He got away with murder in the courtroom, but O.J. is facing tougher prosecution from Geraldo Rivera and Vincent Bugliosi By JOYCE MILLMAN Illustration by Johanna Goodman it's been 757 days and counting since Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were murdered, and though O.J. Simpson has been tried and acquitted, it's not over, not by any stretch of the imagination. The Brown and Goldman families press on with their wrongful death suit against Simpson. Hues and cries of public indignation greet the disgraced celebrity's every attempt at restoring his image (like the June 27 fundraiser at his home for an anti-violence organization). Books are still being written. TV specials are still being produced (the latest: The Learning Channel's July 14 doubleheader, "The Trial of O.J. Simpson: An Insider's View with Dominick Dunne" and "The O.J. Simpson Trial: Beyond Black and White," a look at a cross-section of African-Americans' opinions on the verdict). And for nearly every one of those 757 days (with a brief recess for the Oklahoma City bombing), Geraldo Rivera has presented a nightly Simpson roundtable on his CNBC cable show "Rivera Live." "Why is there still such continuing interest in this story? Why aren't people talking about Jeffrey Dahmer? He was eating people," asked a pro-Simpson African-American radio talk show host, on "Rivera Live" in May. Perhaps she was being disingenuous. "Because Dahmer was convicted," was Rivera's terse reply. Those who feel that the verdict was stunningly wrong (the majority of Americans, polls show) don't want to take Simpson's supporters' advice and "move on." The anger has hardened into something that can't be swallowed. How could the system fail so horribly? Money and fame are not supposed to buy a guilty person's freedom: Hadn't whites and blacks in America finally reached a place where they could agree on at least that basic notion? "Outrage" (Norton, 356 pages, $25.00), the new book by former Los Angeles County prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi (a.k.a. the guy who put Charles Manson away), is subtitled "The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away With Murder," and it's the angriest post-mortem on the verdict yet -- angrier even and far more impassioned than Simpson prosecutor Christopher Darden's morose, wound-licking best-seller, "In Contempt." "In all my years, other than in cases where the killer has been apprehended during the perpetration of the homicide, I have never seen a more obvious case of guilt," Bugliosi writes. "I mean, to deny guilt when your blood is at the murder scene is the equivalent of a man being caught by his wife in flagrante with another woman and saying to her (quoting comedian Richard Pryor), 'Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?'" Bugliosi is no great stylist and his ego has an ego; when he's complaining about the performance of both sides' lawyers, he comes across like a crabby retired sports great trying to convince us that the game has gone to hell since he hung up his jock. Yet "Outrage" cannot be dismissed. Bugliosi's arguments are damn sensible, particularly if you sat through the trial wondering things like, "Gee, when is the prosecution going to introduce the suicide note, the money, the passport and the cheap disguise?" and, "If he's so innocent, how come he isn't taking the stand?" Scattered throughout the book are examples of how Bugliosi would have made key prosecution points, and on energy alone, his fire-breathing arguments suggest what a listless job Marcia Clark and Darden did. In Bugliosi's view, the defense didn't so much win the trial as the prosecution lost it. Gathering his ammunition from an unnamed prosecution source and his own interviews with defense and prosecution witnesses, Bugliosi cites prosecutorial "incompetence" (his word) in every phase, from Clark's refusal to step down when pre-trial focus groups consistently showed that black female jurors absolutely despised her, to Clark and Darden's inability to tailor their arguments to a jury Bugliosi characterizes as not having "too much intellectual firepower." (For instance, he writes, the prosecutors should have at least made it clear to this jury that "contamination" of a blood sample could not turn someone else's blood into Simpson's.) The prosecution, Bugliosi charges, was generally too "afraid of its own shadow" to introduce some of the most damaging evidence it had: the taped police interview with Simpson -- in which he admits to cutting his finger on the night of the murders but when asked how, says, "I have no idea, man" -- was never used because Clark and Darden didn't want the jury to hear Simpson denying guilt. Bugliosi also charges that the prosecution let misleading statements by defense witnesses such as forensic expert Dr. Henry Lee go unchallenged. "Throughout the trial, the sad irony was that the defense attorneys seemed to be fighting harder for injustice than the prosecutors were for justice," writes Bugliosi. Judge Lance Ito also takes his share of grief from Bugliosi, who paints a scathing portrait of an egomaniac without a firm grasp of the letter of the law, who invites the lawyers into his chambers to tell them O.J. jokes and play them tapes of the Dancing Itos from "The Tonight Show." Ito, says Bugliosi, made several "terrible" rulings beyond the decision to admit the Mark Fuhrman "N-word" tapes. The judge failed to instruct the jury that when Simpson attorney Johnnie Cochran said of the infamous glove, "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit," he was not to be taken literally. Most damagingly, Ito (and the prosecutors) allowed the defense to repeatedly mislead the jury by equating "beyond a reasonable doubt" with "beyond all doubt." Still, Bugliosi writes, the case was winnable -- after all, there was, at a minimum, that DNA evidence. He says he would have answered the defense's police conspiracy theory by exposing it, point by point, as a ridiculous, desperate and insane proposition, reminding the jurors often that, "After all these months and all the money expended on Mr. Simpson's defense, they never offered.. one speck of evidence that anyone... other than their client, committed these murders." He would never have let up on the distinction between the police harassment and brutality that the jurors may have been familiar with from their own experiences (which, Cochran implied in his final summation, the jury could put an end to with their verdict) and the frame-up that the defense was alleging. And on the issue of race, Bugliosi brings up a statistic that should be shouted from the rooftops every time a pro-Simpson talking head implies that any white person who is pissed off at the verdict is a racist: 88% of white Americans believed that the not guilty verdict in the first Rodney King police brutality trial was wrong. Bugliosi is not a finesse player but, clearly, he knows how to score. Still, it's troubling that it has come to this, that a book that nearly vibrates with bile should be so -- satisfying. Contrary to what Simpson's supporters say, it's not anger that a black man was set free that keeps this story alive -- it's anger that a man whom all the evidence pointed to as being guilty was set free. For many, in the absence of justice, hearing Bugliosi and Geraldo Rivera say Simpson is guilty will suffice. These days, Rivera overtly supports (those who've always been suspicious of Rivera's motives may say he's latched onto) victims' rights. Author Dominick Dunne and Marc Klaas, whose daughters were murdered by dangerous men who slipped through the cracks of the system, are "Rivera Live" regulars, as is Fred Goldman. Indeed, the show has the feel of a grim crusade. It's a last-ditch haven for those who are sick with frustration over the horrible things that happen to innocent people and the perception that the criminal justice system is weighted in favor of the rights of defendants. It's the TV equivalent of a procession to Lourdes. Along those lines, Bugliosi is the only Simpson analyst thus far who's bold -- or crazed -- enough to bring religion into all of this. Bugliosi's arm is not too short to box with God; in a fascinating section of "Outrage's" long, disorganized epilogue, he rejects the concept of "God's will'' as a way to explain events like brutal murders going unpunished. He cites Simpson's family and Cochran giving thanks to God after the verdict and wonders, with a contentious logic reminiscent of Frank Pembleton on "Homicide," does God take sides? If so, it's no wonder Fred Goldman is on "Rivera Live" all the time looking abandoned. Here is TV as the last resort for those in search of justice and spiritual peace. Even Simpson seems to regard TV as the power by which he will ultimately be judged, to which he must reconcile himself, make amends. Simpson has been trying to get on TV since the verdict, but only once (the Black Entertainment Television interview) has he succeeded. TV has, by and large, rejected him -- despite the big ratings draw the BET appearance proved to be. But, maybe, if there's ever going to be (in one of Rivera's favorite words) "closure" to this thing, it's time TV let O.J. back into the fold. Let the man make a living (so he can continue to dwell in Brentwood and not, heaven forbid, be forced to move into the 'hood). Book him on "20/20" and Leno. Give him his old job back on "Monday Night Football." Sign him up as a contestant on "Singled Out." Put him in the Paul Lynde seat on "Hollywood Squares." Let the world see O.J. back on TV, smiling, relaxed, searching for "the real killer" on the world's finer golf courses, demanding -- as he did on the BET interview, with more indignation than he expressed over a murder committed yards from where his children slept or over the alleged frame-up against him -- that Fred Goldman and Denise Brown pay him an apology. By all means, end the TV embargo against Simpson. People might have lying eyes. But the camera doesn't.