted, or both.
On July 10, 1995, Simpson's daughter Arnelle took the stand as the
first defense witness. She would be followed by Simpson's sister
and his mother, Eunice Simpson. By the time Simpson's mother
finished her testimony, it was apparent to some courtroom
observers that jury members were showing more empathy for the
Simpson family than for the families of the victims.
As successful as it turned out to be, the defense effort was not
without its own miscalculations. After Simpson's doctor, Robert
Huizenga, testified that O. J.--despite looking like Tarzan--was
in about as good of a condition as "Tarzan's grandfather" and
suffered from arthritis and other problems, the prosecution
produced a video taken shortly before the murders. The video
showed Simpson leading demanding physical exercises. Especially
embarrassing for the defense was a quip on the tape from Simpson
as he performed an exercise that consisted in part of punching his
arms back and forth. Simpson suggested people might try this
workout "with the wife."
The most talked-about aspect of the defense case undoubtedly
concerned Mark Fuhrman, the LAPD officer who had found the bloody
glove and who, as a prosecution witness, denied using the word
"nigger." It turned out that Fuhrman had used "the n word"--many
times--and it was on tape. Laura Hart McKinny, an aspiring
screenwriter from North Carolina, had hired Fuhrman to consult
with her on police issues for a script she was writing. McKinny
taped her interviews with Fuhrman, who not only used the offensive
racial slur, but disclosed that he had sometimes planted evidence
to help secure convictions. Needless to say, the defense wanted
McKinny on the stand, and they wanted the jury to hear selected
portions of her tapes. The prosecution strenuously objected,
arguing that McKinny's testimony was irrelevant absent some
plausible evidence suggesting that evidence was planted in the
Simpson case. The prejudicial value of the testimony, the
prosecution insisted, would exceed its probative value. Judge Ito,
somewhat reluctantly, allowed the defense evidence. Ito's decision
opened the door for the defense to offer its rather fantastic
theory that Fuhrman took a glove from the Bundy crime scene,
rubbed it in Nicole's blood, then took it to Rockingham to drop
outside Kaelin's bedroom so as to frame Simpson.
It may not, however, have been Fuhrman, but rather a soft-spoken
Japanese American forensic expert named Henry Lee that won Simpson
his acquittal. Lee had solid credentials, smiled at the jury, and
provided what seemed to be a plausible justification for
questioning the prosecution's key physical evidence. Lee raised
doubts with blood splatter demonstrations, his suggestion that
shoe print evidence suggested more than one assailant, and his
simple conclusion about the prosecution's DNA tests: "Something's
wrong." He may have, as Christopher Darden speculated after the
trial, have been the person who gave the jury "permission" to do
what they wanted to do anyway: acquit Simpson. Jury forewoman,
Amanda Cooley, called Lee "a very impressive gentleman." Another
juror agreed, describing Lee as "the most credible witness," a
person who "had a lot of impact on a lot of people."
The
Jury Acquits
By the time closing arguments began in the Simpson case, the trial
had already broken the record set by the Charles Manson case as
the longest jury trial in California history. The jury had been
sequestered for the better part of a year and was showing signs of
strain and exhaustion. Judge Ito was under attack for the allowing
the trial to drag on and his seeming inability to keep lawyers
under control.
Marcia Clark's summation for the prosecution sought, among other
things, to do damage control on the Fuhrman issue. Clark denounced
Fuhrman as a racist, the "worst type" of cop, and as someone we
didn't want "on this planet." But, she told the jury, that doesn't
mean there was a frame-up. She took the jury again through the
prosecution's "mountain of evidence" as puzzle pieces on a video
screen accumulated to reveal the face of O. J. Simpson.
Christopher Darden followed Clark, telling the jury that Simpson
could be "a great football player" and "a murderer" as well.
Johnnie Cochran's summation for the defense added controversy to
an already very controversial trial. His co-counsel, Robert
Shapiro, was later to condemn his closing for "not only playing
the race card, but playing it from the bottom of the deck."
Cochran compared the prosecution case to Hitler's campaign against
the Jews:
There was another man not too long ago in this world who had those
same views, who wanted to burn people, who had racist views, and
ultimately had power over people in his country. People didn't
care. People said he's crazy. He's just a half-baked painter. And
they didn't do anything about it. This man, this scourge, became
one of the worst people in the world, Adolf Hitler, because people
didn't care, didn't stop him. He had the power over his racism and
his anti-religionism. Nobody wanted to stop him....And so Fuhrman.
Fuhrman wants to take all black people now and burn them or bomb
them. That's genocidal racism. Is that ethnic purity? We're paying
this man's salary to espouse these views...
The jury spent only three hours deliberating the case that had
produced 150 witnesses over 133 days and had cost $15 million to
try. As America watched at 10 a.m. PST on October 3, 1995, Ito's
clerk, Deidre Robertson, announced the jury's verdict: "We the
jury in the above entitled action find the defendant, Orenthal
James Simpson, not guilty of the crime of murder." Simpson sighed
in relief, Cochran pumped his fist and slapped Simpson on the
back. The Dream Team gathered in a victory huddle. From the
audience came the searing moans of Kim Goldman, Ron's sister, and
the cry of his mother Patti Goldman, "Oh my God! Oh my God!"
Simpson announced after the verdict that he would devote the rest
of his life to tracking down the real killer of his ex-wife, but
he would soon be preoccupied with a civil trial. The trial, held
in Santa Monica, would take just three months and would produce a
very different result. Simpson was forced to testify, clumsily
trying to explain the unexplainable. Photos showing Simpson
wearing the size 12 Bruno Magli shoes that he claimed not to own
turned up first in one newspaper, then in others. The judge in the
civil trial, Hiroshi Fujisaki, proved he was no Lance Ito, and
prevented the Simpson defense from introducing fanciful theories
of a top-to-bottom conspiracy. After seventeen hours of
deliberation, the jury concluded--using the preponderance of the
evidence test applicable in civil cases--that O. J. Simpson had
wrongfully caused the death of Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown
Simpson. The jury ordered Simpson to pay compensatory damages of
$8.5 million and punitive damages of $25 million. Under California
law, however, Simpson can continue to survive on the
$25,000-a-month income from a judgment-proof pension fund.
The Simpson trial demonstrated the polarization of racial
attitudes on issues such as law enforcement that still exists in
our country [POLLING DATA ON SIMPSON VERDICT]. It may be for that,
more than anything, that the trial will be remembered. But it had
other effects. It created a greater awareness of domestic violence
issues, provided lessons in how not to run a criminal trial,
slowed the trend toward the use of cameras in courtrooms, and
created a new type of "immersion" journalism that still flourishes
today.
O. J. Simpson Trial Page
Although the 1995 criminal trial of O. J. Simpson for the murders
of Nicole Brown
Simpson and Ronald Goldman has been called "a great trash novel
come to life," no one can deny the pull it had on the American
public. If the early reports of the murder of the wife of the
ex-football-star-turned-sports-announcer hadn't caught people's
full attention, Simpson's surreal Bronco ride on the day of his
arrest certainly did--ninety-five million television viewers
witnessed the slow police chase live. The 133 days of televised
courtroom testimony turned countless viewers into Simpson trial
junkies. Even foreign leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and Boris
Yeltsin eagerly gossiped about the trial. When Yeltsin stepped off
his plane to meet President Clinton, the first question he asked
was, "Do you think O. J. did it?" When, at 10 a.m. PST on October
3, Judge Ito's clerk read the jury's verdict of "Not Guilty," 91%
of all persons viewing television were glued to the unfolding
scene in the Los Angeles courtroom.