Christopher Tidy wrote:

No, it follows OJ's pattern of conduct. He was a street thug that got a ride in the NFL
but never lost the street thug heritage.

It is difficult to categorise O.J. as being a good or bad guy. He
clearly has some of both in his personality. I think this is one reason
why people found the 1995 murder trial riveting: here was a nice guy
accused of murder. Conversely, I think it's why people are less
interested in the Phil Spector murder trial. Phil Spector has never had
that "nice guy" image.

An interesting piece of trivia is that O.J. was considered for the role
of Terminator, but that director James Cameron did not think that "such
a nice guy could be a ruthless killer":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminator

Oh, I think he could have got the part post 95 but I'm not sure I'd have paid to see the
motion picture.

Anyway, if it was Joe Citizen, that slow speed chase would have been ended in about 20
seconds. The deference shown to OJ illustrates a lot of things wrong in our society and
legal system.

As far as thinking out legal system is inferior to yours, we don't have loser pays which
makes it hard for a working man to prevail. I'm not sure it has changed but doesn't the
Scottish legal system have a verdict of 'not proven'? We go with inocent or guilty.

I didn't say your legal system is inferior to ours. Essentially it is
very similar. I just have some lingering doubts about this particular
verdict.

I was pointing out differences. English law is the framework we used to formulate our
laws after we decided to move out of the Empire

In Scottish law there are three verdicts available to the jury:
"proven", "not proven" and "not guilty". The second two are treated as
acquittals, but the idea is that the jury only rewards the defendant
with a "not guilty" verdict when they are convinced of the defendant's
innocence. Technically, the English/American system uses verdicts of
"guilty" and "not guilty", as opposed to "guilty" and "innocent".

In civil law, the English "loser pays" rule has its advantages and
disadvantages. The advantage is that it discourages people from bringing
a lawsuit that they cannot substantiate, or is frivolous. It used to be
the case that the USA had a reputation for seeing many more frivolous
lawsuits than England, but I'm not sure that this is the case any
longer. A litigation culture and lawyers offering "no win, no fee" deals
have made such lawsuits much more common here.


You stated the down side of not using looser pays quite well. We have a lot of frivolous
lawsuits. I used to work for a firm that made asbestoes products during WWII. Class
action lawsuits are seriously abused. There are many days I'd consider supporting looser
pays modified so that private citizens suing individuly would be exempt but in large class
actions, the contingency fee lawyers would have to pay if they lose.

Yes our system is not perfect but show me one that is.

There isn't one, and I wouldn't try to argue otherwise.

The nice thing about different systems in different countries is that we can observe and
learn and decide to adopt a practice that has good results.

Wes