A different kind of O.J. Simpson story

by James Oliphant

Tuesday the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case out of Louisiana that involves, of all things, the O.J. Simpson murder trial of more than a decade ago.

A jealous Allen Snyder stabbed his estranged wife and her late-night date on a hot summer night in 1995. Upon his arrest, a prosecutor in Jefferson Parish, a majority-white, solidly Republican community across the Mississippi River from New Orleans, began comparing Snyder to Simpson.

That prosecutor, Jim Williams, then, Snyder’s lawyers allege, engineered an all-white jury in order to be able to raise the specter of Simpson being acquitted by the majority-black Los Angeles jury in that case.

Williams then mentioned the Simpson case in detail during his closing argument, saying that Snyder's case was "very, very" similar to "the most famous murder case, and all of you have heard about it." Williams went on to say that the "perpetrator in that case claimed that he was going to kill himself as he drove in a Ford Bronco and kept the police off of him. And you know what? He got away with it."

The jury came back with a death sentence in 2 1/2 hours for a crime his lawyers say should have resulted in a manslaughter conviction.

The case will be argued Tuesday morning and will examine the kinds of evidence that can be used to establish a prosecutor’s motive for striking jurors. The state of Louisiana will argue that the black potential jurors were properly struck from the jury pool and that the Simpson case had nothing to do with it.

Here’s the full story from the Chicago Tribune.