Reflections at One Week

It's been one week, and as I reflect on that fact, I realize that the emotions I felt last Wednesday morning, I have felt before.

Tuesday, October 3, 1995. The day O.J. Simpson was acquitted. It was a cool but sunny central New Jersey morning. Older Daughter was at school. I was pushing Younger Daughter in her stroller along the sidewalk when my neighbor Beth burst out of her house, as if she'd been shot out of a cannon, and rushed toward me. "Have you heard the news?" she cried, breathlessly.

For months we had all been transfixed in shock and horror: at the gruesome details of an unspeakable crime, the charges against a popular sports figure, the famous "White Bronco" chase, and the twists and turns of the trial. Even my daughter's elementary school stopped what it was doing on October 3 and announced the acquittal over the loudspeaker.

Columbine was four years in the future, 9/11 six, Sandy Hook seventeen. We are, it seems, never at a loss for moments in history we never forget: "Where were you when...?"

November 9, 2016. Whatever day it was in 2020 when we learned that a deadly virus -- which would kill my sister-in-law -- was snaking its way around the globe and into our lives. January 6, 2021. November 6, 2024.

I have before me Marcia Clark's memoir Without A Doubt. Clark was the lead prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson murder case. I found this book in one of my favorite second-hand stores last month and picked it up. Though I love crime novels if John Grisham writes them, I am much more drawn to true stories -- you don't have to suspend disbelief.

But sometimes truth is, as they say, stranger than fiction.

In her postscript, Clark writes: "I know that to many Americans, that verdict came as a gut shot. I've seen photos of the faces of people watching television as it was read back. I'm talking about the look of dumb shock caught on the faces of Americans in bars and beauty salons and living rooms all over the country. They knew he was guilty. We all did. How could something like this happen in a country where every sixty-minute weekly courtroom drama has conditioned us to expect -- in the face of overwhelming evidence of guilt -- a triumph of justice?"

A jury verdict is not a national election; there are critical differences. And yet each is a referendum -- and a statement about who we are, for better or for worse.

How could something like this happen? Justice is denied through calculated transactions: the buying and selling not only of special interests but of ethical standards, principles, truth itself.

And sometimes wrong prevails and the guilty get off scot-free. Sometimes they are even rewarded, lauded, praised – and returned to power. This is not the first time in history this has happened; it will not be the last.

We are right to experience these moments in history – the acquittals of a killer, the election of a convicted felon, both criminals – as a gut punch. It is fitting that we recoil, because it means we’ve retained some sense of integrity. The emotions we experience in the wake of these moments are what will preserve our humanity and, indeed, our civilization.

These moments, then and now, serve a purpose.

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