I asked a question yesterday, following the arrest of OJailed Simpson.

An interesting question arises, though. To what degree can the 1994 murders be taken into account at sentencing -- OJ was found not guilty in the criminal trial, but legally culpable in the civil trial. Can the latter be used as evidence of a history of criminal activity (especially when paired with is abuse of Nicole) to move his sentence to the higher end of the range?

Well, I got an answer today over at the Volokh Conspiracy, courtesy of Eugene Volokh himself.

The gist of the answer? Yes -- and so can the criminal case itself, despite the acquittal.

Simpson has been found guilty by a civil jury of killing his ex-wife and Ron Goldman. (If I'm not mistaken, the jury's award of punitive damages involved a finding of guilt by clear and convincing evidence, though I don't think this is necessary to my analysis.) It's possible -- I'm not sure -- that a judge could simply rely on this past finding; but a judge could certainly enter such a finding himself based on his own review of the evidence.

And given this finding about Simpson's past conduct and therefore his moral character, the judge would be legally allowed to impose a higher sentence than he would on a typical robber, burglar, or what have you. I'm not sure whether a judge would indeed act this way; but the federal Constitution would let him act this way if he so chose.

In other words, we may be seeing OJailed getting the entire 30 years if he is convicted on all counts. And since he is 60 now, that would pretty well constitute a life sentence. Ron and Nicole may get some justice after all.

Posted by: Greg at 02:32 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 304 words, total size 2 kb.