Mark Jensen V. O.J. Simpson, Wife Murders; Cause and Effect

Switch Verdicts? Jensen Not Guilty; O.J. Simpson Guilty

Two men were tried for the same type of crime--murdering their wives. Both trials were televised. Both wives wrote letters some time before their deaths. In 1998, Julie Jensen was poisoned and suffocated; in 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson was slashed and stabbed. Allegedly by their respective husbands, Mark Jensen and O.J. Simpson.

The majority of interested public believed both men to be guilty--even before their trials began. In the 2008 trial for the State of Wisconsin v. Mark Jensen, Jensen, 48, was found guilty--despite defense attorney Craig Albee's presentment of ample reasonable doubt. In the 1995 trial for The People v. O.J. Simpson, Simpson, age 48 at the time, was found not guilty, despite ample evidence otherwise, including a bloody glove that allegedly was his.

Jensen's wife pointed a finger at Jensen in a letter she wrote to the police just weeks before she died of poisoning by antifreeze and, as determined nearly ten years later, also by suffocation. She wrote, "...if anything happens to me, he [Mark] would be my first suspect." Among many other statements, she also wrote, "I would never take my life because of my kids--they are everything to me!"--a curious denial that fits with the guilty man who proclaims his innocence even before he is accused. Is Julie Jensen guilty of suicide and framing her husband for her death--or is her husband truly guilty of homicide? Either way, her letter put her husband in jail, for life.

Simpson's ex-wife had also written a letter, in which she referred to his adultery and to his repeated verbal and physical abuse toward her. For example, she wrote, "You beat the holy hell out of me & we lied at the X-ray lab & said I fell off a bike ... Remember!??" Her letter, intended for O.J. Simpson's eyes only, is full of hurt over a marriage gone wrong and, at times, of self-criticism. Evidence of the mental and physical abuse she sustained supports her letter. Yet, it did not put her ex-husband in jail.