Mark Fuhrman should be in jail somewhere, but instead he's the go-to guy for Fox News when it comes to criminal trials. Not just any criminal trial, either. No, former Detective Mark Fuhrman is the guy Fox News is using for commentary on the high-profile George Zimmerman trial. Zimmerman, you may recall, is on trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin, after a firestorm of protest was unleashed at law enforcement's initial refusal to prosecute Zimmerman due to Florida's ALEC-authored "Stand Your Ground" law.
For those of you reading this who are younger than age 30 or so, Mark Fuhrman was the policeman who blew up the OJ Simpson criminal trial because of his deep, ingrained hatred of black people.
During the 1995 murder trial of O.J. Simpson, the defense produced a tape of Fuhrman, who collected evidence in the case, using the word n*****more than 40 times over a 10 year period. The person who made the tape said Fuhrman used the slur "in a very casual ordinary pattern of speech. It was nothing extraordinary. It was just conversation." During the O.J. Simpson trial, a number of other witnesses testified that Fuhrman was a racist. Fuhrman, who testified during the trial that he had not used a racial slur in the past 10 years, pled no contest to perjury charges and was sentenced to three years of probation.
During a 2006 appearance on Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, Fuhrman, who is a Fox News contributor, said that the type of "people" he "dealt with ... for 20 years" while working in law enforcement will "kill somebody and go have some chicken at KFC. You will catch them eating chicken and drinking a beer after they just murdered three people." Co-host Alan Colmes challenged Fuhrman for using racially charged language, an allegation Fuhrman denied. Fuhrman has also appeared on Fox to defend a group of white police officers who were videotaped beating an African American man.
This is not a surprise to anyone who has lived in Los Angeles for any period of time. Not all LAPD officers are bigots, but there are bigots in the LAPD, and Fuhrman was just one of the boys back then. The only thing that's changed between now and then is that Fuhrman gets paid a lot more to spew his racist garbage on the air than he ever did while working for the LAPD. His racism allowed the OJ defense team to successfully argue that evidence had been tampered with to frame Simpson for the crime. It wasn't until a civil trial with a lower standard of proof that Simpson was held accountable at all for the murders of his wife and friend Ronald Goldman, and that miscarriage of justice can be laid at the feet of Mark Fuhrman.
It takes a high lack of self-awareness for Fox News to put Fuhrman on to comment on the Trayvon Martin case, which is loaded with racial overtones. In this segment, former Detective Fuhrman tells Megyn Kelly jury selection "is the entire case." It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out what he's really saying there, but in case anyone missed it, Fuhrman's message is simple: Pick jurors who don't care about evidence and do care about race.
Keep it classy, Fox.
