The Robbery Case Against O.J. Simpson
The robbery case against O.J. Simpson was a whole controversy murder trial that paraded the U.S. for over a decade. O.J Simpson was acquainted in the murder case and sentenced for 33 years on the grounds of robbery and robbery in his attempt to reclaim memorabilia of his career in sports that had been storied. It was ruled that the 61-year-old Simpson known as “The Juice” in his National Football League career days be eligible for parole, nine years later (Shahinyan., 2018). The retired sports personality was found guilty of the 12 charges over gunpoint use of force in a hotel room in Las Vegas, against sports collectors. During the pronouncement of the sentence, he appeared remorseful and pleaded for leniency as he only needed to retrieve his possession illegally taken away from him.
As defence lawyer Yale Galanter emphasized, Simpson’s actions were foolish but with no elements of criminal intentions and thus the sentence was too harsh for him. Because he was a sports star in the 1960s and 70s and held the flag of the U.S. high, he deserved better treatment (Newly., 2018). The argument is, however, disputable across the justice system in the U.S.
Since he was convicted on the robbery, he has been in custody 13 years after his acquittal of 1995 at Los Angele over the murder of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson, Simpson’s ex-wife. As ruled by the U.S. civil jury, Simpson was responsible for the murders and that $33.5 million be paid to the families of the victims, a judgment that is yet to be affected (Geis & Bienen., 2016).
As noted, the harshest penalty he received was 15 years for kidnap, six more years for the use of a lethal weapon in the execution of the crime and 12 years for assaulting the victims, summing up to 33 years. He had faced potential life imprisonment. Simpson’s lawyers requested the chambers that he serves for a term limit not exceeding six years for crimes committed by storming into a casino and Palace Station hotel with five other people to hold to dealers of sports merchandise at a scary gunpoint before getting away with collectables worth thousands of dollars.
Jackie Glass, the judge, stressed during the hearing of the sentencing that the sentence was not in any way related to the 1995 crimes he committed or any other past actions of the victim. Connie Bisbee, one of the commissioners of the parole also alluded to the history of Simpson. Based on precedence on matters armed robbery with violence, the judgment was too soft and unjustified. Simpson’s sentence should have been tougher on account of the use of a lethal arm and the potential damages he would have caused. Even though Judge Glass claims that the 13year old acquittal of Simpson did not influence her decisions, the sentence should have been harsher for better precedence (Friedman, 2018).
References
Friedman, S. H. (Ed.). (2018). Family Murder: Pathologies of Love and Hate. American Psychiatric Pub.
Geis, G., & Bienen, L. B. (2016). Crimes of the Century: From Leopold and Loeb to OJ Simpson. Northeastern University Press.
Newlyn, D. (2018). OJ Simpson: media construction, hermeneutics, truth and critical legal studies. International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Literature, 51-58.
Shahinyan, D. L. (2018). Representing Lawyers in Contemporary American Literature: The Case of OJ Simpson. Law and Literature, 203.