Creeps (Back) in the News

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There's no shortage of creeps in the news, of course, but two of them have previously appeared here and are especially creeptastic.

First, O.J. Simpson, whose most recent appearance here was in 2010, when the Nevada Supreme Court affirmed his conviction for murdering two people and getting away with it barging into a Las Vegas hotel room with an armed posse to steal reacquire some of his sports memorabilia. Looking back at this post on that incident, I'm reminded that Simpson claimed at the time that he did not ask the police to help him get his stuff back because, "since my trouble," they had not been very helpful to him. By "my trouble," he appeared to be referring to the earlier suggestion that he had murdered two people and gotten away with it, although most people would probably say that incident was more troublesome for the victims than for the Juice.

Anyway, O.J. is back in court this week trying to convince a federal [correction: it's a state habeas petition] judge that he should get a new trial because the conviction was his lawyer's fault. Simpson has argued that his right to effective counsel was violated because his lawyer (1) advised him that his memorabilia-recovery plan was legal, (2) should not have represented him at trial because of a conflict of interest, and (3) convinced him not to testify and did not communicate a plea offer that Simpson says he would have taken. Supposedly, Simpson was offered a deal requiring him to serve two years, somewhat less than the 9-to-33-year-but-probably-33-year sentence he ultimately received. "Had I understood that there was an actual chance of conviction," Simpson said in an affidavit, "I would have accepted such an offer." Tip: there is always "an actual chance of conviction," even if you are innocent. That chance increases to some extent if you are not.

Simpson will reportedly testify on Wednesday, and the allegedly ineffective former lawyer will testify on Friday. Simpson's hypothetical memoir, "If I Did It, I Did It on Advice of Counsel," will presumably follow.

Second, Joe Francis, who made millions from "Girls Gone Wild" but has managed to lose it all as a result of various stupidities and verdicts against him. (GGW itself has also filed for bankruptcy.) After dodging a remarkable number of civil and criminal allegations (but not all of them), Francis was convicted last week of assault and false imprisonment charges arising from this incident in 2011 in which he got in a fight with three women. Francis of course blamed the women, but a jury did not agree.

These were apparently misdemeanor charges, but since there were five of them, Francis faces up to five years in jail. He's been there before, but it's nice to know he'll be going back.