The Legal Edge

I was in the NBC car headed for a series of live shots to talk about him.

“She’s gonna give him life.” So predicted O.J. Simpson’s Las Vegas attorney Gabe Grasso in a phone conversation with me as he was heading out his office door to the sentencing hearing for his client.

“They’ve been out for him since day one.” So says O.J. friend and famous groom Tom Scotto in our phone talk just a hour before the sentence was pronounced.

And yet, despite the gloominess of these insiders, O.J. got an early holiday gift. (”Holiday” is now the PC version of season’s greetings; lest we offend any Christian, Jew, or Kwanzanista.) When is a minimum 9 years in the slammer a “gift”? When you could be looking at life. When the probation department wanted you to do at least twice that time.

Judge Jackie “pain in the” Glass could have given the hall of famer a true life sentence or an effective life sentence. The guys is 61. How long can he survive in prison? At 61 his life expectancy is now 22.2 years. I’m guessing that prison life, even in segregation, will cut that expectancy in half. So, O.J. may make it to his first parole hearing in 2017 but he may not see the proverbial light of day ever again.

So, as the talking heads (I mean that in the nicest way) pontificate on the appropriateness of this sentence for O.J. and his chances on appeal (slim); I can only think of one thing…not O.J., but C.J. We’ve all made bad decisions in our lives, but can any one of us say that our one mistake has been so painfully punctuated? Even though Stewart’s chances on appeal are better than O.J.’s (Is there any better evidence that Stewart should have had his case severed than the sentence he received?) this former mortgage broker is going to suffer a personal foreclosure the likes of which no one making that one mistake should ever experience.

Choose your friends wisely.

MJB