Michael Smerconish | DID O.J. STEP INTO SOME DEEP (BLEEP)?

September 20, 2007

'B.A.C. ANNUAL Sports Night, 1973, Professional Athlete of the Year: O.J. Simpson."

So reads the inscription on a plaque that hangs in a room where I keep a treadmill and work out.

The plaque, from the Buffalo Athletic Club, used to hang in the Juice's house in Brentwood, Calif. You know, the one on Rockingham. As in Rockingham, Bundy, Kato, Ito, Fuhrman and all those other names and places that used to be a part of our daily lexicon.

It was his plaque until a court-appointed receiver put his personal property up for sale to help satisfy a $33 million judgment that Simpson owed to the Brown and Goldman families as a result of a civil determination that O.J. murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.

That's when the sheriff removed the property from O.J.'s mansion and handed it over to an auction house called Butterfield & Butterfield.

In 1999, that firm sold the plaque, along with 71 more of O.J.'s prized possessions, including his Heisman Trophy (which went for $230,000).

I'm sure to some it will sound morbid for me to want to own a tribute once bestowed on O.J. Simpson.

But as a former civil trial lawyer, the plaque represents the merit of our civil jury system in the face of a criminal court's travesty of justice. O.J. beat the criminal rap. But the civil system did what it could do to mete out justice.

I was looking at the plaque while breaking a sweat this week when it came to me: My plaque may itself be an indication of the fallacy of O.J.'s presumed defense in his recent travails. Consider that in the audiotape of the Las Vegas hotel encounter, we hear this:

O.J. Simpson: Don't let nobody out this room, mother- (bleep)! Think you can steal my (bleep) and sell it?

Unidentified male: No.

Simpson: Don't let nobody out of here. Mother-(bleep), you think you can steal my (bleep)?

Unidentified male: Mind your own business.

Unidentified male: Look at this (bleep).

Unidentified male: Get over there.

Simpson: You think you can steal my (beep)?

Unidentified male: Backs to the wall.

Unidentified male: I was trying to get past you.

Unidentified male: Walk your (bleep) over there.

Simpson: Think you can steal my (bleep)?

Unidentified male: Mike took it.

Unidentified male: You, against the mother (bleep) wall.

Simpson: I know (bleep) Mike took it.

Unidentified male: Search him.

Unidentified male: And I know what Brian's trying to prove.

Simpson: I always thought you were a straight shooter.

Unidentified male: I'm cool. I am.

Unidentified male: Stand up.

Unidentified male: So, so.

Unidentified male: Get your mother (bleep) up.

Unidentified male: Stand the (bleep) up.

Well, O.J. isn't supposed to have any "bleep," if the "bleep" to which he refers, as reported, is sports memorabilia. It was all supposed to have been sold a few years ago to satisfy the court judgment won by the families of his victims.

I legally own a plaque that once belonged to O.J., having acquired it indirectly from the Butterfield & Butterfield auction. But O.J. is not supposed to legally own any such sports memorabilia. In other words, it suggests that O.J. didn't hand over everything he was supposed to surrender.

Surely he wasn't breaking into a Las Vegas hotel room in an effort to retrieve items that belong to Fred Goldman!

SO WHICH is it? Despite what's on the tape, either this wasn't about O.J. attempting to retrieve sports memorabilia that he believed he owned, or the tape is accurate on its face, in which case O.J. withheld from the Brown and Goldman families the "bleep" that should be hanging in someone else's workout room, not his. *

Listen to Michael Smerconish weekdays 5:30-9 a.m. on the Big Talker, 1210/AM. Read him Sundays in the Inquirer. Contact him via the Web at www.mastalk.com.