I just recently re-watched the excellent 2016 ESPN doc "OJ: Made in America." Which led me to order a cheap used copy of the 2007 book "If I Did It," allegedly the confession of Simpson---originally intended as a money-making project for him but, through the courts, the rights to the book were ultimately turned over to the family of murder victim Ron Goldman.
Simpson was interviewed for the book in 2006 by Judith Regan. The interview was initially scheduled to air on Fox in that year but was shelved after widespread protest. In 2018, the below interview was finally aired for the first time.
After reading "If I Did It" and watching the interview, I don't think of Simpson as "The Devil." I think his crime was rather typical---yes, typical. The history of the world is full of angry, jealous lovers killing each other in the heat of passion. And "heat of passion" is the key. I just went and looked up California law: A murder committed in the heat of passion can either be 2nd-Degree Murder (15 years to life) or Voluntary Manslaughter (3, 6, or 11 years). The prosecution, in their quest for publicity, insisted on making this a 1st-Degree Murder case---which I don't think it was.
As Simpson admits ("hypothetically" or not) in this interview, he went over to Nicole's house to either peek in her window (as he'd done before) or actively confront her about some perceived sexual/drug-related "misdeed." His daughter's recital only hours earlier, and his scheduled flight an hour later to Chicago, make it clear, to me at least, that Simpson wasn't thinking about intentionally murdering Nicole when he went over there. The fact that something "set him off" (Goldman's appearance, or did Nicole have a knife at the door?) isn't an excuse for murder, but I think it's an excuse for not being "the Epitome of Evil." Rather, this is a real-life case of a one-time hero brought down by his emotional weakness for a woman---the centuries-old tragic stuff of both literature and myth. Told here in a banal fashion, but tragic, nonetheless.
After reading "If I Did It" and watching the interview, I don't think of Simpson as "The Devil." I think his crime was rather typical---yes, typical. The history of the world is full of angry, jealous lovers killing each other in the heat of passion. And "heat of passion" is the key. I just went and looked up California law: A murder committed in the heat of passion can either be 2nd-Degree Murder (15 years to life) or Voluntary Manslaughter (3, 6, or 11 years). The prosecution, in their quest for publicity, insisted on making this a 1st-Degree Murder case---which I don't think it was.
As Simpson admits ("hypothetically" or not) in this interview, he went over to Nicole's house to either peek in her window (as he'd done before) or actively confront her about some perceived sexual/drug-related "misdeed." His daughter's recital only hours earlier, and his scheduled flight an hour later to Chicago, make it clear, to me at least, that Simpson wasn't thinking about intentionally murdering Nicole when he went over there. The fact that something "set him off" (Goldman's appearance, or did Nicole have a knife at the door?) isn't an excuse for murder, but I think it's an excuse for not being "the Epitome of Evil." Rather, this is a real-life case of a one-time hero brought down by his emotional weakness for a woman---the centuries-old tragic stuff of both literature and myth. Told here in a banal fashion, but tragic, nonetheless.
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