This is topical since OJ is going to jail for many years but this question relates to his murder trial. My girlfriends insists that he was innocent of the direct murder of Nicole and Ron. She is convinced that evidence was planted. Specifically, she says that OJ’s blood was planted at his residence. Apparently, key forensic scientists testified at his trial that blood samples contained preservative that would not obviously be there if it were fresh blood. While in the court record, this testimony was not emphasized by the press.
I am personally convinced that OJ is guilty but am willing to be open minded. If the police planted blood evidence then he deserves to go free.
Any experts out there?
He did go free.
I think the key word is “deserves”.
The notion that anyone would want to frame Mr Simpson–one of the most beloved and widely-accepted athletes of all time–is ridiculous. The evidence against him is overwhelming. Read Mr Bugliosi’s book, or just look through Wikipedia’s summary: Murder trial of O. J. Simpson - Wikipedia
Mr Simpson went free because a simple-minded jury unable or unwilling to consider the case objectively wanted him freed regardless of culpability. His lawyers were able to hire experts willing to obfuscate enough to give the jury a superficial excuse to do so. Had he been white he would have easily been convicted absent any DNA evidence at all.
Just cause he was framed, doesn’t mean he was innocent. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.
Agreed. My one-liner about the OJ case is “That’s what you get when you try to frame a guilty man.”
I really believe OJ committed the murders and got away with it. But at the same time, I can’t help but think that if I had been on the jury, and ONLY heard and saw what they heard and saw, I would have probably come to the same conclusion that they did. After all, the jury never heard all of the arguments that we the TV audience heard, nor did they see half of the alleged evidence that we the TV audience saw. Not to mention, they were subjected to weeks and weeks of DNA evidence. By the time the prosecution finished “explaining” it all, it would have confused Einstein. Put that all together with what they actually saw and heard and how it was presented and it isn’t too hard to figure out why they came to the conclusion they did.
From here, chapter 14. Much more here, Week by Week in the O.J. Simpson Criminal Trial, and if you really want to make your eyes bleed the trial transcripts can be downloaded.
Add to this that the nurse that drew the blood samples from OJ, Thano Peratis, remembered the amount of blood he drew was ~8ccs and the vial presented at trial only contained ~6.5 ccs.
CMC +fnord!
I think that’s an unfortunate conclusion to draw. After all, there have been similar cases in the same jurisdiction with white celebrities (eg, Robert Blake) that also resulted in acquittal. If anything, there’s a general trend for the LA DA to bungle high profile cases.
Maybe the jury was predisposed to find him not guilty, but there were two bigger failures unique to this case. First, the jury was unswayed by the overwhelming physical evidence. Public acceptance of DNA evidence was mush less in 1995 than it is today, and you had the double whammy of a prosecution case that was overly complicated and a defense strategy of oversimplifying.
Second, the trial went on forever and the jury was sequestered. Those people just wanted to get the hell out of there. The trial lasted 22 months (!) and the jury deliberated for three hours (!!).
Five of the jurors wrote books, and they’ve given lot of interviews, and these are the two factors they all pointed to. Some of them said they thought OJ probably committed the murders, but they felt the police had contaminated or planted evidence. Some of them just clearly didn’t understand (or believe) the underlying science (such as the juror who theorized the DNA evidence might have pointed towards OJ’s son). But I think concluding that jurors just didn’t want to convict a black defendant is missing the real story here.
An incompetent prosecution team does not equal innocence on the part of the accused. It may equal a “not guilty” verdict, however.
Part of the problem was the site wasn’t sealed. Police have been known to plant evidence because it’s easier when the cops are certain the guy is guilty. The cops were so sure OJ did it that for the first couple of weeks all you heard about was what kind of “deal” OJ would cop.
OJ’s trial was moved partly because the state wanted a conviction from a jury that was more black. I recall very early no one could fathom the idea that OJ would get off.
Mark Furman singlehandedly killed the case, once he was proved a liar, the case was changed from proving OJ guilty to proving the LA Cops innocent.
Race and education played a HUGE factor. OJ’s fame played a factor. If OJ was an ordinary black man, I would bet the same jury would’ve convicted him.
The DNA was never directly linked to OJ but rather his family. DNA, as one poster pointed out was knew. I recall one juror being interviewed when questioned said “lots of people have the same blood type.” People didn’t understand and the prosecution wouldn’t talk down to the jury to explain, so the jury wrote it off.
Even today I’ve talked to people who have no good concept on DNA works. Or they think it’s like TV.
The cops never explored any other possibilty of who did it. This strikes people as arrogance and a set up. Like in JonBenet, many people are convinced the cops spent so much time looking at the parents, the kidnapper got away. We had a similar case in Illinois where the father was convicted and a year later DNA proved him innoent. So the real killer got away with murdering a kid. The district attorney was like “So what?” It’s that arrogance and refusal to admit error even in the face of the fact they screwed up big time which hurts the government.
As one juror from the OJ case said “If the LA cops had done their job properly, we would’ve convicted him.” To her they couldn’t be sure because of the police.
The thing is IF OJ didn’t do it one thing is for sure, he knows more than he’s letting on.
If it was someone else, it’s almost certain someone will knows and will snitch eventually. Very few cases “Of high profile”, such as Lizzie Borden, Jack the Ripper or the Black Dahlia, go forever unsolved.
There’s usually a snitch
I’m hardly a “nut” wrt this trial, but I followed it fairly closely.
Based on everything I’ve seen, including some statements by jurors, it came down to the apparent mishandling of the case by the police.
The defense was, as a result of this mishandling, able to instill a resonable doubt in the jury, and under our system, the jury had no option but to find him not guilty.
While I am one who believes he did it, had I been on that jury I probably would have returned the same verdict given the sum total of the evidence.
What got me was this was a nine-month trial and the jury deliberated for three hours. They’d made up their minds long before both sides rested.
I’d also heard OJ was told by his attorneys to stop taking his arthritis medicine so his hands would swell and not “fit” the glove. That, plus I heard a talk show host prove to his skeptical call screener that you can make your gloves not fit. He pulled on a pair of gloves, then tried to do it again over surgical gloves. He couldn’t do it.
I also heard there was blood evidence of Nicole and Ron found in Simpson’s car, but it was tossed on some technicality.
What an amazing crash and burn.
The problem is that no matter how overwhelming the evidence is, it’s always possible to invent an alternative explanation. Thanks to movies and TV, people are constantly exposed to fictional crimes where these highly improbable alternatives are true and people who appear to be clearly guilty are actually innocent.
Then all you need is a team of legal experts who are capable of inventing these alternatives and selling them to a jury. Thanks to psychological studies, it’s possible to determine which jurors are susceptible to different kinds of persuasion and bias a jury in your favor and pitch a defense to that jury that you know it’s likely it will believe.
A couple of things I prefer to note:
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OJ confessed to Rosie Grier in a jailhouse visit, overheard by a guard. The guard wasn’t allowed to testify about this since Grier is an ordained minister and the confession was ruled privileged.
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In the civil case, the issue of the footprint of the unusual shoes came to the forefront. OJ denied owning such “ugly” shoes, but a set of photographs showing him at a football game wearing them were presented. At least one of the pictures was also printed well before the murders so that the shoe photos were not planted. Note that since this was a civil case, OJ had to testify and he did himself no good at all.
I also blame Ito for the failure of the criminal case. He consistently sided with the defense in squashing evidence (e.g., OJ’s previous abuse history) while allowing the defense incredible leeway. The bits of the trial I saw consisted of the defense lawyers asking over and over and over the same questions. The trial should have taken less than a third of the time. When you bend over backwards to give someone a fair trial, you don’t get a fair trial.
My take on the outcome of the civil trial: Equality was reached. A rich and famous black person could now buy “justice” as well as a white person.
FTR, I think OJ was guilty of murdering Nicole and Ron Goldman. But one thing has always bugged me about the chain of events:
Its been a long time and my memory is fading, but IIRC, they found copious amounts of blood at OJ’s house the day after the murder. Yet OJ was not arrested until several days later. If there was a much blood as they claimed, he should have been arrested right away and without bail. Alledgedly, there was blood in the driveway, the entry way, the bedroom and the bathroom.
I don’t care if was a celebrity, he was a cold blooded murderer.
I didn’t really follow all of the details of the case, but from what I have heard the claim that OJ was framed never really made sense to me. Specifically:
If the theory is that OJ’s blood was planted by corrupt police – how did the police obtain OJ’s blood? Assuming they didn’t have advance knowledge that Nicole and Ron were going to be murdered, it seems they’d have had to (1) find out about the murder, (2) realize that one of the victims was O.J. Simpson’s wife, (3) go get some of OJ’s blood somehow, (4) rush the blood to the scene of the crime to be planted there in time to be found and entered as evidence.
As implausible as that scenario seems, what are the alternatives? That none of OJ’s blood was found at the scene of the crime, and it was all inserted into evidence after the fact? How many people would have to lie to cover that up? And that again leaves the question: How did they get OJ’s blood? The other alternative is even more absurd: that the L.A.P.D. somehow orchestrated the murders themselves to frame OJ, after somehow obtaining his blood. Again, where did the blood come from?
It makes no sense to me.
Read this for a rundown of Scheck’s cross examination of Dennis Fung, the guy in charge of collecting the blood evidence in the case. Basically, Fung had testified that he had received a vial of blood taken from Simpson as evidence and that the sample was delivered to him at Simpson’s residence (where LAPD was investigating) on June 13 (which even Fung admitted wasn’t typical procedure). However, it was revealed by videotape footage that Fung didn’t have the envelope this sample was supposedly in, and the evidence logbook was fudged to hide the fact that the evidence wasn’t actually logged until June 14. The implication was that the LAPD (and specifically Mark Furhman) had gotten a sample of Simpson’s blood and taken the sample to the crime scene, where they proceeded to contaminate various items, including the Bronco, and that Fung had lied about when he got the sample to cover Fuhrman’s ass. Combine all this with the fact that Fung didn’t know a whole lot about DNA evidence, made mistakes in collecting the blood samples (including having a less experienced criminalogist collect the evidence and storing it in plastic bags), and seemed to spend 9 days on the stand stammering and sputtering the whole time (Fung actually hugged and shook the hands of the defense lawyers after he stepped down from the witness stand), and I think the jury came to the conclusion that the LAPD botched the investigation at best, and planted evidence at worst.
And it got worse,
CMC +fnord!