Simpson Trial Books Share One Flaw: A Predictable Ending
“The Run of His Life” By Jeffrey Toobin (Random House, $25)
One of the most baffling phenomena in publishing this year is the number of books about the O.J. Simpson trial.
Yes, it was a trial that riveted the nation for months, made celebrities of absolute nobodies, lashed further scorn on lawyers and drew fresh attention to the deep schism between blacks and whites.
But still …
Who would have thought that so many readers would be willing to go over the same ground again - and again and again? Especially when the ending stays gallingly the same?
The latest entry in the O.J. sweepstakes is “The Run of His Life” by prosecutor-turned-reporter Jeffrey Toobin. Toobin’s claim to fame is his July 1994 New Yorker story, which revealed that Simpson’s lawyers would make race a centerpiece of his defense.
Toobin, who graduated from Harvard Law School with honors, had Alan Dershowitz for a class. Toobin went on to work for Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh and as an assistant U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, all the while keeping in touch with Dershowitz. And it was in one of those “keeping in touch” calls after Dershowitz had signed on to the Simpson team that the Harvard professor tipped Toobin off to Fuhrman: “He sounds like Oliver North, looks like Oliver North, and lies like Oliver North.”
He had a story - and now a book.
Toobin’s book is not as bombastic as Vincent Bugliosi’s “Outrage” and a trifle more generous, although Toobin is reasonably tough on everyone involved and as convinced as anyone that Simpson murdered Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman. Simpson, who miserably failed polygraph tests set up by Shapiro, is nearly illiterate (the good-bye letter he wrote was cleaned up by friends and the media). Shapiro, who went into the case with his eye on a book deal, spent more effort on making himself look good than helping his client, to whom he proposed a plea bargain fairly late in the proceedings. Christopher Darden’s fiasco with the glove was “the classic example of his shortcoming as a trial lawyer - his impetuousness, his immaturity, his failure to prepare either himself or his witnesses adequately.” Marcia Clark willfully dismissed a jury expert who determined black women would be most sympathetic to Simpson - and would despise her.
Even as I read it, I wondered why I was doing so. We read mysteries in part to solve a puzzle, in part because of the satisfaction in seeing justice triumph. Perhaps we read Simpson books because we seek an explanation for why justice did not triumph. Unfortunately, the explanations, though at times titillating, offer none of the satisfaction of fiction.