IIRC, the jury was not present when Fuhrman took the fifth. Also, I agree with other posters: whether required under California law or not, he made it clear that he was going to refuse to answer any question posed and invoke the fifth. OJ’s lawyer asked him that in the question right before the seemingly damning one. If he had been asked if he participated in the JFK assassination, he would have likewise taken the fifth.
I always thought the State’s reliance on DNA was a huge mistake. Johnnie Cochran revealed several crime lab mistakes in collecting the evidence. Primarily because the techs were using outdated procedures. That would have been fine if the state hadn’t presented a DNA case.
I can’t recall the names. I think there were two crime lab techs that got grilled on the stand. At the time DNA was very new and rules for gathering evidence were changing. They were using procedures a few years out of date.
Also the state’s prolonged DNA presentation seemed to stretch out over a week. It was mind numbing and boring for the jury. They had so much conflicting scientific testimony that I think they just rejected all of it. Barry Scheck and his partner were brought in to discredit the DNA testimony and they were very effective.
This is a great thread. How about the omission of Jill Shively as a witness? (The lady who says she saw OJ speeding away in his Bronco the night of the murders but ultimately wasn’t called to the stand after some debacle with doing a paid TV interview.)
IIRC, if they put her on the stand, the defence would ask “you were paid to tell this story, weren’t you?” … “If you didn’t say you saw OJ you wouldn’t have been paid big bucks?”
How reliable would that testimony be? I would be very skeptical of prisoners who get a break on their sentence or charges for testifying what their cellmate told them, and I would be equally skeptical if someone got paid thousands of dollars to say they saw something. Perhaps the media could be charged with obstruction of justice for interfering with the investigation…
Sure, but in hindsight, were those obstacles ones that couldn’t be overcome? It’s natural to be skeptical of such accounts, but that doesn’t change the fact that convictions on cases large and small are pursued and obtained daily using snitches and other witnesses who may have something to gain.
IANAL but that’s a good question.
The obvious questions are - how good a witness was she? How well could she recognize OJ? (Was she a sports fan? Movie star fan?) Where did her story come from- did she initiate contact with the media, or did she go to the police first? Was there a history of anything similar? Had she had run-ins with the law before? Mental problems? And so on… All such questions go to the issue of credibility. Who knows what the prosecutors found out and why they decided as they did.
Now that I’ve had time to read the details of the link, … wow!
Truth is even stranger than fiction, far more convoluted and disjointed.
This particular version makes Clark out to be vindictively incompetent and manipulable, and suggests the OJ defence was willing to concoct nastiness to smear witnesses very early on, and Clark fell for it without checking.
So for the answer to the OP, the problem was not focussing on DNA, the problem was how the whole case was handled.
I have seen dozens of trials, watched that case - I saw 90% of it at least - have been involved in federal and state criminal cases (including two murder cases - one of which is famous/complicated), have taken ~ a dozen college classes in criminal justice, have successfully argued a case pro se at the appellate level that was tangentially criminal related, have served on a criminal jury in which it involved a black man charged with attempted murder(with a knife) of a white woman (and did find the person not guilty).
You are entitled to your opinion. As i mentioned - and you haven’t provided anything to the contrary other than some lawyers opinion [you know the first article was Simpsons lawyer, right? - I’m not going to be real surprised what he says 
] - any problems with the state’s case was supported by other evidence.
Where you have testimony Nicole was abused by him, he was photographed with the gloves, and he admitted the blood was his in his driveway, and changed his story as to how he was cut. How many people do you think cut themselves and bleed in their driveway the day their ex wife is stabbed? How many people own those shoes as well? Add in testimony of limo driver if you want a slam dunk. That is all you need to convict. Everything else is icing on the cake.
Ok - the second article you provided quotes a lawyer talking about chain of custody and Furman. There were “problems” with both. As mentioned in my post - they did not matter - there was way more that enough evidence even if you excluded what could have been tainted by these problems.
Jurors can do whatever they want, and if some juror wants to exclude evidence or find someone not guilty based on the fact that someone perjured themselves - they are welcome to do so. It does not change that the prosecution had enough to convict and that Simpson is logically tied to the crime scenes.
As I mentioned - Furman was a relatively unimportant witness - in that all his evidence was provable by other means (that the gloves were OJs and that they were found at the crime). He could be Hitler - it wouldn’t change the fact the relative facts.
I don’t blame the Jury for what they did - I think the prosecution did over complicate the case and the second article you posted mentions the cameras in the courtroom problem - which was huge.
But your claim that you somehow needed to be intimately involved in this case to know the case was proved beyond a reasonable doubt - is silly. I did watch or later read the whole case. I was taking criminal justice classes at the time and it was my entertainment/interest at the time.
But that isn’t necessary - people seem to think what happened in the Simpson case is normal - read the evidence - the experts that testified - when asked stuff like:
“Have you ever been asked for computer printouts from your Mass Spec testimony?”
Elicited responses like
“I’ve been head of the FBIs Mass Spec for 15 years and have never seen this.”
No one else has been afforded the level of doubt that was assigned OJ. That is the one of the points I was trying to make. Every case I have ever seen has less proof than that one did. The fact that they had literally hundred of pieces of evidence - makes it more likely some will have “issues”.
If you can’t see the similarities of complaints about blood stains not being collected properly (as Simpson admitted they were his - so who cares) with the complaints about the evidence of the moon landing (supposedly missing cross hatches on photos not mattering - as that is only one piece of the puzzle and there was a scientific explanation) then there is nothing I can do to make you see it.
People believe the moon landing didn’t happen and Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii for the same reason they think OJ was innocent. They see “problems” with evidence which are easily explained by other factors. That is what I was saying.
I think we also might be arguing about something we MIGHT not actually even disagree about. I am not saying that a juror or jury couldn’t have honestly came to the verdict they did - I don’t believe they let OJ go cause he was black (not directly at least).
I’m saying that prosecutions case more than enough supports the finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt by anyone who can go through the evidence in a logical manner.
If to you or others - reasonable doubt means letting someone go cause the prosecution had one witness who perjured themselves about something they said (guess what most officers will lie on the stand if asked if they have used the word “nigger”) - and that means that other officers could be lying - and chain of custody wasn’t totally followed all the time exactly as procedures go - then that person is more than entitled to find someone not guilty.
Only two people on that jury had a college degree - and some of the testimony was highly technical with little effort made to make it more understandable. I understand why the jury decided the way they did - the EDTA stuff was particularly confusing if you don’t have a technical background. If you did however - it made the case against OJ even more of a slam dunk.
I think you are missing the points I’m making and not understanding the foundations of the conclusions I am drawing. Not to dismiss your expertise, but it does not even begin to come close to the level of expertise of the cites I provided, especially the Columbia law professor - who came to a much different conclusion. There is just too much information to process in this case; so if you have any interest in beginning to persuade me otherwise, you would have to match cite with cite, not just give me your opinion.
AFAIK Marsha Clark and Christopher Darden never prosecuted a case again after bungling the OJ trial. They both resigned shortly after the trial. That pretty much says it all.
From what I recall, Marsha Clark was the up and coming star in the prosecutor’s office. Racking up victory after victory. Then the OJ trial came along.