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Former D.A. Gil Garcetti Says He Didn't Want Marcia Clark On The O.J. Trial
Gil Garcetti (Kevin Winter/ Getty)
Former Los Angeles District Attorney (and father of Instagram star Eric Garcetti) Gil Garcetti has come forward with some behind-the-scenes stories about the prosecution of the O.J. Simpson trial, which his office oversaw. Thanks to the popularity of FX's brilliant miniseries The People v. O.J. Simpson, the case has reignited a lot of "where are they now" fascination, and the emergence of even more behind-the-scenes details about the trial.Garcetti told the New York Post that hiring Marcia Clark as the lead attorney was a mistake.
"She wasn't my choice—I didn't pick her," he said "almost coldly," according to the Post.
He continued:
Marcia is a very good lawyer, but one of the things with her was that she didn’t heed the advice of our trial consultant who told her not to pick African-American women — particularly black mothers — for that jury,” he said, noting eight black women wound up on the panel. She didn’t listen and once she did that, there was no chance that we’d get a guilty verdict, although I still thought we’d get two or three jurors to hold out for a hung jury.
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I've never told anyone this story before. I went to a function, a Hollywood agents' function and everyone there was talking about the O.J. trial. Now, there was this one African-American couple, an agent and her husband who is a Ph.D. Naturally, I steered clear of the trial talk, but what the Ph.D. told me was that he thought O.J. was guilty but he'd still vote not guilty and that floored me. I asked him how he could vote not guilty if he knew he was guilty...I asked him how he would explain that to his kids and he just dropped his head and said he didn't know.
That's when I knew I had a big problem.
Garcetti said that he's recorded The People v. O.J. Simpson, and has so far watched the first three episodes. It doesn't sound like he's much of a fan.
“They are making up the dialogue; it’s very misleading,” he said. Let's hope that made-up dialogue refers to the scene in which he, played by Bruce Greenwood, urges Clark to get a makeover that will make her appear "softer."
O.J., obviously, did not like Garcetti; as TMZ noted in 2010, a documentary called O.J.: Monster or Myth? showed the Juice driving by Garcetti's home and shouting "Asshole!" out the window.
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