79. The memoir was the fastest-selling book its publisher, Random House, had had up to that time. See Elizabeth Kolbert, “A Rising Star Shines Brighter on His Book Tour,” New York Times, September 24, 1995.
80. See ibid.
81. Frank Rich, “The Dole Dive,” New York Times, October 7, 1995.
82. Ellen Goodman, “A Wedge or a Bridge?” Baltimore Sun, October 5, 1995, accessed May 21, 2013, http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1995–10–05/news/1995278070_1_colin-powell-american-journey-simpson.
83. Carl Rowan, “A Year of Pain—and Some Plusses,” Chicago Sun-Times, December 31, 1995. Rowan also wrote: “Didn’t an adoring nation almost talk a black retired general, Colin Powell, into accepting a semi-draft into the presidency of the United States?”
84. See Philip J. Trounstine, “Powell for President: Would Race Matter?” San Jose Mercury News, November 5, 1995.
85. Harris, The Survivor, 207. Harris also wrote: “The interest in Powell was an implicit rebuke of the incumbent [Clinton].”
86. Colin L. Powell with Joseph E. Persico, My American Journey (New York: Random House, 1995), 609. He also wrote: “I would enter not to make a statement but to win. I understand the battlefield, and I know what winning takes” (609).
87. “Not in ’96: Powell Rules Out Accepting Any Nomination for Vice President, Too,” San Jose Mercury News, November 9, 1995. One of Powell’s close friends, Richard Armitage, was quoted in the article as saying: “Over these past weeks, he was up and down, he agonized. He’d go out and meet with crowds and they’d fire him up. Then he’d get back home and wonder, ‘Do I have the necessary fire in the stomach to be worthy of support of these people?’ And he found he did not.”
88. Ito put off announcing the verdicts to allow the prosecutors and defense lawyers ample time to reach the courtroom. Cochran, for example, was in San Francisco when the jury concluded its deliberations. In addition, the judge’s decision served to lessen the prospect of civil disturbances had the verdicts gone against Simpson. For a brief discussion about the timing of the verdicts, see Dershowitz, Reasonable Doubts, 11–12. Dershowitz wrote: “Hours before the verdict was to be announced, President Bill Clinton was briefed on nationwide security measures in the event of possible rioting. The Los Angeles Police Department was on full alert” (12). See also Uelmen, Lessons from the Trial, 178.
89. Peter Arenella, interview with author (May 6, 2013).
90. See “The O.J. Verdict: Interview Peter Arenella,” Frontline, April 1, 2005, accessed May 22, 2013, www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/oj/interviews/arenella.html.
91. See Arenella, “The Perils of TV Legal Punditry,” 50.
92. Ibid.
93. See Martin Gottlieb, “Racial Split at the End, as at the Start,” New York Times, October 4, 1995.
94. Quoted in Caba, “Trial Judgments: Consensus: Money Counts, Race Matters.”
95. Quoted in Vincent J. Schodolski, “Simpson Jurors: Police Lost Case,” Chicago Tribune, October 5, 1995.
96. Quoted in Adams, “Simpson Jurors Cite Weak Case, Not ‘Race Card.’”
97. Quoted in ibid.
98. See Todd S. Purdum, “Simpson Verdict Confronts a Public Seemingly Numbed,” New York Times, February 6, 1997. Purdum’s report quoted David J. Garrow, a biographer of the Rev. Dr. Martin L. King, Jr., as saying that he had detected “almost an evaporation of energetic black support for Simpson” since 1995.
99. Pam Bellack, “In New York, Many People Anticipated the Verdict,” New York Times, February 5, 1997. Similarly muted reactions were noted elsewhere in the United States. In the San Francisco Bay Area, “there was neither the shock nor the jubilation that greeted the outcome of Simpson’s criminal trial in 1995.” Brandon Bailey, “Reaction to Simpson Verdict Split Along Racial Lines,” San Jose Mercury News, February 5, 1997. A report in USA Today said: “Without cameras in the courtroom and a live audio feed, the unanimous verdict finding Simpson liable in two murders brought forth more muted reactions.” Haya El Nasser, “More Muted Reaction Second Time Around,” USA Today, February 5, 1997.
100. Steve Friess, “Stark Contrast to the ’90s as Simpson Is Convicted of Armed Robbery and Kidnapping,” New York Times, October 5, 2008. Friess also noted: “Public interest in the trial was minimal. Seats in the Las Vegas courtroom set aside for the public were vacant most of the time.” The Los Angeles Times welcomed Simpson’s conviction, saying in an editorial that the outcome represented “one of those unusual circumstances in which human law and karmic justice converge. . . . Without any doubt, Simpson belongs behind bars.” See “The Juice and Justice,” Los Angeles Times, December 6, 2008, accessed May 27, 2013, http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-simpson6–2008dec06,0,3478056.story.
101. This point was made by Tony Mauro in “Simpson Free: Prosecutors ‘Ran from Their Evidence,’” USA Today, October 4, 1995.
102. Quoted in ibid. Had Simpson not been wealthy, Arenella said, his case would not have gone to trial. “It would have been pleaded out.” Arenella, interview with author.
103. Simpson, I Want to Tell You, 91. “I truly realize now, for the first time,” Simpson further stated, “that there are probably a great many people in jail who are innocent but who don’t have the money to prove it in court.”
104. Data cited here were retrieved from the Gallup Organization’s online “Gallup Brain” database. The question’s wording was: “In your opinion, if Simpson had not been rich, would he have been found guilty or not guilty?” The question was asked of 639 American adults on October 3, 1995.
105. Quoted in Caba, “Trial Judgments: Consensus: Money Counts, Race Matters.”
106. Laurie L. Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, has said, for example, that the Simpson case “made very little impact on legal doctrine.” Levenson, “Cases of the Century,” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 33, no. 2 (January 2000): 586.
107. Quoted in Linda Deutsch, “DNA Evidence Has Come a Long Way since O. J. Simpson Trial,” Associated Press, August 21, 2002, retrieved from LexisNexis database.
108. Jerry E. Bishop, “How DNA Scientists Help Track Criminals and Clear the Innocent,” Wall Street Journal, January 6, 1995.
109. Gina Kolata, “The Code: DNA and O. J. Simpson: Testing Science and Justice,” New York Times, June 26, 1994.
110. See Rick Weiss, “Adversaries End DNA Evidence Fight,” Washington Post, October 27, 1994. See also Jay D. Aronson, Genetic Witness: Science, Law, and Controversy in the Making of DNA Profiling (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 142. Aronson wrote that the at-times nasty “DNA Wars” featured a dispute “over which scientific community, or communities, had the expertise necessary to determine whether or not the practices and methodologies surrounding forensic DNA analysis were valid and reliable.”
111. Jay Aronson described Lander as “one of the most vocal early opponents of DNA evidence.” Aronson, Genetic Witness, 182. Lander, for example, wrote an often-cited article in 1989 that raised a variety of questions about DNA testing. See Eric S. Lander, “DNA Fingerprinting on Trial,” Nature 339 (June 15, 1989): 501–5.
112. Eric S. Lander and Bruce Budowle, “DNA Fingerprinting Dispute Laid to Rest,” Nature 371 (October 27, 1994): 735. They further wrote: “The technology itself represents perhaps the greatest advance in forensic science since the development of ordinary fingerprints in 1892.” Jay Aronson noted that Lander and Budowle’s article attracted criticism for “minimizing the importance of many issues that had not yet been resolved.” For example, they failed to mention “that much of the DNA evidence in the Simpson investigation was produced through new . . . methods that had been subjected to limited scrutiny in court.” Aronson, Genetic Witness, 185. See also Richard Lempert, “After the DNA Wars: Skirmishing with NRC II,” Jurimetrics 37 (Summer 1997): 439–68.
113. Lander and Budowle, “DNA Fingerprinting Dispute Laid to Rest,” 735.
114. Ibid., 738. That Simpson’s defense team did not c
hallenge the science of DNA testing was mildly surprising. For example, the New York Times noted: “Even in this bitterly contested murder trial, the principles and procedures of DNA testing have not . . . been seriously questioned.” See “The Power of DNA Evidence.” See also Aronson, Genetic Witness, 193. Aronson wrote: “Even the New York Times, which had published some of the most controversial accounts of the debates over DNA profiling in the late 1980s and early 1990s, was surprised about the lack of a fundamental technical challenge to DNA profiling” at the Simpson trial.
115. Barry Scheck, interview with Harry Kriesler, “Bringing Science to the Courtroom” (July 25, 2003), accessed April 1, 2012, http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people3/Scheck/scheck-con3.html.
116. Ibid.
117. For a discussion about the bungled DNA evidence collection, see Toobin, The Run of His Life, 338–43. See also Gina Kolata, “Simpson Trial Shows Need for Proper Use of Forensic Evidence, Experts Say,” New York Times, October 11, 1995. Kolata wrote: “Many experts say the Los Angeles Police Department’s apparent mishandling of evidence in the Simpson trial may typify what happens in lower-profile cases nationally, but those defendants are generally too poor to mount a counterattack that scrutinizes the quality of the genetic evidence against them.”
118. See Michael Lynch et al., Truth Machine: The Contentious History of DNA Fingerprinting (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2008), 237.
119. See “What Every Law Enforcement Officer Should Know about DNA,” National Institute of Justice, September 1999, accessed May 29, 2013, www.nij.gov/pubs-sum/000614.htm.
120. Scheck, interview with Kriesler, “Bringing Science to the Courtroom.” Textbooks have embraced Scheck’s interpretation. “Arguably the most important outcome of the O. J. Simpson trial was the renewed emphasis placed on DNA evidence collection.” John M. Butler, Fundamentals of Forensic DNA Typing (Boston: Academic Press, 2010), 85.
121. Such programs make for “good television but bad forensic science,” Moses Schanfield, chair of George Washington University’s Department of Forensic Sciences, said in an interview in 2004. Quoted in Ken Adelman, “CSI: DC,” Washingtonian, October 2004, 37. For similar criticism, see Lynch et al., Truth Machine, x. “Experienced forensic scientists,” they wrote, “are quick to point out that . . . fictional portrayals are notoriously inaccurate, and that the reality of forensic science is far less clear, certain, and glamorous than portrayed on television.”
122. “Television without DNA would look a lot different, and prime time would need a makeover,” Brandon L. Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia, noted in his essay “After Osama bin Laden’s Death, Imagining a World without DNA Evidence,” Washington Post, May 13, 2011. He also wrote: “In a world without DNA testing, these programs would have a hard time selling fiber comparison as a silver bullet.”
123. David Martindale, “CSI Miami: Investigating CSI with the Creators,” A&E television, accessed October 18, 2013, www.aetv.com/csi_miami/csi_investigating_creators.jsp. On another occasion, Zuicker said: “I don’t believe America was privy to forensics until the O. J. Simpson trial.” Quoted in Charlie McCollum, “‘CSI’ Turns Up the Heat,” San Jose Mercury News, September 23, 2002.
124. See, for example, Linda Deutsch, “Simpson Case Could Be Shaped by 13th Juror—the TV Camera,” Associated Press, August 7, 1994, retrieved from LexisNexis database.
125. Simpson wrote that “cameras in the court all the time is a no-win situation for me. If I’m looking like I’m having a good day in court, if I’m too jovial, people say he’s not serious or concerned enough. If I’m looking worried or upset, then it looks like I did it. You just can’t win. I think the worst thing the court can do is let the TV camera in.” Simpson, I Want To Tell You, 97.
126. See, among others, Arenella, “Foreword: O.J. Lessons,” 1257. Arenella noted: “Watching the trial on television is not an adequate substitute for being in the courtroom every day. The TV juror might miss revealing non-verbal behavior of the witnesses or the defendant that jurors can see from the jury box. Some witnesses appear more credible on TV than in the courtroom while others fare better in person than on the tube.”
127. To that point, Dominick Dunne observed not long after the trial that Simpson was “not satisfied with a mere acquittal [but] wanted more from us. He wanted our adulation back. Adulation is what he craves. He is addicted to it.” Dunne, Justice, 227.
128. Ibid., 225.
129. Cited in Whitaker, “Whites v. Blacks.” Dunne observed that, while reading the statement, Jason Simpson “sat awkwardly, almost hiding his face . . . as if he were ashamed of the message he was reading.” Dunne, Justice, 229.
130. Jeff Hall, interview with author (May 4, 2013).
131. Linda Deutsch, “Going, Going, Gone—Simpson’s Dream Home Now Belongs to Bank,” Associated Press, July 15, 1997, retrieved from LexisNexis database.
132. Linda Deutsch, “Simpson Shrugs Off Demolition of His Former Mansion,” Associated Press, July 30, 1998, retrieved from LexisNexis database.
133. See Terry Baynes, “Ex-prosecutor: Cochran Manipulated Glove,” Washington Post, September 9, 2012. Dershowitz also said that Darden should have taken his suspicions to the California bar association rather than raise them publicly, during a panel discussion.
4. PEACE AT DAYTON AND THE “HUBRIS BUBBLE”
1. See, for example, “Bosnia Peace Talks Reportedly Fail to Reach Agreement,” Agence France Presse, November 21, 1995, retrieved from LexisNexis database. In addition, Warren Christopher, the U.S. secretary of state who participated in the endgame at Dayton, wrote in his memoir that he awakened on November 21, 1995, “prepared to announce” the failure of the talks. See Christopher, Chances of a Lifetime: A Memoir (New York: Scribner, 2001), 266.
2. See Peter Beinart, The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris (New York: Harper, 2010), 332, 360.
3. “Clinton’s Words: ‘The Promise of Peace,’” New York Times, November 22, 1995.
4. At the start of the war in April 1992, Bosnia’s population of 4.3 million people was 44 percent Muslim, 31 percent ethnic Serb, 17 percent ethnic Croat, and 8 percent “Yugoslav” or other. See Elizabeth M. Cousens and Charles K. Carter, Toward Peace in Bosnia: Implementing the Dayton Accords (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2001), 21. “Bosnia,” the authors noted, “resembled the Yugoslav Federation uniquely among Yugoslav republics in its mix of nationalities, lack of an absolute ethnic majority, and intricate power-sharing formulas for managing ethnicity” (20–21).
5. See Cousens and Carter, Toward Peace in Bosnia, 19. See also Roger Cohen, “Balkan Leaders Face an Hour for Painful Choices,” New York Times, November 1, 1995. Cohen, one of the leading chroniclers of the Bosnian war, wrote: “It was clear to almost everyone that the Bosnian independence [Izetbegović] sought in 1992 would provoke a violent reaction from the Serbian minority of Bosnia, strongly backed by the Serbian-dominated Yugoslav Army. On April 4, 1992, two days before the fighting broke out, he declared: ‘Citizens of Sarajevo, sleep peacefully, there will be no war.’”
6. Roger Cohen wrote of the Serbs: “They killed, raped, and plundered Muslims, and they ‘cleansed’ them by throwing them into concentration camps. Whatever the arguments on their side . . . the Serbs trampled them into the Bosnian mud with this vicious campaign that flouted all the principles on which Europe had been rebuilt since 1945.” Cohen, Hearts Grown Brutal: Sagas of Sarajevo (New York: Random House, 1998), 194.
7. “Bosnia Serb Ethnic Cleansing,” DCI Interagency Balkan Task Force, December 1994, from “End of the Cold War Collection,” National Security Archive, Washington, D.C.
8. Cousens and Carter, Toward Peace in Bosnia, 21.
9. See David Rohde, Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe’s Worst Massacre since World War II (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1998), xi. See also Richard Holbrooke, To End a War (New York: Random House, 1998), 162. Holbrooke wrote that American negotiators at Dayton called the “Grea
ter Serbia”–“Great Croatia” formulation “the ‘Stalin-Hitler’ scenario,” recalling as it did the division of Poland between the Soviets and the Germans in 1939.
10. Data cited here were retrieved from the “Polling the Nations” database; the survey by the Times Mirror Center for the People & the Press was conducted January 13, 1993. When the question was asked again in June 1995, 47 percent of respondents identified the Serbs; 53 percent of respondents gave incorrect answers or said they did not know. These data were retrieved from the “Polling the Nations” database; the survey by the Times Mirror Center for the People & the Press was conducted June 14, 1995.
11. Fifty-six percent of respondents to a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted in mid-November 1995 said they felt “America’s vital interests” were not at stake in Bosnia; 35 percent said American vital interests were at stake there; and 9 percent offered no opinion. Data cited here were retrieved from the “Polling the Nations” database.
12. A Time/CNN poll conducted among 600 Americans in October 1995 reported that 34 percent of respondents felt the United States had a moral obligation to end the fighting in Bosnia; 59 percent of respondents said they did not feel that way. Data cited here were retrieved from the “Polling the Nations” database; the Time/CNN poll was conducted October 23, 1995.
13. Quoted in Anthony Lewis, “Abroad at Home: Anatomy of Disaster,” New York Times, January 5, 1996.
14. Louise Branson and Dusko Dodger, Milosevic: Portrait of a Tyrant (New York: Free Press, 1999), 10.
15. See Marcus Tanner, “Gambler Stakes His All on War,” Independent (London), August 6, 1995.
16. Holbrooke, To End a War, 162. See also Michael Dobbs, “New Talks on an Old Agenda: Bosnia’s Future,” Washington Post, November 1, 1995. Dobbs reported that a member of the British parliament had asked Tuđman in 1995 what postwar Bosnia might look like. The Croat president “promptly took out his pen and drew a map of Bosnia with a squiggly line down the middle,” Dobbs wrote. “On one side of the map, he wrote ‘Croatia,’ on the other side ‘Serbia’”—an evocation of the “Greater Croatia”–“Greater Serbia” formulation.
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