As someone who's turning 50 soon, 30 seems like several lifetimes ago for me. Age is this weird thing and you only realize it more and more as you get older.
Even if sequestering worked better than it does, I think there are a lot of other subtle influences from mainstream consensus that affect all the participants in the process.
But unlike OJ, political figures and the media higher-ups weren't nearly as personally invested in the outcome of the case.
Sam Bankman-Fraud is unique because he somehow managed to ensnare a good portion of those higher-ups in his scheme, so naturally they really want to do some damage control.
That approach is hierarchical, and it looks like this:
That didn't happen. (It's pretty firmly established that it did.)
And if it did, it wasn't that bad. (It was tens of billions of dollars.)
And if it was, that's not a big deal. (Again, it was tens of billions of dollars.)
And if it is, that's not my fault. <- ("But he's just a kid" rhetoric.)
And if it was, I didn't mean it. (Media has been pivoting harder towards "honest mistake" these days.)
And if I did, you deserved it.
Expect to see the media further pivot towards something resembling "honest mistake" (note that they're doing this already) before settling on "and that's why we need onerous regulation of cryptocurrencies" (which, unfortunately, has a chance of being taken seriously by the government because it affects currently-sitting politicians and not just the people whose dinner parties they attend).
I wonder if that started as “just send donations to mainstream political parties”…