Marcia Clark talks new TV shows, O.J. Simpson and her biggest issue with prison

Marcia Clark sat inside Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles, California, on Monday, waiting for production to shoot a funeral scene for her ABC pilot, "The Fix."

The famous former prosecutor had childhood dreams of becoming an actress -- she's now involved in two TV projects.

"I never wanted to be on television," she clarified, "I just wanted to do stage work. Off-Broadway, no less."

The first is her A&E docuseries, "Marcia Clark Investigates the First 48," which premieres Thursday at 9 p.m. ET. Clark, born Marcia Kleks, who also spent her time on the other side of the courtroom as a defense attorney, opens some of America's most notorious cases in the two-hour episodes.

From Casey Anthony's death to Jam Master Jay's fatal shooting, Clark hopes to dig into any "unanswered questions" or re-questions "an ending that was not easily understood," she told ABC News via phone while on set.

"These are cases that were unresolved for one reason or another," she added. "There are questions."

Clark, 64, is used to dealing with cases that have left questions. She was the lead prosecutor for the 1995 O.J. Simpson murder trial, in which the former NFL player was acquitted after being charged with killing his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman. Simpson, 70, continues to maintain his innocence.

Despite failing to prove the state's case against Simpson, Clark said she still believes in the criminal justice system.

"In general, the jury gets it right much more often than not," Clark admitted. "There are times that it doesn’t. There are times that things really go amiss... but that doesn’t make me feel our system of justice has to be thrown out because I don’t know what we would replace it with. Every other system has it’s own flaws. For now... it’s as good as we got."

Simpson eventually served 27 months in prison after being found guilty of various charges involving robbery, attempted burglary and kidnapping after a 2007 incident in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Now that Simpson has served time, being released in October 2017, Clark said she's unsure if the public should be concerned.

"I honestly don’t know how to answer that question," she said, after taking a long sigh. "I don't know what to say about the likelihood of [Simpson] re-offending. He’s older. It tends to make it less likely that they’ll commit a violent offense, statistically speaking... I don't know. I hope he doesn’t, you know? I hope he can live a quiet life and not hurt anyone."

Clark feels the large problem with the legal system falls on "human error" and the failure "to run a courtroom properly."

"And it happened in the Simpson case; the jury got an overwhelming mountain of nonsense piled onto the case that should never have been admitted and jurors can get distracted by things like that," she said. "It’s really hard for them to weave their way through it all to find the truth."

But the former prosecutor gets particularly enthusiastic when discussing prison reform, letting out an "oh my God, yes," when asked if there were changes that needed to be made.

"The majority -- and I mean, the vast majority -- who’ve been locked in prison, they’re not Hannibal Lecture... they’re impulse challenged," she said. "Largely they’ve been raised in dire circumstances... and are very poor. These people -- for the vast majority of them -- if given the chance to train and learn a job, and learn a skill... would love to. But they’re not even given the chance."

She continued, "They go to prison. They basically get locked up and get shelved for a period of years. There’s no real effort to teach them vocational skills or to train them in any way. We do nothing."

Clark's second TV project is more so based on her own life. At least her script -- which she co-wrote with Elizabeth Craft and Sara Fain -- starts off sounding familiar, "but the rest is all fantasy," she said.

"It's about a DA [district attorney] in Los Angeles, who loses a high-profile case," she began, describing character Maya Travis. "She takes off and she moves up to Washington state, and she starts a horse breeding business... and has a beautiful cowboy for a boyfriend."

Travis, according to Clark, eventually gets called back to the district attorney's office after the defendant, who got acquitted, kills again.

Clark, off screen, however never went back to work after losing the Simpson case. After taking an extended leave of absence, Clark would eventually quit two years later.

"I wish," she said of her character's post-trial life of living on a farm. "It bears no resemblance to my life at all. None."