Free Republic

Yes, a juror really did give Simpson the raised fist as he left the courtroom. His name was Lionel (Lon) Cryer, and as The New York Times reported, he was “a former Black Panther whom prosecutors had inexplicably left on the panel.” I’ll give you a minute to pick up your dropped jaw: Yes, there was an ex-Panther on the Simpson jury. Here he is in the Washington Post, commenting on the prosecution’s case against OJ: “It was garbage in, garbage out,” said Cryer, a former Black Panther Party member who raised his left arm in a clenched-fist salute to...

Yes, a juror really did give Simpson the raised fist as he left the courtroom. His name was Lionel (Lon) Cryer, and as The New York Times reported, he was “a former Black Panther whom prosecutors had inexplicably left on the panel.” I’ll give you a minute to pick up your dropped jaw: Yes, there was an ex-Panther on the Simpson jury. Here he is in the Washington Post, commenting on the prosecution’s case against OJ: “It was garbage in, garbage out,” said Cryer, a former Black Panther Party member who raised his left arm in a clenched-fist salute to...

WHEN IT WAS REVEALED that Lionel Cryer, the male juror who flashed O. J. Simpson a black-power salute right after the verdict in the criminal trial, was once a member of the Black Panther Party, the Simpson case finally found its context. That black fist called up a host of Sixties memories, among them the ghostly voice of criminal-hero Eldridge Cleaver, who taunted the white world in his autobiography, Soul on Ice: "I'm perfectly aware that I'm in prison, that I'm a Negro, that I've been a rapist. . . . My answer to all such things lurking in their...