The Kavanaugh Hearings and the O.J. Simpson Trial

The more I heard senators, pundits, and even neighbors and relatives debating the Kavanaugh hearings, the more I thought back to how Americans split over the O.J. Simpson trial.

I recall scratching my head during that trial, wondering how really smart people could so stupidly believe that O.J. didn’t do it. I saw them on TV actually arguing he was framed. Eventually, they conceded they never bought into O.J.’s innocence. Their vocal support for him was really all about their disdain for the “system” — one where white cops and juries had railroaded innocent Blacks over the course of centuries.

So, these otherwise intelligent people were willing to deny justice to Simpson’s victims, just so they could send a political message. If the nearly decapitated Nicole Brown or bludgeoned Ronald Goldman had their killer walk free, their families would just have to suck it up. It’s payback time for the thousands of minorities on the wrong end of the stick for all these many decades. It was classic jury nullification, and many leftists felt it was justified.

Those bizarre rationalizations sounded so eerily similar to those of C-list actress Alyssa Milano, who exclaimed that if a few white males were wrongly accused of sexual assault and ruined in the process, it would be acceptable, as long as it led to more survivors of sexual assault to be believed.

Democratic senators and the radical left wing interest groups vilifying Kavanaugh knew they were dismantling the sacred concept of due process in demanding that accusers be believed in all cases simply because of their gender, regardless of any corroborative evidence.

Suggesting a person should be ruined without any evidence is as crazy as claiming a defendant, such as O.J., should walk free. In both cases, facts didn’t matter; emotion did. Facts were subverted by a more pressing desire to win a political argument and to send a message, be it that the system is rigged against minority defendants or the system is rigged against survivors of sexual assault.

That’s the very definition of mob rule. Individual rights and protections are discarded just to appease the passionate and angry demands of the masses marching on city hall with their pitchforks.

That’s why, of all the many statements made throughout this hostile, prolonged debate, the most profound belonged to Senator Susan Collins, who, in her already landmark speech, uttered these words that will be forever etched in American history:

“…we will be ill served in the long run if we abandon the presumption of innocence and fairness, tempting though it may be. We must always remember that it is when passions are most inflamed that fairness is most in jeopardy.”

Twenty-three years after the trial, those pundits who previously supported O.J. now flinch at their own videotape. Two decades from now, you have to think that so many of our present senators will look back, embarrassed that they once called for the elimination of one of the most fundamental underpinnings of our enlightened Western values: The right to due process and to be free from vilification based upon mere allegation.

Steve Levy, former New York state assemblyman, Suffolk County executive, and candidate for governor, is now a distinguished political pundit. Levy’s commentary has been published in such media outlets as Washington Times, Washington Examiner, New York Post, Albany Times, Long Island Business News, and City & State Magazine. He hosted “The Steve Levy Radio Show” on Long Island News Radio, and is a frequent guest on high profile television and radio outlets. Few on the political scene possess Levy’s diverse background. He’s been both a legislator and executive, and served on both the state and local levels — as both a Democrat and Republican. Levy published Bias in the Media, an analysis of his own experience, after switching parties, with the media’s leftward slant. Levy is currently Executive Director of the Center for Cost Effective Government, a fiscally conservative think tank. He is also President of Common Sense Strategies, a political consulting firm. To learn more about his past work and upcoming appearances, visit www.stevelevy.info. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.