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‘The People Vs O.J. Simpson’ Episode Nine: ‘Manna From Heaven’ Fact Checker – Spoiler Alert

By Nancy Bailey
Published on: 17:41 PST, Mar 29, 2016

As the O.J. Simpson trial lurches on, and viewers remember this is only our ninth hour, it gives us a little more perspective as to the slogging gait of this plodding ordeal. Those who watched in real time as it was happening will be projected back into that era: Where we lived. What we were doing. Who we were with. It has become a time stamp, like the Kennedy assassination or the Challenger blowing up, but in slow motion.

Months and months of slow motion.

And like those events, the O.J. trial is so awful that we can’t look away. We remember real events in detail, even now. All that blood, being hosed off Nicole’s walkway by her father. The weeping of her sister on the stand. The nervous testimony of Kato Kaelin and the way he couldn’t stop rubbing chapstick on his lips.

But the generation who does not remember these details, or use them as a timeline, may have a little trouble believing the facts that seem like fiction. As Vanity Fair points out, most of the facts were as strange as the series.

In Episode 9, “Manna From Heaven,” the trial begins to unravel in a barrage of profanity and racial slurs by the one officer who found the most pivotal piece of evidence: Mark Fuhrman.

  1. O.J. made a video called “Minimum Fitness For Men” not long before the murders.

True.

2. O.J.’s Dream Team argued over who would go to North Carolina.

True. It was Bailey who ended up going, but the real reason he went was because he offered to pay for his own ticket. O.J. Simpson’s legal defense team was digging up some evidence of their own: audio tapes by Mark Fuhrman that are spattered with more racial slurs than a KKK rally.

3. McKinney was working as a writing instructor for screenplays, though she had never sold one.

True. Writer Laura McKinney was working on a screenplay and a novel about women in the police force. Mark Fuhrman was one of her sources. Over a nine-year period, from 1985 to 1994, he left her 13 hours worth of interviews.

4. The tapes were riddled with racial slurs.

True. CNN reported that Fuhrman dropped the N-bomb so many times, in fact, that it made McKinney uncomfortable. She said nothing to him about it.

5. Judge Ito’s wife knew and had worked with Mark Fuhrman

True.

Should this have been a conflict of interest, and did she keep silent so that her husband could have the judging assignment?

Very possibly.

6: Judge Ito gave a speech about women in the workplace and how tough it is for them.

True.

Marsha Clark addressed that in her memoir, Without a Doubt.

“[T]hen he began speaking of the difficult road that women had to walk in a man’s profession, how women take a lot of hits for having to be tough. The irony of it left me breathless. For a year now, I had been browbeaten by this man, suffering the very difficulties that moistened his eyes when he spoke of his wife. Oh, when it suited his Kodak moment, he was Mr. Sensitivity.”

7. Did Chris Darden really lose it and then refuse to apologize?

Yes. He finally did offer a grudging apology in order to avoid jail time.

Ron Goldman’s father condemned the use of the tapes in open court. He said that the Simpson trial had now become the Fuhrman trial, and claimed the defense was putting on a show to draw attention away from Simpson.

“We came to this court seven months ago expecting a fair trial. My son had a right to it, his family had a right to it, Nicole and her family had a right to it. Instead, we get this crap spewed in front of the cameras for two hours. For what purpose? I’d love to know what the judge had in mind. I think his words made it real clear. This was for public dissemination, for the public to hear, not the jury, for him to make a decision. This was for the public. I didn’t know this was a public– this was a trial in which the public made the decision. I thought it was one in which the jury made the decisions. I don’t understand why the hell we had to listen to two hours of this hate. It’s disgusting, every word that was said.”

8. Fuhrman claimed the fifth to every question.

True. Fuhrman’s claim during his earlier testimony that he had not uttered the “N” word in a decade became his undoing, as well as, probably, the prosecution’s. But he pled “no contest” to later charges of perjury. He was fined $200 and sentenced to three years probation.

9. Johnnie Cochran referred to the tapes as, “Manna from Heaven.”

False. The expression came from another Dream Team lawyer who is not included in the series. But Cochran told Judge Ito that the tapes were like “Lay’s Potato Chips… You can’t put them down, and you can’t eat just one.”

[Photo via Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP]

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