It wasn't the jury's fault. The star-struck Judge Ito let the defense get away with absolute murder and they were able to turn the case into a completely confusing mess. They let the defense fix up O.J.'s house by filling it with pictures of civil rights leaders and then lead the jury through it (it was really full of pictures of white people). They were able to introduce all kinds of nonsensical junk science questioning the validity of DNA evidence itself, making it look like DNA was meaningless.
And the prosecution was a bunch of sad sack fuckups. Mark Fuhrman getting popped on the stand for blatant perjury probably sunk the case by itself, but the other witnesses weren't great, either. For instance, Vannatter came across as a giant dick and admitted he'd just left blood samples sit in a sunlit car all day and didn't know the chain of custody, and was completely dismissive of any concerns about this. So they fucked up the chain of custody on their main conclusive piece of evidence that, had it been treated properly, almost proved the entire case by itself. But no, they fucked up this absolutely crucial thing.
Don't even get me started on the duo of nitwits Marcia Clark and Darden.
And let's not sell the defense short here either. It was an all-star team of the best money could buy. Johnny Cochran in particular was probably one of the best trial lawyers of the century, and he was just one of the Dream Team. So you had a defense team of all-stars, brilliant lawyers willing do do anything, no matter how unethical, to get their client off, a deadly combo, and a judge willing to let them do that.
So what the jury got to see was a fucked up, muddled mess presented in a carnival atmosphere. And you had a clown show on the prosecution side. They really couldn't convict because the prosecution didn't make its case beyond a reasonable doubt. This was partly because the wheels fell off as soon as the cross examination started, partly because they were bad lawyers, partly because the other side had good lawyers, and partly because the judge was a star-struck idiot.
We could be looking at a repetition of a train wreck like that. I still wouldn't be surprised if the hand-picked jury convicts, even with this absolute clownshoes prosecution.
For context, I've seen Branca on Rekieta on self-defense issues, and he seems to really know his shit. I'd take his opinions on this seriously. And I'm not as sure about Legal Insurrection on this issue, but they had really good takes on the Oberlin libel lawsuit and their calls on that were more or less completely accurate at a time the mainstream media was completely shitting itself and getting everything wrong.