After a weekend of twists and turns in the latest O.J. Simpson saga involving his Las Vegas arrest on a variety of robbery, kidnapping, burglary, assault and conspiracy charges, he was released from jail Wednesday on a relatively modest $125,000 bail and allowed to return to Florida pending trial.

To the credit of the Las Vegas prosecutors and the judge, O.J. was treated the same, no harsher, than anyone else in his situation. The “payback” factor was not in play.

On television, it’s another story. The gladiators were hard at work. The Goldman family could barely contain their glee at the news. If you tuned into CNN, you heard former prosecutor Wendy Murphy calling Simpson a “sociopath.”

On Fox News, you heard Gloria Allred, former attorney for Nicole Brown Simpson’s family, ask Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes, “Is there a lower life on the face of this planet than O.J. Simpson?”

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On another Fox show, host John Gibson asked Geraldo Rivera, “Will jail for robbery constitute justice for murder?” Geraldo replied, “For 14 years, I have waited for Sunday. ... He has conned people, he has jacked people and now finally, in some sense of cosmic justice, this S.O.B. has finally been nailed.”

Not so fast. O.J. Simpson hasn’t been “nailed.” He’s been charged with serious crimes. He’s presumed innocent of every one of them. Charges are not evidence, they are simply allegations.

What about the evidence? None of us has seen it. While we think we may have heard it because the expletive-filled tapes of the hotel room encounter have been played ad nauseum on the airwaves and over the Internet, the tapes may or may not be admissible at trial. If a judge rules the tapes inadmissible, the jury will not hear them.

Then there’s the statements of witnesses and co-participants in the event, many of whom have appeared on TV and told their versions of events. Not surprisingly, their stories conflicted.

They are a pretty motley-looking group. Some have deals for cooperating with the prosecution. Some have unsavory pasts. At least one sold his story and tapes to the media. What a jury will make of their credibility is anyone’s

guess.

As much as Geraldo and others would like O.J. Simpson to receive some kind of karmic payback for a 13-year-old crime for which he was acquitted, the system can’t allow that to happen. Nor can it allow the proceedings in O.J.’s current case to become a circus as his last one was.

Criminal trials have become too much of a sport to the American public, with guilt being predecided in the court of public opinion rather than the courtroom. We might as well be living in the days of gladiators and the Roman Colosseum.

It’s regrettable the media play along.

Jeralyn Merritt is a member of The Examiner’s Board of Bloggers and blogs at Talkleft.com.