OJ Simpson -- Life in Jail? (An Update)

OJ Simpson as been sentenced to up to 33 years in prison. For a 61-year-old this is as good as a life sentence. Some might say this is somewhat poetic justice seeing many believe he was guilty of murdering his ex-wife and her friend but used his celebrity, fame, and money to get himself acquitted in that case. In a perverse twist of irony is that this sentence comes 13 years to the day since he was acquitted of the murder charges.

If the glove fits.

It seems though that OJ Simpson's penchant for believing that he is above the law and then breaking the law has finally caught up with him. His most recent venture, and one that saw him charged with armed robbery and kidnapping, has now landed him a prison sentence that will see him, potentially, in his 90's before he again breathes any air as a free man. That said, the non-parole period is a mere nine years.

If he is well-behaved during those nine years he is likely to be paroled at the first opportunity. This means he will be a sprightly 70 when he has his first chance of getting out.

Simpson will undoubtedly instruct his lawyers to appeal. However, he will stay in jail throughout that process.

OJ Simpson

I just watched this program on OJ Simpson on the Australia Network here in Indonesia. It had interviews with all the players in the trial with regards to the defense team and a lot of the news people involved as well. It was a really interesting program.

There were lots of interesting questions posed on race, race relations, police, fabricating evidence, the role of defense counsel in defending guilty clients, and the main one, did he do it?

The two questions that I was most interested in were the last two. As a lawyer who has worked in criminal defense it is an interesting question to ponder with regards to defending guilty clients. There are plenty of strategies for defending a client. I generally ask my clients if they did it. If they say, no, then that is the end of it. I construct the defense strategy based on the assumption that the client is innocent of the charges being alleged.

If a client answers by saying, yes, then the strategy requires careful considerations in terms of ethical obligations. A defense lawyer must not advance an alternative scenario where they know that the scenario is not possible.

It is worth remembering that it is the prosecution in an adversarial system that must prove the case. The defense's main job is to highlight that there is reasonable doubt in the case being made by the prosecution that would render a guilty verdict unjust. It is not the defense's obligation to prove the prosecutions case for them.

Onto the biggest question of them all, did OJ do it?

Yes.