A few weeks ago I wrote about how Las Vegas was preparing to drop its “What Happens Here, Stays Here” slogan, while trying to come up with something less risqué.

But perhaps, in light of the O. J. Simpson fiasco this weekend, all that is needed is a asterisk: “Las Vegas: What Happens Here, Stays Here*” (*Unless You Are A Double-Murder Suspect Who Was Acquitted Then Found Liable In A Civil Court, Who Is Accused of Armed Robbery In A Hotel Room On The Day Your Non-Confession-Confession-Memoir Goes To No 1 On Amazon.com, In Which Case, What Happens Here May End Up Becoming A Global Internet/Media Phenomenon, Resulting In You Being Booked for Multiple Felonies And Sent To Jail).

I get the feeling, of course, that Las Vegas couldn’t be happier about the way things have gone down over recent days. The details of the Simpson case read like the screenplay to Ocean’s Fourteen. I keep expecting George Clooney to appear somewhere in handcuffs, cracking one-liners. Simpson himself also seems to believe he is starring in a movie: in the audio tape of the “robbery” ( you thought there wouldn’t be an audio tape?), he sounds remarkably like Samuel L. Jackson, what with his enraged demand to the “motherf***ers” in the room to give him his “s***” back (the “s***” being sports memorabilia of dubious provenance). Then there is Simpson’s straight-faced claim that he was simply involved in a private “sting” operation with his “golfing buddies”, who happened to have guns.

But is Simpson’s downfall in Sin City a result of stupidity, or arrogance? The latter seems to be the better bet. What else could have inspired him to write a “confession” entitled If I Did It, based on an allegedly hypothetically scenario of how he could have carried out the double murder for which he was acquitted in 1994. There are still theories, of course, that Simpson’s son might have been involved in the killings, or that Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman might have become caught up in the alleged Mob violence affecting some of Goldman’s fellow waiters.

And yet the Simpson case strikes me as an example of how the scales of American justice have a habit of finding their balance in the end, especially when the death penalty isn’t involved. With Simpson, Los Angeles learnt an important lesson about police distrust and the excess of celebrity trials – and now, 12 years later, it has the satisfaction of knowing that the ex-football star could spend the rest of his life in a sweltering Nevada prison.

Indeed, Simpson brings to mind that other great American hero/pariah, Al Capone, who taught the country a thing or two about Prohibition – before his inevitable journey to Alcatraz. In the end, of course, they didn’t get Capone for selling booze or racketeering: they got him for tax evasion. But still, they got him, all the same.

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