Pleading For Mercy

None other than the self-assured, urbane and arrogant O.J. Simpson. Surely it was time that he was brought to the level of arrest of his activities that his history deserved. He has had, after all, the benefit of thirteen years of undeserved freedom.

His trial for the murder of Nichole Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman presented as a travesty of justice. Sometimes money can buy just about everything, and his costly defence team cleverly suborned justice with the talented assistance of a maladroit Los Angeles police force.

That was then, when a jury comprised in part of sympathetic black Americans remained unconvinced of the guilt of one of their own. Infamous he may have been, but he was also a hero to his community, someone who had thumbed his nose at convention and managed to become wealthy despite that.

Someone so invested in his powers of persuasion and his proud position of celebrity that he was convinced he would never be held to account for his actions.

That was then, when the world waited with bated breath to hear the jury's finding, and O.J. Simpson walked away, triumphantly, free. His life was made complicated, to be sure, when a civil trial later found him liable for those very same deaths, ordering him to pay $33.5-million in damages to the outraged and grieving Goldman family. Whom he likened to vultures, circling about his head.

But now, there was O.J. Simpson, older and no wiser, standing before Judge Jackie Glass, utterly unsympathetic to the pathetic figure that stood before her, humbled and in a blubbering panic. Gone the arrogant defiance. Here was a man finally understanding that he would be paying for his crimes.

Not the ultimate crime of dealing death, but the incidental one of threatening death.

"I just wanted my personal things. I was stupid. I did not know that I was doing anything illegal. I thought that I was confronting friends and retrieving my property. So I am sorry. I am sorry for all of it." And well he might be.

But the judge was having none of it. She did, however, agree on one point he made; he was stupid. Didn't know he was doing anything illegal? Right. Confronting friends? Right. Anything goes between friends, after all. He excels at confrontation.

Here he was, pleading for mercy. Did it occur to him to think back to when he executed his wife, slitting her throat and in the process almost decapitating her? Surely she must have tried to plead with him, begging for mercy. As no doubt, did Mr. Goldman, a much less physically imposing man who must have known there would be no mercy to be had.

And despite DNA evidence linking him to the scene, he paid no penalty.

Now, however, he has been sentenced to jail after his conviction of a dozen criminal charges; armed robbery, kidnapping among them. The lesser of his evil deeds caught up with him, and his arrogance has dissolved into rather unappealing bathos.