Reasonable Doubts The Criminal Justice System and the O.J. Simpson Case

by Dershowitz, Alan M.

• ISBN13: 9780684832647
• ISBN10: 068483264X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-02-19
• Publisher: Touchstone

Summary

One of America's leading appeal lawyers, Alan Dershowitz, examines the American criminal justice system, critically analyzing its strengths and weaknesses. Using the O.J. Simpson murder case as the backdrop, Reasonable Doubts explores the larger issues that shape our country's legal system.

Chosen to prepare the appeal should O.J. Simpson be convicted, Alan Dershowitz is uniquely suited to deconstruct the case in order to use it in understanding the modern criminal justice system. The crucial questions raised by the O.J. Simpson case, and Dershowitz's answers, invite a reassessment not only of the case itself, but also of the strengths—and weaknesses—of the legal system in America today.

Author Biography

Alan M. Dershowitz is the bestselling author of Chutzpah, Reversal of Fortune, The Best Defense, and many other books. He was first in his class at Yale Law School, and was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. After clerking for Judge David Bazelton and Justice Arthur Goldberg, he was appointed to the Harvard Law faculty, where he became a full professor at age twenty-eight, the youngest in the school's history. Newsweek has described him as "the nation's most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer and one of its most distinguished defenders of individual rights." Professor Dershowitz has served on the National Board of Directors of the American Civil Liberties Union and as consultant for various foundations and presidential commissions. His clients have included Claus von Bulow, Patricia Hearst, Senator Mike Gravel, Harry Reems, Anatoly Scharansky, F. Lee Bailey, William Kuntzler, and several death row inmates. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 11
Was the Simpson Case Decided Even Before the Trial Began?	p. 19
Is the Criminal Trial a Search for Truth?	p. 34
Why Do So Many Police Lie about Searches and Seizures? And Why Do So Many Judges "Believe" Them?	p. 49
Were the Jury's Doubts in the Simpson Case Reasonable or Unreasonable?	p. 69
Did the Jurors View the Evidence Through the Prism of Race More than of Gender?	p. 99
Why Was There Such a Great Disparity Between the Public Perception and the Jury Verdict?	p. 128
Can Money Buy an Acquittal?	p. 149
Are Prosecutors and Defense Attorneys Advocates Only for Their Clients, or Also for Justice?	p. 157
What If the Jury Had Convicted Simpson?	p. 182
Was the Simpson Trial a "Great Case" That Will Make "Bad Law"?	p. 196
Epilogue: How Would You Have Voted?	p. 208
The "Appeal" from O. J. Simpson's "Conviction"	p. 211
A Note on the Civil Trial	p. 239
Notes	p. 243
Acknowledgments	p. 259
Index	p. 261
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