Here's the fact checks for this week's episode
O.J. Simpson’s “Minimum Fitness for Men” video was shot a few weeks before the murders.
True. You can
watch it here. It’s also true that his doctor likened Simpson to “Tarzan’s grandfather,” due apparently to his arthritis. (Simpson, never one to pass up an endorsement opportunity, gave a motivational speech three months before the murders claiming that a product called Juice Plus had cured his arthritis.) Left out of the series, however, was a joke about beating his wife Simpson makes in the video that the prosecution successfully entered into evidence: “I’m telling you, you just gotta get your space in if you’re working out with the wife, if you know what I mean. You could always blame it on, uh, working out.”
Did Chris Darden really lose it at Johnnie Cochran over accusations that he himself was racist in quoting from a witness?
Not quite. Darden called out Cochran, but with “quiet dignity,” according to Jeffrey Toobin’s source book,
The Run of His Life: “That’s created a lot of problems for my family and myself, statements that you make about me and race, Mr. Cochran.”
Wait, how did this screenwriter named Laura Hart McKinny even meet Mark Fuhrman?
According to trial testimony, McKinny was approached by Fuhrman at a café in Los Angeles in what sounds sort of like an attempt at a 1985 pickup
"I was working on my laptop computer and a man dressed in street clothes came up and asked me about my computer. That was a fairly common thing for people to do then because this was a time when laptops weren’t that familiar to people and often people would come and ask me what it was and how you used it. So this man asked me what I was doing and what that was and I explained to him that it was a laptop and explained to him how it worked.”
She used him as a “consultant” for a screenplay she was working on about women police officers—which ended up as the 13 hours of “Fuhrman tapes.”
McKinny was working as a screenplay-writing instructor, while never having sold a screenplay.
True.
Johnnie Cochran said of the Fuhrman tapes: “This is manna from heaven.”
False. It was actually another Dream Team lawyer, not seen on the series, though Toobin writes that Cochran took an “almost mystical joy” in the tapes’ discovery. “In all sincerity, Cochran told at least one colleague on the defense team that he believed God had brought the McKinny tapes to him.” Cochran also described the tapes to Judge Ito as “‘like Lay’s potato chips— you can’t put them down, and you can’t eat just one.’”
The defense lawyers bickered over who would go to North Carolina.
True. But it wasn’t Bailey’s questionable history of trying cases in North Carolina (or a superficial appeal to Robert Shapiro’s vanity) that got him a plane ticket, but his offer to pay for the expenses himself. From
American Tragedy: The Uncensored Story of the O.J. Simpson Defense: “During a break, Bailey grabs Cochran. ‘The worst guy in the world to go with you is Bob Shapiro,’ he says. Bailey points out that he’s won every Fuhrman motion he’s argued before Ito . . . I tried cases in North Carolina in the fifties, Bailey says. And then his standard trump card: I’ll pay my own way.”
Bailey and Cochran lost their first request to have the Fuhrman tapes brought from North Carolina to California.
True. Even though Judge Ito had issued a subpoena for the tapes, the judge, William Z. Wood Jr., “inexplicably” denied them. It’s not explicitly stated in the book or the show, but it’s strongly implied that in the North Carolina courtroom, where Bailey notes that attitudes are slow to change, the explanation lies with the racist, good ol’ boy judge. From Schiller’s book
American Tragedy, “[Judge] Wood was apparently offended by Johnnie, who wore a dark suit with a tie of African kente cloth. Judge Wood didn’t like the showmanship.”
Were there paintings featuring the Confederate flag in the courtroom in North Carolina?
This isn’t mentioned in the source material or the books written by the defense team, so who knows. Most likely not, but it’s a brilliant and not-farfetched reminder of the very real persistence of institutional racism that Cochran and his team devoted themselves to exposing . . . whether it was at play in the Simpson case or devised as a winning strategy. Though the paintings in the scene may have been dramatic set pieces, the mention of the Civil War statue was not. That Confederate memorial that Bailey and Cochran notice alongside the “smell of mint juleps and condescension” really stands on the grounds of the Forsyth County courthouse in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and bears the inscription: “As Southern soldiers of the war of 1861-1865, they share the fame that mankind awards to the heroes who served in that great conflict.”
Margaret, a.k.a. Peggy, York, one of the highest-ranking women on the L.A.P.D. at the time and Judge Ito’s wife, was once Mark Fuhrman’s supervisor.
True. Talk about a soap-opera twist. (Remember in an
early episode of the series, the zoom in on a dramatically placed form the blonde York was filling out, stating that she didn’t know Fuhrman?) Ito and York actually met on the job, over a dead body, and had fallen quickly in love and married. She was one of the inspirations for the sitcom
Cagney and Lacey, and yes, Fuhrman says many disparaging things about York, including on tape that she “sucked and fukked her way to the top.”
Did York lie about knowing him so that her husband could get the Simpson case?
It’s unclear but seems likely. Though York had given a deposition saying she did not recall Fuhrman, the revelations on the tapes make this hard to believe—as portrayed, she did privately reprimand Fuhrman for laughing at “K.K.K.” written on a calendar’s entry for Martin Luther King Day. “In other words,” Jeffrey Toobin writes, “as some lawyers on both sides came to believe, York may have lied in her sworn statement that she didn’t remember Fuhrman.” Marcia Clark seems to be one of those lawyers: “
f you believed what Mark Fuhrman had said about her in the McKinny tapes, it became more difficult to take her assurances at face value.”
Judge Ito’s speech about his wife and how tough it is for women in the workplace.
True, astoundingly. This is taken nearly word for word from his actual speech, and we see the subtle outrage flash across Sarah Paulson’s face as Ito praises his wife and all women for enduring hardships in male-dominated professions. From her memoir Without a Doubt:
“[T]hen he began speaking of the difficult road that women had to walk in a man’s profession, how women take a lot of hits for having to be tough. The irony of it left me breathless. For a year now, I had been browbeaten by this man, suffering the very difficulties that moistened his eyes when he spoke of his wife. Oh, when it suited his Kodak moment, he was Mr. Sensitivity.”
Did Chris Darden really lose it during a cross-examination and refuse to apologize to the judge?
Yes, this is true and far worse a transgression than portrayed on-screen. The disagreement between Cochran and Darden was actually over cross-examination of Detective Lange. Ito did instruct Darden to calm down and take “three breaths,” but he still refused to apologize to Ito. A lawyer present to cover for CNBC (O.J.’s original choice for trial attorney, Wyoming cowboy Gerry Spence) became so incredulous that he screamed out, “Jesus Christ!” Clark did offer to remove her jewelry and go to jail with Darden (a move that he writes briefly about with obvious affection and admiration); in the end, he offered a weak apology to avoid jail.
Mark Fuhrman pled the Fifth to every question during cross-examination.
True. He was eventually charged with perjury, after the tapes proved he had used racial slurs within the last decade—after he had testified that he had not. The tapes are as bad or worse than intimated on-screen. The man “hated by both sides,” as Nathan Lane’s character notes, pled “no contest” to felony perjury in October 1996; he was fined $200 and sentenced to three years’ probation.
The L.A.P.D., however, would have to deal with the content of “the Fuhrman tapes” long after his probation was up. According to The New York Times in 1997, an internal review conducted by the L.A.P.D. found that Fuhrman had “grossly exaggerated most if not all of his accounts of his racist brutality as a patrol officer.” The Times continued, “Of 29 incidents or ‘issues’ on Ms. McKinny’s tapes and transcripts, 17 could not be connected to known events in the careers of Mr. Fuhrman or his contemporaries. Investigators did link 12 accounts to known events, but produced no conclusive findings, except for Mr. Fuhrman's use of racial epithets and sexist attitudes toward female co-workers.”
The People v O.J. Simpson Recap: Episode 9 Fact Check
@Darden finally trying to become assertive against little ol' Dershowitz
. Was he planning on getting a cut of the screen play and retiring. He had to have known that the stuff that he admitted to could not only end his career but bring charges against him. Another crazy thing is that there are cops out there just like Fuhrman, that go to work everyday. The only difference is that they're smart enough not to have any tapes.
Darden going off on Clark, he right though.
one episode left..really curious on how the Katrina one will be.
Brehs, Robert Kardashian didn't fukk with O.J. anymore after the trial?
from the beginning. One of the funniest things I've watched on TV this year.
to the security guard while he was trying to get his mac n cheese.
juror losing her shyt and trying to run away
.
during the mock interview and saying he tussled with Nicole like they were play wrestling.
