Week 1, Entry 1: Does justice go to those who pay?

For many in America today the notion of “equal justice under the law” is a foreign concept. There is a growing perception that the wealthy can obtain a fair trial, but the poor all too often cannot. The Louisiana Justice Coalition conducted a survey in 2006 in which “Seven in ten voters (69%) say a rich person gets treated better than a poor person in the Louisiana justice system.” Authors such as Sister Helen Prejean and organizations such as The Innocence Project have documented such disparities between the rich and the poor. The most famous example of how wealth can affect the outcome of a case can be seen in the O.J. Simpson trial.







Douglas O. Linder at The University of Missouri-Kansas City School of law maintains an extensive website on O.J.’s trial which contains a chronology, excerpts and more. Many have argued that O.J. was acquitted because of the use of “the race card” on the part of Johnny Cochran. While racial issues were a strategy of the defense, the fact is that O.J. was acquitted because he could afford the “Dream Team” of some of the very best attorneys, including F. Lee Bailey, Johnnie Cochran, Alan Dershowitz and Robert Kardashian. Whether or not one agrees with their arguments, the skill of these attorneys is evident in the clip below of Johnnie Cochran:



While many factors were responsible for his acquittal, it is doubtless that his attorneys were the ones who made all the factors work to their advantage. If O.J. Simpson had been an average citizen of moderate to modest means, would he have been acquitted? Many have been sent to prison for the rest of their lives or executed for similar crimes. What makes them different? Was there more evidence against them? Was the jury biased? Was their attorney unskilled and/or overworked? While it is indisputable that each case has its own unique circumstances, it can be reasonably assumed that had O.J. been an ordinary citizen, living in Texas, for example, the outcome would have been quite different.

Another more recent example of this theory is Phil Spector. Relatively unknown outside of the music industry, he nevertheless had plenty of money, and hired the best attorneys. Though he was ultimately convicted, it was of 2nd degree murder with a sentence of 19 years to life. As if that were not enough, he was free on bail from the time of the death of his victim in 2003 until his ultimate conviction in 2009. What other than the wealth to obtain the best attorneys could explain this? It certainly wasn’t his good looks or charm that got him the breaks!