Suppose the LAPD beating of Rodney King never took place - say that Mr. King was never on the road at that time, or at the very least wasn't speeding while drunk, or by chance the cops simply missed him.
What would be the effect on the LAPD and relations with the black community?
They were already terrible. The LAPD, with a force only a fraction that of the NYPD, tries to police on the cheap (in a city not much smaller than NYC) by employing a cruiser force covering a larger area with fewer officers. This promotes an occupier's mentality, rather than a chummier relationship found in cities where community policing is practiced.
How much longer would the systematic racism in the police department go unnoticed for? (The investigation into the LAPD after the riots uncovered among other things, dozens of racist messages on the police computers.)
Judging by the number of near-video game level of quick-draw McGraw shootings going on today, I doubt that there would be any difference between OTL and TTL.
Furthermore, would this have possibly resulted in a much different verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial?
No. Not just no, but Hell No.
The evidence against O.J. was damning - the bloody glove found at the murder scene contained DNA evidence from Nicole Brown, Ronald Goldman and O.J. Simpson - it alone might have convicted O.J. under normal circumstances.
Even if the bloody glove did not exist, or even if it hadn't been found by a racist cop, by itself it is irrelevant.
Even the Bruno Magli bloody shoe prints could be declared irrelevant (maybe the "Columbian Drug Lords" liked the brand too
).
But there's no getting around
the bloody socks [1] found the night of the murder at a time when the racist cop was still in bed asleep! The bloody glove is a nice distraction, but its the bloody sock that sinks OJ. Or should have. If you don't count OJ's bloodied car, his cut hand, and his incredibly bungled attempt the night/morning after the murder to "alibi" the wound. [2]
1] DNA and everything, and no way to blame Mark Furman for that sock. So the DTs simply MADE racists out of the rest of the investigating squad...because...rhetoric.
2] The bungled alibi was the one piece of evidence that really seemed to worry the DTs, at least as much as they ever WERE "worried". On the night of the murders, after OJ arrived in his London hotel, he call up the night desk and, while speaking, cried out: "Oh, I just broke this bathroom glass on the porcelain! I'm bleeding real bad!" When offered to get room service to provide first aid, he assured them he was OK, he would take care of it.
Problem: It was an intercom system, set into the wall two rooms away in the bedroom. The device could not be accessed by outside phone or landline, and OJ could NOT have been heard on that intercom from the bathroom. Yet the prosecution, in yet another one of their miscues, never even knew about (or missed) this glaring error by OJ.
To be fair, I hardly think the OJ jury would have been impressed by the DA exposing the fallacy of OJ's attempt at making an alibi for his slashing his hand during his butchery of Ron Goldman. At absolute best, it might have hung the jury. There were members of that jury who showed a glaring hatred for Denise Brown during her testimony, who though not a twin showed a startling resemblance to her murdered sister.
But in the aftermath of the LA riots, with the LAPD now seen by many as a cadre of racist thugs, the trial turned into "Cirque d'O.J.", with the defense charging that the cops planted evidence to set O.J. up for murder.
The Dream Team could have suggested the crimes were committed by Skippy the Alien Space Bat and STILL there would have been at least three jurors who would have voted to acquit.
Without any way of dismissing all the evidence other than the bloody glove as the actions of racism, they simply honed in on that and handwaved the rest using the Race Card to dismiss everything else.
No Rodney King beating, no riots… Could O.J. have been convicted?
No, the riots were only part of the formula of that verdict.
There was:
The willingness of the Dream Team to shred the legal canon of ethics (except in part Robert Shapiro)
Judge Lance Ito's man crush on the members of the Dream Team
Ito's handing over his gavel to them on Day One
Ito's relentless hostility towards Marcia Clark, the Chief prosecutor handling the case
The incompetence of the prosecutor team
the media zoo
