Trial of the century: 4 eerie parallels between Oscar and OJ

“It’s deja vu all over again,” as Yogi Berra, the sportsman sage of baseball would say. A beloved athlete. Dead beautiful partner. Allegations of domestic violence. Public opinion split along racial lines. And now a lead detective with a dubious past. The trial of Oscar Pistorius has now gained an eerie air of a rerun of the Trial of the Century, i.e. the infamous OJ Simpson case. We at Firstpost have put together the ‘believe it or not’ parallels between the two murder investigations. Taken together, they confirm that old adage that history does indeed repeat itself, and in the most unexpected, bizarre ways. Everybody loves(d) Oscar/OJ Before his fall from public grace, what made OJ exceptional was not his athletic ability but his universal appeal that cut across racial lines. As ESPN notes, “He had an innate way of communicating warmth and charm that lifted him to an almost mythical level and made him the first African-American athlete to be merchandised on a grand scale.” [caption id=“attachment_635959” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Agencies.[/caption] Much like The Juice, Pistorius too has a nice guy image, described by one Sports Illustrated reporter as “one of the friendliest athletes” around. And the athlete’s “charm, beauty, talent and refusal to live a marginal life as a disabled person made him a marketer’s dream” and an inspirational hero to South Africans of all hues. A history of violence  For both men, revelations of past violence acquired greater impact against the backdrop of this amiable public image. Their in both cases have been left feeling betrayed by a Janus-faced idol. OJ’s trial unearthed a gory 1989 incident where he had hit and kicked Nicole Brown, yelling “I’ll kill you.” Oscar’s record, to be fair, remains shrouded in insinuation. South African Police spokeswoman Denise Beukes spoke carefully of “allegations of a domestic nature,” and would only nod her head when asked if she was referring to “domestic violence.” But in at least one documented incident, he is accused of slamming the door on a nineteen-year old’s leg causing severe injuries. And last year, Pistorius’ ex-girlfriend Samantha Taylor, threatened to expose him – “Oscar is certainly not what people think he is. We dated for a year and a half” – but later backed out for unknown reasons. Irrespective of what has been proved regarding his history with women, the killing of Reeva Steenkamp has become a story about violence against women in South Africa. Or as Eusebius McKaiser writes in the New York Times “Being disabled or athletically gifted seemingly did not preclude Mr. Pistorius from being like countless other South African men — aggressive and possessed of a sense of entitlement in his relationships with women.” Guilt in black vs. white The OJ Simpson trial – of an African American suspect accused of killing his white wife – threw in stark relief the deep faultlines within American society, sharply polarising public opinion along racial lines. Simpson’s moral character, the weight of the evidence, facts of the case, performance of the prosecution or defence became a matter of interpretation, determined by the skin colour of the beholder. While both the victim and the accused are white, the public opinon on the Pistorius trial has also become divided along race in post-apartheid South Africa, as Time correspondent Alex Perry obverses :

Nearly two decades after apartheid, many South Africans still interpret any big event through a racial prism. Some have attempted to do the same with Pistorius’ arrest. Racist whites commenting on news websites blame the (black) ANC for Pistorius’ arrest since, the racists say, it was their incompetent (that is, black) handling of South Africa’s violent (black) crime that would make even a sporting hero like Pistorius so fearful that he would keep a pistol and a machine gun in his bedroom and expect to have to defend himself against (black) intruders.

On the other hand, black South Africans have been no less eager to affirm Pistorius’ guilt. “Their impulse to judge Mr. Pistorius hastily is driven in part by the desire to prove that a white man — seemingly nice and virtuous — is as capable of wrongdoing as a black one,” McKaiser writes. Irrespective of its outcome, the ’truth’ about Pistorius’ guilt may in the end be rendered in black vs. white. The ‘dubious’ detective One of the biggest factors accentuating the race angle in OJ Simpson’s trial was the history of the lead detective Mark Fuhrman. The defence team, led by Johnnie Cochran, made hay of Fuhrman’s history of documented anti-black bigotry, notably the liberal use of the n-word while speaking about gang members. His dubious credentials also gave credence to the defence counsel’s contention that Fuhrman had planted the infamous black glove to frame Simpson – and was perhaps instrumental in creating ‘reasonable doubt’ that led to his acquital. Hilton Botha, who lead the initial investigation into Steenkamp’s death, has not yet been accused of anti-white bias. Botha, however, is facing seven charges of attempted murder for shooting at mini-van filled with passengers, and his rambling, contradictory account was an unmitigated disaster. And Pistorius’ lawyer is already gearing up to offer the Cochran defence:

Barry Roux has sought to portray Det Botha as someone determined to build a murder case against his client regardless of the facts. “He [Mr Botha] should have said ‘I’m the wrong guy, don’t ask me,’” Mr Roux said. “But he didn’t. He gave theories. And it won’t fly.”

Botha has been pulled from the case as of today. But if reports of a shoddy initial investigation are correct, it may already be too late to mitigate the damage to the prosecution’s case. Simpson’s other lead lawyer, Robert Shapiro, staunchly dismissed any parallels between the two trials. “I really don’t think the detectives are really going to be much of an issue in this case,” he told MSNBC, “The Simpson case was a classic, ‘Who was responsible for the murder case?’ The Pistorius case is a case of, ‘What is it?’… [Pistorius] admitted to doing the shooting so the question is going to be, ‘Was it a premeditated murder or was it a justifiable homicide?’” What it is, however, may be determined by the details of the crime scene. One key question is whether Pistorius was wearing his prosthetics at the time of the shooting. Pistorius claims not, but the trajectory of the bullets – according to the cops – shows otherwise. All that’s missing is Roux waving around a plastic limb, yelling, “If the leg doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” South Africa will then have its very own Trial of the Century.