Several weeks ago I went into the Commercial Center bookstore, hoping to get an interview. The store owner told me that because his building was scheduled for renovation, he was closing the store at the end of the year. At the time I visited, however, the store was full of used books and before I left, I grabbed one book–for $1.
The book I grabbed was Triumph of Justice: The Final Judgment on the Simpson Saga by Daniel Petrocelli with Peter Knobler.
I like non-fiction books and I am old enough to remember the O.J. Simpson “incident.” I was working at the time and every evening turned on the TV to watch the O.J. criminal trial in action. I was actually in Las Vegas when the verdict came in. I was playing poker, and the game stopped as we all were interested in the verdict. Wow.
But this book was about OJ’s second trial.
Attorney Daniel Petrocelli had been hired by the Ron Goldman family to pursue O.J. Simpson in a civil trial related to the same murders in which the former football hero had been acquitted. Because Petrocelli had paid little attention to the criminal trial, work on the case involved interviews of all the personalities in trial one plus his own experts in trial two.
Did I remember the words of Kato Kaelin, A.C. Cowlings, Marcus Allen and others? What did O.J. have to say during 10 days of testimony? How did Petrocelli cope with reporters covering the trial? Every detail was fascinating to me; I was reliving my own history. The book is not short, at 636 pages. And its original publican date was 1998. The paperback edition was published in July 2016.
A excerpt from the book:
“I took a left out the large courtroom doors, took another left, and there was O.J. Simpson. He and a group of friends and family were crowded in the hallway in a tight circle, saying prayers. Praying to Jesus, I heard, “Lord, give him strength,” and “God be with him.”
“What I found striking about this prayer vigil was how uninvolved Simpson appeared. All the others had their heads bowed, their eyes tight shut. From their body language I could tell they cared with a passion, that it was important to them that this man win. They were intensely engaged, convinced that Simpson was innocent, that he didn’t do these terrible things and that God would prevail on his behalf.
“I didn’t get the feeling looking at Simpson. Although a part of the circle, he seemed apart from it, almost as if he were going through the motions to make his followers happy. Their heads were down in supplication, his was up ad looking around. He saw me catch him in his disinterest. He knew that he had killed two people, he knew his prayer was a fraud, a farce, a charade. H knew he was taking the name of the Lord in vain. But Simpson would do whatever he had to do, including pray to whichever God was expedient, to continue to be O.J.”
I found Petrocelli’s book fascinating and do recommend it.
