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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: hmaly who wrote (142847)	2/20/2002 1:45:08 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578131

The court won't let you try to prove OJ is guilty, because OJ was already tried and found innocent. Period. Even if incriminating evidence shows up later, the court won't allow you to use it. That would be subjecting OJ to double jeopardy. If the state can't retry OJ with new evidence, why would they allow you. And if you can't retry OJ, the original verdict will still stand, which means you lose. Double jeopardy only applies to criminal convictions. If I could show that a preponderance of evidence showed that he did kill 2 people I would successfully defend myself without opening OJ up to any criminal prosecution. Besides OJ doesn't have to prove his innocence. You must prove he is guilty, and you won't be given a chance to do that. OJ would have to prove that I am lying (by a preponderance of evidence standard, not beyond all reasonable doubt) if he was to successfully sue me for libel or slander. but it did decide that OJ did wrongfully kill 2 people. <<<<< Agreed, that you can say. But wrongful death is a long way from murder. I was talking about stating the facts. Murder is a legal interpretation. The facts (in my opinion) are that OJ killed two people. By saying "OJ did it", I would be saying that he did kill them, which is the same thing that the civil court found to be true. If the civil court case never happened I would have a slightly more difficult time defending myself from a slander or libel suit but I could use the same type of evidence that the plaintiffs used in their suit to defend myself against the suit by OJ. Tim

To: hmaly who wrote (142847)	2/20/2002 2:17:35 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1578131

I e-mailed a lawyer that I know about this issue. Here is his response. "You have the salient issue at hand. If your misguided friend were correct, the suit could never have been brought against OJ, no less won. Double jeopardy only protects you from another criminal proceeding charging you without he same crime. Beyond civil cases which are often brought in these situations by the family of the deceased and won even in the absence of a criminal conviction, you might remind your friend that double jeopardy is not even a complete blanket of protection from criminal prosecution in some cases. Where a state actor is involved, such as the LAPD officers in the Rodney King beating, while a set of defendants (the officers) are found innocent (I am sure your friend remembers the wonderful riot) they can still be tried by the Fed's for violating "the victim's" civil rights. A finding of not guilty in a criminal trial simply means that the state has not met it's burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was in fact guilty of the crime with which he was charged. While double jeopardy protects him from being charged witht he same crime again, it does not afford him any protection from a civlil suit, nor does it protect him from people voicing their opinions. In actuality, it would be difficult to slander OJ with regard to the murder in a legal sense, because while he was found not guilty in the criminal proceeding, it is still a commonly held belief that he did in fact commit the crime. Thus, how could he establish that you adversely affected his reputation in any way? In a society that overwhelmingly believes he murdered his wife, how have you defamed him by simply uttering the sentiment they already hold to be true? For the sake of argument, let's say he was thought to be innocent by most and that your accusation actually did defame him in some way. It is he that would have the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that he was not guilty, rather than you having to establish his guilt by that standard. Then there is the issue of him being a public figure. To either slander or libel a public figure, aside from meeting the other elements of the case, he would also need to prove that you acted with "malice" in making your statement. In the absence of malice, you can say anything you want about a public figure and walk away unscathed from a civil trial. Malice in the legal sense meaning that you KNEW (as in were certain, not merely that you thought it might be false) the statement you were making was false or that you showed a reckless disregard for the truth. Once again this kills any case he has because even the most cursory view of the events, evidence, trial or any media surrounding the murders would give you enough coverage to say that he may have committed the crime."