Letter: Adding O.J. makes mundane story grow

Monday, Sept. 24, 2007 | 7:17 a.m.

Recently there was an alleged robbery in Las Vegas. That is not unusual for our town, but the alleged robber says he was just getting back stuff stolen from him.

You may wonder why the alleged robber did not go to the police for help, but vigilante justice is not a foreign idea among the gun-toting, Second Amendment-loving folks who live in our valley. What seems to make this story important is that the alleged robber is O.J. Simpson.

O.J. is a black, former football star who married a white woman. At the time, marrying a white woman was thought to be uppity of him. The white woman and her white, male friend got murdered, and O. J. was tried for the crimes.

A predominately black jury acquitted O.J. of the crime, but then the murdered white folks' parents brought civil charges against O.J. and a predominately white jury convicted him of probably being responsible for the killings. This meant that O.J. had to give most of his money to the white folks' parents.

While I was on neither jury and have never met O.J., my impression is that he makes some bad choices and could use some conflict resolution training. Yet, if O.J. did murder those people, he would not be the first to get away with it, and there are also many in our prisons who have been wrongly convicted. Most of them are poor black folks. So now you know why an alleged robbery in Las Vegas is such an important story to so many people.

Jerry Bitts, Las Vegas