O.J. Simpson Prosecutor Writes Legal Thriller
By Marcia Clark
Published by Mulholland Books
Review by Elise Cooper
Marcia Clark, the former O.J. Simpson prosecutor, has launched a new career as a fiction author. She writes about crime and prosecutors and uses her experiences to make the plot and characters authentic.
Her debut novel, Guilt by Association, takes the reader through a marathon of crime issues: murder, mayhem, blackmail, child pornography, rape, and street gangs, to name a few. She is able to blend all of these together to create a very interesting, fast-paced plot. PJ Media interviewed her about the book.
In the first chapter, a prosecutor in the Special Trials Unit, Rachel Knight, explains why she entered that profession: to give victims a voice. Marcia Clark noted that Rachel (Clark’s middle name) can be viewed as her alter ego:
I started out as a criminal defense attorney. My desire to stand up for the victims and give them a voice made me want to be a prosecutor, which is what made me love the job as much as I did. Rachel is what I would like to be. I am jealous of her exciting lifestyle.
It appears that this book was written so Clark could relive her former life as a prosecutor. Clark did confide that she
missed the world of the DA’s office. The world where there was a mission I could believe in that had great people, a lot of camaraderie. It was a great life being in the Special Trials Unit, and working up the cases with the police, not the Simpson bizarro world, but the world before all the cameras entered into the courtroom.
Does she regret having cameras in the courtroom during the O.J. Simpson trial?
It’s a debate I had. From the standpoint of making sure a trial runs properly, cameras in the courtroom is a disaster. Everyone plays to the camera one way or the other: the judges, jurors, lawyers, and witnesses. Instead of focusing on the truth, they start focusing on a search for fame. On the other hand, Fred Goldman (father of one of the victims) made the point to me that if cameras were not in the courtroom you would never know the travesty of justice in the Simpson verdict. People would not have been able to see how much evidence we did present.
There are two very interesting quotes in the book. The first: “And, by the way, you can tell everybody that they definitely don’t screw up DNA all the time.” When asked to explain, Clark laughingly said that she wrote it as an “inside joke with the world.” The other quote is: “Better you ask forgiveness than permission.” She explained: “If you believe in something go ahead and do it. Rachel believed in justice and fighting a good fight. She does not want office politics or political rules to get in her way.”
Now she has two works of fiction to her credit!
How can she pretend that her character is a supporter of concealed carry, then set that character in L.A.?
In that area a D.A. can carry, because prosecutors are “special people”. Movie stars can carry because they are “special people”.
It’s not the prosecutors and other “special people” who deserve the right recognized by the Second Amendment (not created by it, merely recognized by it). It is the working nurse who has to travel to and from work in the inner city hospital at all hours. It is the store owner who closes his store late at night and has to carry cash. It is for the parents with children who are unable to leave a neighborhood when bad people move in.
Her fictional protagonist isn’t celebrating anything but being a “special person” coddled by the same system that denies real people their rights.
So she’s a better writer than a prosecutor? That’s a low bar.
thanks in large part to the incompetence of clark and darden, a murderer was able to walk free. she should be hiding her head in
shame.
This is sure to be an interesting thriller. Thanks for posting about it.
Vincent Bugliosi could not have convicted O.J.Simpson in front of a Santa Monica mostly Black Jury. Most Americans do not have a good understanding of racial politics in America. Bugliosi convicted Manson in spite of Manson’s absence from the crime scene. Clark made many mistakes and the Defense racially demonized Mark Fuhrman, an LA PD Detective, and actually convicted him of perjury.
I remember a pre-trial hearing where the bloody glove was first introduced and seeing O.J. mouth the words, “They’r too tight.” to his lawyer from across the room. How did he know that viewing the crumpled up gloves from a distance? Anyway, there is not much doubt that OJ was the murderer.
I’ve had enough of the hero lawyer, sorry.
Marcia Clark may not to know how she was played in the O.J. Simpson murder case. The defense team not only got the jury it wanted, nubile women with IQs comparable to those of the hens on ‘The View’, but it got the prosecutors it wanted, prosecutors that could not throw a ‘cock block’ on the nine month courtship of O.J. and the jury. What is less salient than how O.J. beat the murder rap is how O.J.’s lawyers were able to persuade the D.A. to put Ms. Clark on the case. Was there a suitcase full of unmarked bills exchanged or some other kind of quid pro quo? There’s probably no way to know unless someone comes clean, and that’s not likely to happen.
The prosecutor that couldn’t do a murder trial in less than a year?
The one that allowed some DNA nebbish to lecture the jury for over a month–a month–with mind-deadening DNA minutae –effectively anesthetizing the jury?
The prosecutor that was absent from the courtroom for days at a time, while relays of lesser prosecutors presented a disjointed story that ought to have been boiled down to 3 weeks of testimony?
Even accounting for the incompetent trial judge (“Judge Ego”), the prosecution was a shambles: not used to real lawyers, it was thrown out the door.
Not a book i’ll read. Not even with this unctuous review that suggests only a middle brow book.
Marcia Clark later wrote that she and Darden were having an affair during the trial. Darden is black and had sympaty for OJ, and he was constantly pressured by the black community with the threat of being labeled an Uncle Tom, in print and on radio, to throw the case. With the incompetent, miniskitr-wearing Clark fumbling the case, they preposterously agreed to the defense’s entire jury selection, and accomplished their goal: OJ skated.
But despite Clark’s and Darden’s unethical shenanigans OJ subsequently self-destructed, and at least partial justice was finally served; OJ is currently rotting in the state penitentiary, a broken has-been.
Sounds like a good book. I don’t believe any prosecutor could have gotten a conviction in the criminal trial of OJ with the problems with the makeup of the jury, the judge’s grandstanding, the mishandling of the DNA and other evidence.