Without a Doubt

Rating:
Summary: No One Cries, "Stinking Fish"
Review: An interesting book which sheds light on why the proscution lost its case. Marcia Clark comes off as an intelligent workhorse with the usual mix of good and bad qualities (I run into women who are like her every day). And in the Simpson case, judging from this book, she and Darden were simply out of their leagues.

Admitting personl fault, moving past instinct to facts, recognizing the importance of salesmanship, these are important traits for success in any situation. The book depicts Ms. Clark as having been overwhelmed from the begininng, so lost in the thicket she never developed the persepective it took to take a complicated case and win. One shouldn't expect her to write a book where she admits she blew it but that's the impression I got after wading through all 500 pages.

Lastly, who thinks we got the real truth about her relationship with Darden, her nervousness at being trust into the celebrity spotlight, her adjustment to attention, money, and fame, which accompanied her role in the OJ Simpson trial? For a case which was fought on a battleground of versions of truth it would have been refreshing if she'd offered complete candor about how her life was turned upside down. My hunch, she doesn't recognize the concept.

Rating:
Summary: Marcia Clark, whine salesman
Review: Because I disagreed with the verdict in the first Simpson trial and thought Marcia Clark was treated shabbily by all concerned, I looked forward to her book, expecting an insightful description of how her quest for justice was derailed by those who wanted to acquit a murderer by pandering to racism. I was disappointed. Clark comes across as one of the most petulant, whining, immature people imaginable. Most distrubing, and least professional, is her glee at reporting what she thinks are the foibles of the people she worked with on this case. (She even tells us when she didn't like the way they dressed.) No one would want to work with her after reading this, nor should they. The only errors at trial Clark admits to are minor tactical ones. Unintentionally, however, she illustrates what lost the case for the prosecution: failure to dismiss Chris Darden from the case when it became obvious he didn't have a grasp of the proceedings. Clark's own book makes clear that Darden made serious mistakes even before the glove debacle, any one of which Clark would have described with sarcasm if it had been done by anyone else. You wonder if Clark is even aware that her book proves the opposite of what she has intended.

Rating:
Summary: Self Serving and not Informative
Review: I have read most of the books written about the O.J. Trial. All have been more about setting forth that particular author's personal/ or political agenda and not about true analysis.

What I fail to find in any of these books is what role did the media play in turning a simple crime of passion into the racial mess that this trial came to symbolize?

This story is simple. Man and woman have a very sick/tormented relationship, where many sick games are played. One day man loses his head and murders woman and the poor guy who comes to her rescue. Man goes to trial. Man goes to jail for a crime of passion. End of story.

Instead the SCLM (So Called Liberal Media) as described in the Eric Alterman's book, "What Liberal Media," enters the picture driven by the almighty dollar and turns this simple crime into the trial of the century simply for the profit margin.

We still trust the media to inform us and they failed miserably as they have done in every important story of our generation. There is no liberal media bias. It's all about the money and polarizing the country to fuel the tragic story of the Simpson case was more important to the Media than actually telling the real story.

They forgot that Nicole and O.J. loved each other and created two very lovely kids together. Race had nothing to do witth it until the media focussed on it.

Marcia Clark lost her case, because she drank the Kool Aid from the media and followed their narrative as opposed to trying the case for what it was a crime of passion.

Rating:
Summary: A No Win Situation - But a Good Book
Review: I read four books after the trial. I read the Schiller 1000 page saga, Outrage, the present book and a book on Johnny Cochrane. Each book was different and gives us different insights.

I think it is clear to any reasonable and unbiased thinking person that O.J. did in fact kill Nicole and Ron and it is just as it is clear that Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK. Also it is clear from the other reviewers that Marcia Clark evokes a certain emotional response that colors their view of the book. If you still think O.J. is innocent then I think that is a personal problem or internal devil that you must deal with but it is not related to reality. As the title says "Without a Doubt" he was guilty.

Johnny made buckets of money as a criminal attorney. Both he and Shapiro could make sums of money in hours that only the rest of us can dream about. Johnny drove a Rolls and Shapiro rubbed elbows with the LA movers and shakers.

Marcia is more like the average citizen, working for the DA's office, probably driving a Chevrolet or Honda. She was a single divorced mother that commutes to work. After the trial she had decided enough was enough, and she wrote the book along with everyone else. And I say good for her! Make a buck or two! Its America.

Now for the book. It is what you might expect. It is the story of her involvement with the trial. It presents some prior background on her life and earlier trials and then goes in detail through the O.J. saga and what it was like from her perspective. I think is a well written book and for the most part entertaining. "Outrage" is a bit more gripping and Schiller's "American Tragedy" longer and more comprehensive. But this book is what we would expect. It deals mainly with her role and it is a solid job. She was basically a civil servant and she was the front "man" facing a raft of America's most famous lawyers including the above mentioned plus F. Lee Bailey. Then to complicate things, the whole mess was presided over by the star blinded Judge Ito. Together they faced essentially 12 black female jurors who loved Johnny and O.J.

Could she win? "Without a Doubt" she could not win, but it was nothing to do with her.

Recommend. 4 stars.

Jack in Toronto

Rating:
Summary: Somewhat self serving
Review: Marcia Clark was, of course, the lead prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson trial. In this book she gives us all of the trial details from the first time she heard about the killings until the day the jury brought in the "not guilty" verdict. It's an interesting book in that it gives you insight into how each trial element was handled and the behind-the-scenes planning that has to occur to try someone.

However, Ms. Clark never feels the need to attach any of the blame for losing the case to herself. Her biggest scapegoat is Judge Lance Ito. By all accounts he is a weak judge and let the defense get away with more than they should have been allowed to, however I find it hard to believe that there was nothing that she or the DA's office could have done about it. In the book it always seems that things are about to fall apart until she steps in at the last minute and fixes everything.

This is the third book I've read about the Simpson trial (and it will be the last). I found Ms. Clark's book much more informative about the trial than Christopher Darden's "In Contempt". The Darden book was much more of an autobiography and to be honest I wasn't all that interested in his personal life. Thankfully, Ms. Clark keeps her personal life story to a minimum. So, I'd recommend Ms. Clark's book if you want to get an inside look at the prosecution side of the trial. However, if you want a less biased look at the whole thing read Jeffrey Toobin's book, "The Run of His Life."

Rating:
Summary: Highly entertaning, without being overly melodramatic
Review: With all the terrible crime scene police work, I don't think anybody other than OJ himself can ever find out whether he was guilty or not. But a book reader's interest is not to uphold one set of criminal evidence by suppressing another. As a book, Without A Doubt is a great read. It's highly entertaining without being overly melodramatic. Marcia, of course, is just as brutally honest about, if indulgent of, her emotions in the book as we've seen her throughout the trial back in 1995. Credit should be given to her vivid characterization of the players: Judge Lance Ito as a wimp; John Cochran, a demagogue; Chris Darden, a 'model minority'; and of course, Marcia herself, a tough, chivalrous, and yet compassionate professional. Whether these characterizations are truthful or distorted is for the academics; but Marcia's strong personality came through in the book and transports the reader back to the anxieties and fears we all experienced throughout that restless year.

It is very amusing, to say the least, that to Marcia the whole world seems to form one big conspiracy against her. The press, the criminalists, the cops, the jurors, the judge, the colleagues, the ex-husband, everybody was terrorizing her life. Then you have the defense team taking every possible cheap shot to upset her plan. One has to wonder if it has ever occurred to Marcia that a real winner in this day and age makes other people play her game, not vice versa.

The book adds virtually nothing, except for Marcia's side of her personal life, to what we don't already know. But as she weaves the Rodney King trial into context, readers soon find themselves thinking, 'Ah. White people had it coming. When they acquitted those cops they should have known that what gets around, comes around.' Perhaps the most thought-inspiring thing about the book is Marcia's personal journey through race issues. She claims, for example, to have had no idea of how the black community would react to Mr. Shipp's testimony. Despite her attempt at being open-minded, what she lacks is not the right attitude, but the fundamental understanding of the sufferings of minorities.

The views in the book, just like all other books about the trial, might be unsurprisingly 'biased' or selective. But it's great for those who aren't seeking to validate their own opinions or to beat a dead horse. After all, remember, after the trial Marcia has nothing left to lose. The trial is over, and history becomes story-telling. Marcia's own imperfections leave us reflecting on what we've learned from all of this.