Perhaps it is time for each person to mind their
own business, make their own decisions and choices
about everything, and be responsible personally
for the consequences of those choices.
Triple Jeopardy
by J. Neil Schulman
[email protected]
Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise
O.J. Simpson is back in the news. Tomorrow, July 20, 2017, O.J. goes before a Nevada parole board that may release him after serving nine years in prison. Never having had a firearm in his hands during the incident for which he was tried, Simpson was convicted of armed robbery—with corollary charges—of a former business associate who had in fact stolen from Simpson for resale O.J.’s personal memorabilia. O.J. Simpson was trying to recover that stolen property in the presence of armed security.
The Nevada conviction was for doing only things O.J. Simpson had every right to do.
But the actual reason behind this kangaroo trial was political. Nevada prosecutors and a judge colluded to imprison O.J. Simpson for the California double murders for which he was acquitted after a criminal jury trial in California Superior Court.
I consider the retrial of Simpson in a second California Superior Court—in which he was found civilly liable for those same murders—violates the spirit of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which reads, “…nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.”
Don’t tell me there’s no being “put in jeopardy of life or limb” when extrajudicial proceedings from a second civil trial can put you in prison in another state where you might get shanked.
That aside, the failed California prosecution’s “mountain of evidence”—despite O.J. Simpson’s criminal acquittal—has convinced the same media pundits who now invent news saying Vladimir Putin conspired to install Trump as his White House puppet—to this day report that Simpson is guilty of those murders.
Every one of these elitist talking heads who consider themselves smarter than the jury who considered testimony and evidence for eleven months—then acquitted O.J. Simpson in less than a day—never consider that the forensic evidence was a frame-up of Simpson by the actual murderers who lured O.J. Simpson to the bloody murder scene and manufactured other evidence tying Simpson to the crime.
Ridiculous?
Not according to forensic experts.
I wrote a book titled The Frame of the Century?. It’s still on sale at Amazon as a 1999-published trade paperback.
Some audio links to a radio show I appeared on promoting the book with trial witness Ron Shipp calling in—can be found on the publisher catalog page.
Beginning with his criminal trial then closely studying new evidence brought out in his civil trial, I became convinced that all that might have been proven in two trials was that at some time after the murders and before the police arrived, O.J. Simpson had driven to the murder scene of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and an unfortunate waiter, Ronald Goldman, and transferred a few drops of blood to his Bronco and from there to his Brentwood home.
My best theory is that O.J. Simpson was lured to the murder scene by his ex-wife, Nicole, phoning O.J. while being held at knife-point. It being a local call from landline to landline there would have been no billing records for detectives to find, and any redial would have been foiled by LAPD Officer Robert Riske using Nicole’s house phone to call in the homicide.
To me everyone was always asking the wrong question about O.J. Simpson’s claim that he was framed. His defense team accused a racist and corrupt LAPD officer of framing Simpson—never an implausible scenario if you’re familiar with LAPD history—but the question that had never been asked nor answered was whether the killer or killers—or an accomplice—could have diverted suspicion by planting evidence against Simpson.
It would have had to be an inside job by someone with forensic expertise. I identify in my book someone whom a Venn diagram places in both circles.
In my book I examined a number of Brown-Goldman murder scenarios, but the one which has become the most prophetic is where I suggested that even the DNA blood evidence against O.J. Simpson could have been manufactured in a laboratory, really needing only the knowledge that it was possible.
I wrote,
But there was one additional possibility I discovered. If you didn’t have enough of O.J.’s blood, Dr. Frankenstein could make more for you.
Dr. Frankenstein, as it turns out, could be anyone with a high school diploma and a job in a biochemistry lab. Any lab doing criminalistics would do. So would most university labs. It just required a device called a thermal cycler used for PCR testing of DNA, and common lab equipment such as a blood centrifuge.
Five thousand bucks worth of lab equipment that could be ordered on an 800 line, paid for by credit card, and delivered by mail, anonymously—and another couple of hundred dollars in chemicals. The techniques had been in use for a decade, and everybody who worked in the field knew it could be done.
Any policeman who’d ever spent any time talking to a lab technician, or had to be briefed on DNA procedures for a criminal case, would know about it, too.
He’d need a drop of O.J.’s blood, as a reference sample. Type the red blood cells for ABO and enzymes. Do PCR on the white blood cells to clone the DNA—as much as you need. Shipp wouldn’t even necessarily need a drop of O.J.’s blood as a reference sample. If he had a lab blood report giving O.J.’s ABO type, ESD, and PGM subtype—used in case O.J. needed a blood transfusion— then all he would need is a sample of O.J.’s DNA—and he could get that from a used Kleenex, or a fingernail clipping, or a follicle from O.J.’s hair.
Now you get a test tube of blood of the same ABO type. Centrifuge the blood to separate the red and white blood cells. Heat the red blood cells carefully to destroy the enzymes, while preserving the ABO typing, and pour in enzymes matching your reference sample. Then take the white blood cells and subject them to X-rays or short-length ultraviolet to destroy the DNA. Do PCR testing on the white blood cells to make sure none of the DNA is left. If it is, give them more radiation.
Then take the DNA you’ve cloned using PCR and mix well with the now DNA-free white blood cells, and mix it back with the red blood cells.
Voila. Instant O.J., suitable for use at the crime scene of your choice.
—J. Neil Schulman, The Frame of the Century,
Pages 93-94, Pulpless.Com, June, 1999
Nobody at the time I wrote this took it seriously. Crazy Neil.
Nobody, that is, until August, 2009, when Forensic Science International: Genetics—reported on in The New York Times described in detail precisely how DNA blood evidence could be created in a laboratory and planted at a crime scene.
According to The New York Times article,
Scientists in Israel have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate DNA evidence, undermining the credibility of what has been considered the gold standard of proof in criminal cases.
The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person.
“You can just engineer a crime scene,” said Dan Frumkin, lead author of the paper, which has been published online by the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics. “Any biology undergraduate could perform this.”
I’m not even the first writer to get this idea of planted DNA produced. The November 18, 2009 (Season 11, Episode 9) of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, “Perverted,” had this as its plot line.
There was no eyewitness testimony to O.J. Simpson committing these murders. There was no security footage of the crime. The entire case—the mountain of evidence—was based on O.J. Simpson walking in the blood, supposedly dropping two gloves—one at the crime scene, one on his estate—and driving like a terrified rabbit from the murder scene back to his house.
The frame up was actually easy for someone who had access to O.J.’s bedroom with Aris black leather gloves and Bruno Magli shoes, and both house and Bronco keys casually left in the kitchen—both facts that were testified to in O.J.’s criminal trial.
In my book I proved that the person who fits the Venn Diagram committed perjury during his prosecution testimony against O.J. Simpson.
Being declared “not guilty” by a jury in modern America is just nowhere near enough to avoid a lengthy prison term and a reputation being ruined.
That O.J. Simpson, though acquitted by a criminal trial jury of the crime, committed the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman is something everybody knows.
And endless repetition by media pundits—convincing to prosecutors, jury, and judge in another state—was enough to take away his liberty on unrelated bogus charges for nine years.
That was triple jeopardy.
Reprinted from J. Neil Schulman @agorist.com
© 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 The J.
Neil Schulman Living Trust. All rights reserved. Web and email links
with attribution permitted and encouraged. Other reprints permitted
only with prior permission of the author.
J. Neil Schulman is a novelist, screenwriter, journalist, radio
personality, filmmaker, composer, and actor. His dozen books include
the novels Alongside Night and The Rainbow Cadenza,
both of which won the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Prometheus
Award for best libertarian novel, and the anthology Nasty, Brutish,
And Short Stories.
Read
more about him.
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