O.J. Simpson (via Wikimedia)
In minor news today, a 70-year-old man, convicted for trying to rob a memorabilia salesman, was paroled after nine years in prison. The parolee, Orenthal James Simpson, said that he’s “always a good guy,” cited an anger management course he took in prison, and committed to being a better Christian.
In arguing for his release, the occasionally jocular Simpson said, “No one has ever accused me of pulling a weapon on them.” Which, more or less, was the point when I puked in my mouth and turned off the hearing.
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Look, O.J. is only in jail because we all think he did what he almost surely did. He’s not in jail for double homicide because the LAPD used racist cops — the lesson from O.J. that white America fails to learn. But he did spend nine years in jail for trying to get back stolen memorabilia — which is not something we usually put people in jail for. At his parole hearing, the memorabilia dealer he tried to jack spoke on O.J.’s behalf. Of course he was getting paroled.
We punished O.J., harshly, for the crime we could prove because we couldn’t punish him for a crime where the evidence was tainted by an acknowledged racist. It’s not really justice, but it is some real -ss karma.
But he’s 70 now. And denying him parole would strip away the thin veneer of rationale for putting him jail in the first place. If you think O.J. should still be in jail, you might as well start rounding up old people indiscriminately and putting them in lock-up for three months because “they probably did something illegal over the course of their long lives.” Denying parole to 70-year-old “first time offenders” is just ludicrous.
I can say all that. I can even defend O.J.’s murder acquittal if I have to — not on grounds that he didn’t do it, but on grounds that the racist system can go f**k itself. But I can’t sit there and watch smiling O.J. say he’s a “good guy” who has never pulled a weapon on anybody. That’s just insulting.
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To recap: F**k O.J., F**k LAPD, F**k you if you think there’s any value in keeping 70-year-olds incarcerated.
I expect to have to write about O.J. exactly one more time in my life, which means I’m not even looking forward to the day he dies.
Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.