OJ Simpson is was such a famous case that I'd be inclined to treat it as an outlier in many ways, not the norm.

Agreed. Outliers are a thing. As is cherry-picking data to try and prove a point.

Sucks, as this level of cherry-picking heavily biases me against the premise. If someone has a good data set, they don't need to drive anecdotes from the outliers. And if they are, is it an attempt to hide that the overall data paints a different picture?

But I would argue that jury mentality is universal.

Any juror who knows about the concept of jury nullification is more likely to use it when the defendant reminds them of themselves or when the prosecution has so vastly disproportionate resources over the defendant that the trial can’t possibly be fair.

>I would argue that jury mentality is universal

Then argue it, because that's a pretty large thing to say unsupported

And the LAPD seems to have decided OJ was guilty based largely on a feeling of racial prejudice. The fact that he actually did it was coincidental. I've often seen that trial described as the LAPD framing a guilty man. The prosecution did a terrible job and I'm not at all convinced the acquittal wasn't the correct verdict, even if it's pretty clearly contrary to the facts of what happened.

It seems safe to assume that the LAPD also did/does this to less famous people of color, in which case a higher rate of voting to acquit would not indicate bias by the jury.

I would argue OJ would have been arrested far earlier for DV (long before the murder) if the LAPD didn’t have such a hard-on for the celebrity.

> not at all convinced the acquittal wasn't the correct verdict

I agree with you. I followed it closely at the time, and thought acquittal was the correct verdict based (only) on what the jury saw. We court-watchers, of course, saw everything that the defense managed to exclude, and came to a different (and I do believe more accurate) conclusion, but the jury got it - from their (deliberately constructed by the defense) point of view - right.

It was a formative episode in my civic understanding.