Parole board got it right with O.J.

The $100 problem circulates on social media every few weeks, and invariably somebody gets it wrong.

A woman swipes a $100 bill from a store’s register. Confident she has not been caught, she returns to the store and selects $70 in merchandise. She pays with the stolen $100 bill, and leaves with $30 in change.

How much did the store lose? Your choices are $30, $70, $100, $130, $170 or $200.

I’ve seen every answer picked, with wrong answers explained through tortured logic.

Let’s assume the store starts the day with $500 in the register and $500 in merchandise, and review each event. A $100 bill is stolen ($400 R, $500 M). The woman gathers $70 in merchandise ($400 R, $430 M). The woman pays with a $100 bill ($500 R, $430 M). The cashier gives $30 in change ($470 R, $430 M).

The store started with $1,000 in total assets, and ended with $900, so the answer is $100. Errors lie in not treating the theft and purchase as separate events.

That’s the sort of real-life problem America had Thursday, when O.J. Simpson was paroled on his prison sentence for armed robbery. He served nine years of his 33-year sentence for an incident stemming from a 2007 robbery at a Las Vegas hotel and casino.

Simpson said he was reclaiming his own sports memorabilia, which led many to joke, “If it’s O.J.’s s**t, then you must acquit.” The jury disagreed, and the sentence shocked defense attorneys who predicted a five-year term at the most.

America’s freedoms have side effects. It’s easy to say, “Better to let 10 guilty men go free than one innocent man go to jail,” but let’s see you watch the first guilty man go free.

I thought O.J. killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. But even high-school me braced for acquittal — the prosecution’s star witness got caught perjuring himself, the glove connecting O.J. to the crime scene didn’t fit O.J.’s hand and the verdict depended on a jury that was 75 percent black trusting the LAPD.

What stood out about Oct. 3, 1995, to me — as I experienced it from a high school where the entire minority population was three Hispanic siblings — is it was the first day many Americans saw their justice system fail them.

To all of my friends who were mad the justice system didn’t work 22 years ago, are you outraged it still fails people like Walter Scott or Sam DuBose to this day? Each man was fatally shot by police for the non-capital offense of evading police, and video of each incident directly contradicts how the officer wrote it up. In each case, a jury has not convicted the shooter despite indisputable video evidence.

The justice system worked Thursday. A parole board did its job and determined a man convicted of armed robbery had served a sentence fitting the crime. It didn’t listen to an emotional public that wanted a murder sentence for a robbery conviction. Like the shopkeeper problem, it viewed the events separately.

It’s a system that invariably gets things wrong, but Thursday’s justice system is the one I want if I’m in the defendant’s chair.

Kevin Wilson is managing editor of The Eastern New Mexico News. Contact him at: [email protected]