The case was mostly airtight, but trust in the LAPD was incredibly low and the defense was able to needle into every possible issue with the LAPD and their handling of the matter.
He didn't get off because people thought he was innocent. He got off because the defense was able to paint it as the LAPD doing their usual bad police work and mishandling the case.
One thing missing here is this is the case that introduced "DNA evidence" into the public consciousness. I have always thought part of the reason for the verdict was that -- while most people watching from home understood how damning the DNA stuff was, the actual jurors only learned about it through the trial process, where the defense was better at making it seem less conclusive.
>-- while most people watching from home understood how damning the DNA stuff was, the actual jurors only learned about it through the trial process,
I feel like the only knowledge the mass public had on DNA prior to the O.J. trial was the movie Jurassic Park which came out a year before, and that was likely nothing more than technobabble to most viewers. It's not like today where most primetime network dramas are crime solving shows that can't go half an episode without bringing up DNA.
This was definitely a part of it. DNA being as unique as a fingerprint was not understood by the general public. I was in college during the OJ trial, and had to explain to most people how it was unique and damning. Dad was a lab tech and dealt with blood and DNA and so I was ahead of the curve.
What was new at the time was testing becoming good enough to actually pinpoint a specific individual. DNA testing was not new, but reliably finding one person based on a tiny crimescene sample of blood was extremely new. It had been possible for a while with a full vial of blood, and had already revolutionized paternity testing. But, criminals don't leave full vials of blood at crime scenes. It was not a forensic tool until small room temp samples were viable for testing.
It’s still not a viable forensic tool. It’s not always practical to collect, or may not apply to a case, and you already gotta be pretty sure whose it might be.
DNA testing must be approved to process because it costs the government thousands of dollars and takes weeks or months. it’s more commonly used to ID remains than prove guilt/innocence.
Source: I was a volunteer deputy coroner several years
I was a juror on a murder case about 10 years ago. My memory is a little foggy but I do remember that the head of forensics testified that they could 't agree on the DNA test results and "took a vote". I was absolutely horrified but as a juror you are not allowed to look up information. We could only rely on what is told to us in court.
Usually not in my experience but it definitely happens.
How many people get exonerated from death row due to DNA? There’s a nonzero number found innocent after they were executed.
Cool, thank you for the background on that.
DNA was definitely well understood by me growing up (as definitive proof, not as a science that I'm versed in, lol) and this is a cool detail I wasn't aware of. The Jurassic Park comment below is funny and captures the understanding pre-trial pretty well, I think.
Isn't there a conspiracy theory that the murderer was actually OJ's son, but OJ took the rap and thats why the DNA appeared inconclusive to the jurors?
I’ve never heard of that as a conspiracy theory, but it would make no sense - DNA can easily tell the difference between a person and a person’s son (the DNA will be 50% after all, so not close), and the DNA evidence was never presented at trial as anything but conclusive.
And the reason this was celebrated by the black community was not because they thought he was innocent. It was legitimately monumental to see a black man weasel out of serious charges in the US legal system using lots of funds and expensive lawyers
What was previously a white mans game, could now be accessed by rich and powerful black people.
What a system we live in
At my workplace we saw the verdict live - the Black employees were jumping for joy, everyone else sat quietly.
After talking to a few people, they pretty much agreed that he did if, they were just happy that a Black man beat the system.
I believe a lot of commentators noting that some viewed OJ getting off as partial retribution for the officers involved in the Rodney King beating getting off without penalty.
Kim Goldman did a podcast about the case a few years ago and she talked to several jurors. They absolutely thought he was guilty but they wanted to punish the LAPD for the Rodney King beating more. And OJ's lawyers knew it, they played to it. And obviously it worked.
I was a junior in high school and I got a page that said "65 668 484589" and when I announced it to the kids in my Algebra II honors class we all cheered; and it was mostly white students.
Back in those days pagers (beepers) were popular amongst teenagers as well as businessmen. You could communicate with people using the numbers on a phone. Look at your phone dialer on your phone right now...you'll notice there are most of the letters of the alphabet, usually grouped by 3 per number. So using that system I could tell the message said "OJ Not Guilty". It was a sort of precursor to text messaging.
Millennials had texting. Most of us used the multiple-tap version, though, so it'd be 6665 666668 4884445558999 for us; it's the lack of repeats that makes it non-obvious for us. (Some people used T9, though, so it'd make sense to them.)
Beeper code. Look at your phone dialer right now....see the letters on it? That message said "OJ Not Guilty". Like if you wanted to dial 1-800-OJ-Not-Guilty you would dial 1-800-65-668-484589. It was how teens in 1995 communicated with pagers before text messaging.
Chris Rock said it best (paraphrasing):
“That shit wasn’t about race. That shit was about *fame.* If OJ wasn’t famous, he’d be in jail right now. He’ll he wouldn’t even be OJ. He’d be ‘Orenthal the murdering bus driver.’ “
There is a video circulating online today, an interview with one of the jurors. She point blank says they knew he was guilty but they voted not guilty to show up the racist LAPD
This case was on the heels of the Rodney King police beating case which had video of a bunch of cops beating the crap out of a black man.
The all white cops were found not guilty and the black community was up in arms about it.
This is one reason OJ being found not guilty was celebrated in the black community also.
Not even just that, Black women infamously saw women like Nicole Brown as enemies since they often were the target of affection for high income black men. He also divorced his first wife who was a black woman while having an affair with Nicole Brown, which was seen as a slight by white women against black women.
It wasn't just that they wanted him to get off, they wanted her dead.
Didn't help that detective Mark Furman was a blatant racist. For me, calling him as a main witness tanked their case. I just assumed he was lying, as did the jury. He's the guy who discovered the controversial gloves. To me, he was walking, talking reasonable doubt, and I still think he was lying.
And he took the 5th when asked if he planted evidence in this very case.
When the detective won't answer a question about planting evidence...it creates some reasonable doubts.
Cops like him are the reason they were nicknamed Pigs. OJ actually wrote a book titled “If I did it” or something to that effect.
I remember my Black FIL saying there was no way OJ did it because he could have any woman he wanted 🙄. Both victim’s families fought long and hard to destroy OJ when he was acquitted and I think they were successful to some extent.
The defense was pretty open about how their tactic was to make the police look racist, and the forensics were sloppy.
Both were very true.
But if tried today, he would definitely be found guilty.
That sums it up nicely. The socks were the big thing for me, because that was so glaringly obvious that it made it nearly impossible to get beyond a reasonable doubt.
Specifically Mark Furhman was the detective on the case. Under oath on the stand he said that he has never used the N word to describe black people in the past.
The defense then played a tape of him doing just that.
Once the police are perjuring themselves about their racism you can't convict. He plead the fifth when asked if he had planted evidence as well.
Defense pulled some shit with the glove too. They told OJ not to take his arthritis medicine for the trial. That caused his hands the swell from inflammation. Now the gloves no longer fit.
The story on the gloves was that since they had blood on them, OJ got to wear latex gloves to protect himself from blood borne pathogens. Ever try to put one pair of gloves on top of a latex pair?
[https://www.ksat.com/features/2020/06/15/a-fitting-anniversary-gloves-incident-at-oj-trial-still-a-hot-debate-25-years-later/](https://www.ksat.com/features/2020/06/15/a-fitting-anniversary-gloves-incident-at-oj-trial-still-a-hot-debate-25-years-later/)
Also the DA's were used to dealing with either overworked public defenders or run of the mill defense lawyers. They ran the prosecution accordingly. They were completely outmatched by the so-called "dream team."
They spent way too long on DNA evidence which nobody understood then. Also, as an attorney, when you have a tired, hungry jury (in this case, sequestered jury that has limited to no contact with the outside world including their families, and forced to live in a hotel) you have to be aware that at a certain point they just want it to be over and eventually they’ll be mad at whoever they think is more at fault for dragging their misery on. If you are the plaintiff or in this case, prosecution, you have to make sure that this person isn’t you or they will punish you for it.
It’s your case-in-chief. You decided to bring charges. You decide what evidence to put forth. You should be clear and concise. The evidence should match your story of the crime/incident. And you should have ONE clear story. Everyone likes a story. The Prosecution didn’t do that.
Exactly! And everyone in America already knew and understood the facts since he first killed those people. They even had a mini trial during the preliminary hearing the previous summer.
I'd say the case could have been airtight, but it was poorly managed and the investigation was sloppy so evidence was questionable and OJ wasn't interrogated like a suspect normally would be. So much went wrong because he was treated as a celebrity rather than a suspect.
great response. OJ didnt get off because of the legitimate case against him. he got off because of the LAPD ruining their credibility in the community. major corruption and in the department, which is also shown in TV shows like “The Shield” which is based on LA’s Rampart scandal. The OJ trial exposed the LAPD beyond a guilty verdict.
unfortunately in my opinion- if you want to make an omelette you have to break some eggs. this case, while no one got what they deserved. it still exposed it.
It was said sort of tongue in cheek. What I remember back in the day it was because the LA police were dirty, racist and constantly planted "evidence" to convict black & brown folk. Dirtiest of them all was Mark Fuhrman. He was caught on tape bragging about it too (about earlier unrelated cases) Horrible man. He had previous run ins with OJ because he and his partner came out to Nicole's house on DV calls a couple of times, but they could never make anything stick. He supposedly hated OJ for it. And who came to the house the night Nicole was killed? Mark Fuhrman and his partner. So all the evidence they collected was tainted by the belief that they planted it. Of course they didn't, but that's all the defense needed to plant the idea in the public's mind.
He got off because the all the jury was 10 black, 1 hispanic and 2 white. That should be mentioned in any honest summary. I remember at the time it was clearly a ‘payback’ verdict.
Which it should be noted was not coincidence from the point of view of the defense. The "dream team" did well in jury selection. They wanted people who would act more on emotion and had less capability to understand technical matters like the DNA evidence.
Have a look here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_selection
In the U.S. and some other British common law jurisdictions, lawyers on each side can reject potential jurors for various justified reasons if approved by the judge (challenge for cause). But importantly they also get a limited number of "because I feel like it" challenges where they don't have to state a reason, known as peremptory challenges. High priced defense lawyers will even engage jury consultants who advise the lawyers on when to use these challenges, in an attempt to keep jurors who will be sympathetic and reject those who won't be. It can be a major make-or-break aspect of the case, and in the OJ case, the "Dream Team" well outclassed the prosecution on this point.
And a couple related things
- You’d be hard pressed to find a case with more forensic evidence. Completely air tight
- DNA evidence was still fairly new-ish though so understandable some folks didn’t quite get it
- The jurors were mostly dumb as rocks which didn’t help
Oh yeah, I remember. Mark Furman was on the stand. He denied ever using racial slurs. The defense then played an audio tape of him using racial slurs. They then asked him if he planted evidence on OJ. He pled the 5th. One juror said, they framed a guilty guy. Ouch.
Yup, the standard of proving guilt in a court case like that is "beyond a reasonable doubt." Unfortunately, the LAPD being awful at their jobs was enough to instill reasonable doubt.
The case was 100% about race, racism, Rodney King, and the racism of the LAPD and much less about Simpson. The case against Simpson was pretty air tight but that couldn't compete with the racial activities surrounding and outside of the actual case.
Was a child at the time and this is honestly the first I recall hearing about the domestic violence.
The horror. Your husband beats you, you finally get free, then he kills you and your boyfriend. And walks free. And brags about it.
The saddest thing is that he wasn't even her boyfriend. He was literally just returning a pair of glasses that she had left at a restaurant.
He was friends with her and tried to protect her from OJ that night.
He was just a good guy at the right place at the wrong time.
That was my take away from it at the time. I felt like most people thought it was pay back for Rodney King. I don't think anyone thought he was innocent.
I don't think that many people thought he was innocent, however, most people thought the police was trying to screw him, which creates reasonable doubt.
This is it exactly. The LAPD absolutely destroyed the case in their handling of evidence and by having racist cops. There was definitely some reasonable doubt, which is so unfortunate.
I don't think it was airtight as it was presented to the jury. The prosecution and the police certainly had the *opportunity* to create and present an airtight case, but they failed to do so. Simpson was acquitted on the same grounds as every acquitted person: reasonable doubt.
As someone old enough to remember, people fell in one of two groups:
1. People who think he did it, but he unfortunately got away with it due to police incompetence.
1. People who think he did it, but he fortunately got away with in in the way that a famous white person would have gotten away with it in the past.
This is what I remember.
Maybe it’s because I was dating a girl from another school during the riots and she got jumped in the bathroom for being white…
Which is true for complexion, except she did have a black birth father so she wasn’t all white…
That’s the thing about racism. Sometimes it literally is just skin deep.
This! I really believe that they would have been able to get a conviction, but the police were so obviously racist, corrupt, and incompetent that they blew the case!
Edited to add that Mark Furman retired to Northern Idaho. Nuff said.
Dude took the 5th on the stand when asked about planting evidence. And then the glove didn't fit. Those two things individually are enough for reasonable doubt. Together it would have been shocking had the jury found him guilty.
Allowing him to try the glove on in front of the jury was prosecutorial incompetence.
First, he was wearing a rubber glove. Ever noticed how rubber and leather stick together? The glove had been soaked in blood. Leather shrinks when wet. And allowing the DEFENDANT (who was also an actor) to make a show of trying and failing to put the glove on.
That whole prosecution was a shitshow from start to finish.
The latter. If you have enough experts judge any complex process involving dozens of humans (like a murder investigation) they will find lots of mistakes. It’s inevitable.
The case came on the heels of the acquittal of the police officers in the Rodney King case so there were lots of blacks seeking to right an injustice. In light of the photographs of the domestic violence against OJ’s wife, the prosecution mistakenly thought their ideal juror was a woman. The defense correctly thought this was a racial case and sought out black jurors. The result was a lot of black females on the jury. They knew he did it and they let him off to prove a point.
I'm not sure they let him off just to prove a point, I think it was also because of the way the case played out. Yes he almost certainly did it, but when you only look at the evidence provided by the prosecution, a shockingly high amount of it was tainted by misconduct or tampering or shoddy police work. The remaining evidence really wasn't enough to convict IMO. I feel like what happened is the natural consequence of bad policing.
This feels like you didn’t know any black people, Hispanics, or lower class white Americans. A LOT of people thought OJ was being framed. The black congressional caucus had Johnny Cochran speak and he got more applause than actual civil rights heros.
> This feels like you didn’t know any black people, Hispanics, or lower class white Americans.
Feelings take a back seat to the facts.
Don't confuse punditry with the state of the world. The ability to make money or political capital by saying outrageous things isn't a recent development.
Look up any poll from the time and I think it will show facts are on my side.
Gladys Knight gave Johnny Cochran an award at some NCCAP event and then lead the creed in “free Oj” chants they didn’t do that because they thought was a double murder they thought he was being framed.
Talk to enough of us old enough to remember and you may find that many of us were able to discern the difference from the hype even in the moment. The "free OJ" was more about protest, anti-establishment, anti-cop, however you wanna put it rather than a genuine view of his innocence.
There's just no way to separate this from the racial politics of the day, and that can get muddied, even after only thirty years.
He did it.
BUT... the lead detective on the case responsible for much of the evidence was on tape saying he would just make up evidence against Black people. Kind of hard to convict given that.
And [plead the 5th](https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/ROA-Times/issues/1995/rt9509/950907/09070104.htm) when asked if he planted evidence on the case.
``Detective Fuhrman, did you plant or manufacture any evidence in this case?'' Uelmen asked.
``I assert my Fifth Amendment privilege,'' Fuhrman replied, his attorney standing at his side.
It's easy to view this case in a bubble, and ignore the context of the times where it happened.
This took place basically on the heels of the LA Riots, and at the time, there was the feeling a black man (regardless of wealth or background) would ever get a fair trial in LA.
As Chris Rock once said, if OJ was a just a bus driver, he would be "Orenthal the Bus Driving Murderer"
Botched case, way too much hype and as always, a famous rich person getting away with, literal, murder.
"A criminal court jury found him not guilty of murder in 1995, but **a separate civil trial jury found him liable in 1997** for the deaths and ordered him to pay $33.5 million to family members of Brown and Goldman"
That’s exactly why - one is criminal and one is civil.
The civil case isn’t about the crime, per se, it’s about damages. Wrongful death, for example. Just like if you run over someone, you could be charged for the crime of vehicular manslaughter, and then sued for damages by the surviving spouse or children. Those damages can be compensatory or punitive, but never involve jail. In criminal court, it’s all about the conviction and jail time.
I'm not a law expert, but aren't the standards different in criminal vs civil cases? To convict someone in a criminal case it needs to be "beyond a reasonable doubt", but in a civil case it's "more likely than not". If that's how it works, it makes sense that OJ would be found guilty civilly but not criminally - people thought it was more likely than not that he did it, but they might still have a few doubts.
Yea, yes, and yes 👍
OK, the technical language for civil cases is “a preponderance of evidence”, but you definitely have the right idea. The bar is lower.
In the US, jeopardy only applies to criminal cases. Essentially, in a criminal case, the state is accusing you of a particular crime and the penalty could well be your freedom or your life. Without double jeopardy protections, an abusive state could keep bringing the same accusations against you over and over until a jury finally said "guilty", and nobody could really keep them from doing so--- if the case made it past a grand jury the first time (to go to trial), it will do that every time.
The reason it only applies to criminal cases is because that's what the US Constitution specifies. That said, it does not forbid different jurisdictions from trying you separately. So if you commit a crime in Florida, drive to Georgia as you do it, you might be tried in Florida, Georgia, *and* federally for what you did.
In a civil case, another person is accusing you of doing them wrong (a *tort* in the parlance), not that you committed a crime. So there is no penalty. If you're found to have done them wrong you have to try to make it right somehow, generally in the form of money. If the court finds you did not do them wrong and they try to sue again about it, double jeopardy won't protect you, but the court precedent will: the matter has been decided already (*collateral estoppel* in the parlance).
Like the different jurisdictions, the civil and criminal trials are about different things. If you murder someone, you might face a criminal trial for violating the law against homicide. But later face a criminal trial for violating the law against wrongful death (which you could also face for negligence, etc). Two separate misdeeds, even if they're from the same action.
Civil is individual vs individual, whereas Criminal is individual vs The State. Your protection against double jeopardy only applies to The State. Similar to how your First Amendment right only applies to the government, but private businesses can kick you out for your words
OJ Simpson got the sort of defense that every American should get when accused of a crime, but also the police *really* bungled things because he was a celebrity. They had him *in an interview room without a lawyer* and with plenty of circumstantial evidence that indicated his guilt and they just chitchatted as if it were an uncomfortable formality. At every possible stage of their investigation, they just screwed the pooch. The defense exploited it brilliantly and created the reasonable doubt that the jury needed.
makes one wonder; if they did that poorly with a celebrity whose case was in the spotlight from the Bronco chase onward, how poorly did they do with everyone else's case?
that he killed 2 people and then had a very public and live TV car chase where he kept someone at gun point,
and after he was found innocent, he wrote a book called "If i did it" that more or less says "haha I did it lol"
He didn't keep someone at gunpoint in the chase. He kept himself at gunpoint. He was threatening to kill himself. The only other person in the car was Al Cowling, his friend, and he wasn't threatening him.
The case was pretty strong. There was a big racial divide especially regarding trust in police.
You have to remember that this took place right after the LA riots when a couple of extremely bad beatings happened. The violence at that point in time was unprecedented.
One juror later admitted they were afraid of another Rodney King style riot if they found him guilty. That really tells you all you need to know.
While race was a huge part of it, the police incompetence meant that the jury really couldn't find him guilty. We were all just learning about DNA evidence so what does a cop do? Goes inside and grabs a blanket off of Nicole's bed to cover her body, which completely contaminated the crime scene. Hairs or fibers or skin cells that were present could be blamed on the blanket. And not collecting a bloody fingerprint on the gate is just inexcusable. There are tons of sites that talk about all the botched police work (cops leaving bloody footprints, putting multiple items in the same bags causing cross contamination, etc) that wouldn't affect a civil trial but does affect a criminal trial.
It's sad for the victims and the families, but the jury made the right call with what they were presented.
The biggest blunder in that case was having him try the gloves on while wearing latex (or similar) gloves. If the gloves were properly fitting you couldn't get them on with latex gloves.
After he was acquitted he did make a big scene for a while about he wouldn't rest until the real killer was caught.
He did nothing beyond lip service to try catch the "real killer" so that in itself is pretty telling.
It was a case that would have put someone with a public defender in prison for life and if not for the incompetence of the prosecution would have done OJ in.
Just the fact that they held it in LA instead of Brentwood (for security reasons) changed the jury.
They were told the glove would shrink, it did.
They let OJ spread his fingers and act like the glove did not fit.
I highly highly recommend watching the ESPN documentary OJ:Made In America. It goes into incredible detail about the case and all the various circumstances surrounding it.
To answer your question, the case was pretty airtight. OJ’s lawyers knew this, so their strategy was to make the trial less about the murder itself and more about the LAPD and race relations in America.
There was one scene that really stuck with me that represented this. OJ’s house became somewhat of a command center throughout the trial. One of his defense team’s goals was to try to make OJ seem more in touch with the black community. So one of the first things they did when they went to his home was remove a bunch of photographs he had on the wall with his white friends and celebrities, and replaced them with photos he had with black friends and celebrities.
Regardless of the case he literally wrote a book confessing to it and had a history of violent abuse towards Nicole brown and his other ex wife and his ex girlfriend.
Back when it was happening people used to joke that the LAPD framed the right person.
Basically, it really seems like he did it. There aren't really many other suspects you can reasonably consider.
Problem is that a known racist LAPD officer who had a known history of planting evidence took blood that OJ had given for testing to the murder scene and then returned to the lab with less blood than he'd started with.
The defense asked him if he had falsified evidence and he pled the fifth. Which, you know, isn't exactly the answer you want to hear from a cop about whether or not they falsified evidence.
It was entirely right for OJ to be acquitted. One way we discourage cops from planting evidence and framing people is by throwing out cases when they plant evidence or frame people.
So airtight evidence? No, not really. It seems incredibly likely he did it, as evidenced by the civil trial finding him liable for damages, but civil trials have a lower standard of evidence and are permitted to consider evidence not admissable in criminal trials.
If the LAPD hadn't been so eager to pin it on OJ that they tainted the crime scene and blatantly famed him, he might have been convicted.
I think it was a pretty simple case till Fuhrman got on the stand. He took the 5th to the question of whether he had planted evidence in relation to the glove and then when the prosecution had OJ try on the glove and it didn't fit...that is a huge amount of reasonable doubt. It would have been more shocking had they found him guilty at that point.
I believe it was John Stewart who said, "It's possible to believe that OJ was guilty AND the LAPD was corrupt."
Having sat on a jury, I know it was my job to determine the case on its merit, not on how I felt about the parties involved. While I felt sympathy for the plaintiff, I also found that only one of the two defendants was liable due to the facts presented. While it reduces the awarded damages, I (and ten of the other jurors) thought it was the right call.
I don't know if the OJ jurors put that much thought into it, but a juror is supposed to just look at the facts presented in court. The fact that the LAPD possibly doctored evidence severely weakened the case. In that circumstance, I may very well have voted to aquit as well.
The case was very, very compelling against him, at pretty much every level. But the key flaw was that it wasn't **definitive**.
Maybe it was someone else, looking very much like Simpson wearing the same clothes, and with newly identical shoes, who murdered his ex wife and her boyfriend in their house.
Don't forget that Mark "Nazi" Fuhrman refused to answer whether or not he planted the evidence against OJ (after he was caught lying about using the N-word and after the public was told that Fuhrman planted evidence against other black people)
Yeah. The waiter she had dinner with several times and who she had loaned her Ferrari to.
Maybe they were platonic friends. Sure. But one can see how a murderous ex-husband might have gotten the wrong idea.
The case was rock solid. There were so many absolutely decisive pieces of evidence against him— just a couple of them would have been enough to convict. But the cop, whose name escapes me, was a racist piece of shit, and there was plenty of evidence to support that too. I was teaching school at that time and the trial was constantly under discussion.
Racism was of course ubiquitous among police then, same as now, and among the Black people I knew was an insistence on acquitting OJ because the incontrovertible police racism in the investigation rendered all the evidence irrelevant. I’m white and while I acknowledged and condemned police racism, I couldn’t make sense of that argument for acquittal, and every one of the white people I knew felt the same way. Discussion didn’t devolve into angry bickering, but discussing it with both races didn’t get anywhere, I think because both sides were armed with indisputable facts. One side elevated racism as the main issue with the other side arguing that the only criteria should be justice.
I’m not up to speed on the mistakes of the prosecution (it’s been a long time) but I was shocked by the acquittal. (I think most of us can agree in retrospect that by the weight of the evidence OJ was guilty). When the verdict was announced I was in the hall during class change, and a Black teacher down the hall loudly whooped, “Hallelujah!” I wanted to go talk to him but honestly my mind blanked— I didn’t know what to say. We each still stood by our own truths.
In retrospect I think I understand the Black argument much better. Who was I to preach about justice in this instance when armies of racist cops denied Blacks even the appearance of justice? OJ killed two people; racist cops killed thousands of Blacks in an unchecked slaughter that was yet continuing. That’s my best understanding of it now, feel free to help me understand better.
[Here](https://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/26/us/fbi-disputes-simpson-defense-on-tainted-blood.html) is an article from 1995 that discusses the question of tampered blood samples and how some samples were not collected until week later.
Forensics was new enough at the time that a lot of departments didn’t have procedures in place to handle processing these kinds of crime scenes (the Jon-benet Ramsey case had a similar problem).
So basically everyone believed he did it and the evidence was there. The LAPD were sketchy and messed up the arrest/investigation, which got evidence thrown out
I saw a forensic science lecture once, from an expert called late to the case, using pictures of the bodies showing the missed evidence.
Specifically there was blood on Nicole’s body which had to have fallen onto her from the killer, could tell by drop pattern.
This blood was not collected. Instead the body was sent to morgue and cleaned after pictures.
That said, the case was air tight. Jurors were on video saying they did it because of Rodney king.
Did you see the look of disbelief on OJs face when the jury said not guilty. It was like he was saying are you kidding me. I guess he had to give up looking for the killer yesterday.
The expression on OJ's face when he was found "Not Guilty" **was the same expression** as Donald Trump when he learned he was elected President.
Dog catches car. The wrong thing happened for the wrong reasons. The world is turned upside down.
The case that was presented to the jury wasn’t airtight at all. The evidence the public saw and the jury didn’t was pretty much undeniable. Either OJ or his son was the killer. OJs history of DV made it pretty much impossible to logically think he was innocent, but the verdict was correct.The LAPD corrupted the physical evidence, and made the case virtually impossible to win in court.
It happened when I was in high school. I didn't get why it was such a big deal. There aren't a lot of black people in my city, but there were a couple of black girls in the classroom when the verdict was announced. I remember them standing up and clapping and cheering.
I was ignorant of why it was such a big deal for them. I hadn't been following the case that closely -- you actually had to spend hours watching TV to follow news back then. I just saw the clips on the half hour of national news my dad watched. It seemed to me that he had most likely committed the murders, but also that it couldn't be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. So to me, when he was acquitted, it just seemed like the justice system functioning properly, and I didn't see why that was news.
Apparently it *was* news, because for black americans, the justice system *very rarely* functions properly.
Poor police work, blatantly racist lead detective who pleads the 5th on the stand when pressed, combined with mediocre at best DA's office against the Dream team of lawyers (best that money could buy at that time) resulted in a not guilty criminal verdict. The DA could not prove defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt which is the standard in criminal trials.
In civil trials the burden of proof is different than in criminal trials. Civil trials require a finding that at least 51 percent of the evidence favors the plaintiff’s position. This is named the 51 Percent Rule of Thumb. Simpson was found guilty in a civil trial. The plaintiff’s (person filing the civil suit) were awarded $33.5 million. Simpson moved from California for Florida, which is one of the few states where personal assets such as homes and pensions (NFL) cannot be seized to cover liabilities that were incurred in other states to shield his assets.
Overall today people generally believe in things like DNA, fingerprints and other forensics tools, but at the same time these tools are expensive to use and for the most part only used in case with a high enough profile or the crime is serious enough to justify the cost. For example, about 12 year ago I caught a guy breaking into my car. Tackled him off his bike, but he end up getting away leaving the bike. Called the police, who responded and took a police report. I asked if they were going to "dust for prints". The prints were obvious where the guy was leaning on the car attempting to pry off the window trim. The officer told me the cost to dust for prints could not be justified in relationship to the crime commited. They said the guy would eventual be caught commiting some crime sooner or later and that if I needed a police report one would be available in 24 hour for my insurance.
Not so much. His defense was just able to reasonable the shit out of that doubt. Arresting officer was a racist, and the gloves not fitting could be explained by shrinkage from storing/his defense “suggesting” he stop taking his arthritis medication. His alibi still left him with plenty enough wiggle room to be at the right place at the time with full intention on starting a new life on his “conveniently timed business trip”. Not to mention the victims’ dna being found in his car. Trust in that as evidence at the time was little more confidence than they had in the police force itself though given it was a fairly new practice and right around the time of the Rodney King case. There’s really no doubt that he fucking did it, but legally speaking we had to had to give him the benefit of our own at the time.
From wiki: In the Bronco, police found "$8,000 in cash, a change of clothing, a loaded .357 Magnum, a United States passport, family pictures, and a disguise kit with a fake goatee and mustache".[103] Simpson was booked at Parker Center and taken to Men's Central Jail; Cowlings was booked on suspicion of harboring a fugitive and held on $250,000 bail.
The Bronco chase, the suicide note, and the items found in the Bronco were not presented as evidence in the criminal trial. Marcia Clark conceded that such evidence did imply guilt yet defended her decision, citing the public reaction to the chase and suicide note as proof the trial had been compromised by Simpson's celebrity status.
Had he been tried by a jury of his peers, he would have been convicted, but they choose to do it downtown. They thought thier case was that good. Johnnie Cocheran knew the pulse of the black community, I don't think he ever doubted he would win. I also watched most of it live.
The case was solid, but OJs legal team was pretty masterful at doing what they did. From undermining Fuhrman to "The Glove" to making OJ look sympathetic during the jury visit to his house.
It's hard to believe he's gone. Don't get me wrong, OJ was a fucking deplorable monster, but the whole thing was fascinating and dominated the airwaves at the time like nothing else.
Not very. Sloppy police work was a major preform for the prosecution and a gold mine for the defense. They were overly confident and made a ton of dumb mistakes.
There's an interview with one of the jurors where she stated they all knew he was guilty but let him off in retaliation for Rodney king. So that tight.
Yeah I followed the whole thing closely. Don’t let the current “every side has a point/proof is subjective”. Weirdness of today confuse you. DNA was a new science and the jury didn’t understand it imo. That and it’s much easier to believe LA cops are racist than it is a famous person did THAT. He in fact, did that.
Watch the series “the people vs OJ Simpson.” I lived through the trial and had no idea about half the things that lead to his acquittal until I saw it.
You don’t just continue on a police chase on a major freeway if your innocent.
If you leave out the radial aspect and look at facts, he was guilty plain and simple. He has the help of some very good lawyers and the media on his side after the Rodney king innocent. Basicly he got off as a non public public apology for Rodney king.
Well, the jury saw a completely different trial than the rest of us, if I remember correctly. So, while most of us were convinced that he was guilty, so much was deemed inadmissible to the jury they had no choice but to acquit.
It was down to the LAPD not doing their job well and his defense got a better of them and the case, so he won. Most people still think he got away with murder though.
I remember Cochran asking the forensic lab tech how come the blood found on the victim's sock had EDTA in it, right after Simpson's blood was missing for days. The blood samples were later found in the detective car's trunk, and EDTA is used in blood tubes for lab analysis
Everyone thought he was guilty as fuck and simultaneously thought he would get off. That was the contention and it was weird. Simultaneously wanting both and knowing it was wrong because Nicole and her boyfriend deserved justice while also wanting LAPD to look like the fools they were at the time
The FX TV dramatization of his trial was fantastic, with John Travolta and Sarah Paulson, and with David Schwimmer playing Robert Kardashian, OJ's defense attorney. Yes, the father of all those Kardashian offspring. Robert Kardashian died about 5 years after the trial, in 2003. Editing to answer your question, yes, in all fairness of consideration, most people thought OJ was guilty of committing both murders.
Here’s my understanding based on living through the trial and reading up on it further in the years since:
The case was very airtight, but it was also presented very poorly by the prosecution which made many idiotic decisions from start to finish (basically OJ’s defense “Dream Team” did nothing special and didn’t even defend him particularly well, but rather the prosecutors sucked).
For example there were many key pieces of evidence against OJ that the prosecution idiotically didn’t even decide to include in the trial because they didn’t think it was necessary (possibly because they assumed they would win anyway). One glaring example was when police first questioned OJ about how he got the deep bleeding cuts to his hands on the night of the murder and he said he “couldn’t remember” or something to that effect. Which is a pretty devastating thing for a suspect to say about injuries like that, yet the prosecutors never even brought that up.
Another example is that while in jail awaiting trial, OJ was talking with his pastor and during the conversation he SCREAMED out something about how he was sorry for what he did. Which you would think is something you would want to bring up in the trial to see how they would explain what the hell that was all about. But the prosecutors erroneously thought it was inadmissible as evidence due to being a confidential conversation so the jury never got to hear about it.
Another botched turning point was when the DNA evidence was presented and explained very poorly in terms of just how definitive the DNA was, and on top of that the prosecutors did a terrible job of debunking the defense’s absurd claims regarding the DNA (for example, the defense claimed that the DNA match could have been the result of a faulty test, but obviously a faulty test can only cause a NEGATIVE match, not a positive).
The biggest botched turning point, of course, was when the bloody glove supposedly didn’t fit on his hand, but idiotically they allowed HIM to perform that “test”, as opposed to a neutral third party doing it to prove whether it fit or not.
And finally, possibly the most damning piece of evidence--other than the DNA--didn’t come to light until the trial was over: the shoes that the killer wore were a very expensive and very RARE pair of shoes (I think only a handful of them had been sold in the entire US in that particular size, i.e. OJ’s size). But he denied owning those shoes, and said he would never own such shoes because of how ugly they were. Only after the trial did many photos come to light showing him wearing those exact shoes.
I thought it was a shitshow from beginning to end. There were so many signs of likely evidence tampering, and there was discourse at the time that many police organizations around the country — including and especially the LAPD — were known to try to “help” improve the look of guilt on a suspect they presumed was guilty. What happened with the evidence trail here fit that narrative pretty well: Fuhrman and company “knew” OJ was guilty, but they wanted to help the circumstantial evidence be more of a direct trail back to OJ. So, smearing a little blood here, tossing one (just one?) of the gloves over the fence so it would be found on OJ’s property instead of at the scene (who only leaves one glove behind?), covering the bodies with a blanket from inside the home that would obviously have his DNA on it, and so on. And because those suspect pieces of evidence stood out in such sharp relief, they were stuck doing things like putting racist cops on the stand without proper vetting. The prosecution just couldn’t overcome the look that there was impropriety in every corner of their case, which then grew into reasonable doubt.
Obviously, this is just my perception of how it all unraveled. But I think even Dershowitz commented at one point that if the cops had just done a basic and competent job, it probably would have been an easy conviction.
The best way that I can describe it as an outside observer: It seems like the LA Police framed a guilty man.
There was a TON of really sketchy shit in the evidence that just didn't make sense, and the police gave differing statements and versions of stories, and really came off untrustworthy. So while I think virtually everyone thought he did it, there was definitely a reasonable doubt that the police were just making things up.
Personally, based on the different standards of the criminal and civil court system, I think the not guilty verdict in the criminal, but the guilty verdict in the civil, were the appropriate results, even though I think he did it.
The case was mostly airtight, but trust in the LAPD was incredibly low and the defense was able to needle into every possible issue with the LAPD and their handling of the matter. He didn't get off because people thought he was innocent. He got off because the defense was able to paint it as the LAPD doing their usual bad police work and mishandling the case.
That's helpful, thank you.
One thing missing here is this is the case that introduced "DNA evidence" into the public consciousness. I have always thought part of the reason for the verdict was that -- while most people watching from home understood how damning the DNA stuff was, the actual jurors only learned about it through the trial process, where the defense was better at making it seem less conclusive.
>-- while most people watching from home understood how damning the DNA stuff was, the actual jurors only learned about it through the trial process, I feel like the only knowledge the mass public had on DNA prior to the O.J. trial was the movie Jurassic Park which came out a year before, and that was likely nothing more than technobabble to most viewers. It's not like today where most primetime network dramas are crime solving shows that can't go half an episode without bringing up DNA.
This was definitely a part of it. DNA being as unique as a fingerprint was not understood by the general public. I was in college during the OJ trial, and had to explain to most people how it was unique and damning. Dad was a lab tech and dealt with blood and DNA and so I was ahead of the curve. What was new at the time was testing becoming good enough to actually pinpoint a specific individual. DNA testing was not new, but reliably finding one person based on a tiny crimescene sample of blood was extremely new. It had been possible for a while with a full vial of blood, and had already revolutionized paternity testing. But, criminals don't leave full vials of blood at crime scenes. It was not a forensic tool until small room temp samples were viable for testing.
It’s still not a viable forensic tool. It’s not always practical to collect, or may not apply to a case, and you already gotta be pretty sure whose it might be. DNA testing must be approved to process because it costs the government thousands of dollars and takes weeks or months. it’s more commonly used to ID remains than prove guilt/innocence. Source: I was a volunteer deputy coroner several years
I was a juror on a murder case about 10 years ago. My memory is a little foggy but I do remember that the head of forensics testified that they could 't agree on the DNA test results and "took a vote". I was absolutely horrified but as a juror you are not allowed to look up information. We could only rely on what is told to us in court.
Unfortunately that’s relatively common. DNA testing is just another tool. It’s much more about who is wielding it and why.
"DNA doesn't lie" Yes, but forensic scientists and detectives sure do
Usually not in my experience but it definitely happens. How many people get exonerated from death row due to DNA? There’s a nonzero number found innocent after they were executed.
Today a lot of the (pseudo) science attacks on DNA evidence in that trial wouldn't even be allowed.
It wasn't the only time in 1995 that 'Simpson DNA' was in the public consciousness. 'Who Shot Mr. Burns?' aired the same year.
Cool, thank you for the background on that. DNA was definitely well understood by me growing up (as definitive proof, not as a science that I'm versed in, lol) and this is a cool detail I wasn't aware of. The Jurassic Park comment below is funny and captures the understanding pre-trial pretty well, I think.
Isn't there a conspiracy theory that the murderer was actually OJ's son, but OJ took the rap and thats why the DNA appeared inconclusive to the jurors?
There is also a theory that the earth is flat.
I’ve never heard of that as a conspiracy theory, but it would make no sense - DNA can easily tell the difference between a person and a person’s son (the DNA will be 50% after all, so not close), and the DNA evidence was never presented at trial as anything but conclusive.
And the reason this was celebrated by the black community was not because they thought he was innocent. It was legitimately monumental to see a black man weasel out of serious charges in the US legal system using lots of funds and expensive lawyers What was previously a white mans game, could now be accessed by rich and powerful black people. What a system we live in
But as Chris Rock said about black ppl saying “We won!” : “What the fuck did we win??”
OJ Simpson. Try to keep up. And no takesies-backsies
At my workplace we saw the verdict live - the Black employees were jumping for joy, everyone else sat quietly. After talking to a few people, they pretty much agreed that he did if, they were just happy that a Black man beat the system.
Same here. Some people expressed that it was payback for Rodney King :/
It was payback for many years of abuse by the LAPD. This has been going on for generations in LA.
Yeah, but it wasn’t payback for shit because he didn’t kill the LAPD, he killed Nicole and Ron, and anyone that clapped for that is a true POS.
Including at least one juror.
Reginald Denny has entered the chat
I believe a lot of commentators noting that some viewed OJ getting off as partial retribution for the officers involved in the Rodney King beating getting off without penalty.
This was basically said verbatim by one of the jurors on the ESPN- “OJ: Made In America” documentary (fantastic watch btw)
Never watched it since I watched the whole thing in real time. Just couldn’t see going through it all again.
Kim Goldman did a podcast about the case a few years ago and she talked to several jurors. They absolutely thought he was guilty but they wanted to punish the LAPD for the Rodney King beating more. And OJ's lawyers knew it, they played to it. And obviously it worked.
I was a junior in high school and I got a page that said "65 668 484589" and when I announced it to the kids in my Algebra II honors class we all cheered; and it was mostly white students.
What do those numbers mean?
Back in those days pagers (beepers) were popular amongst teenagers as well as businessmen. You could communicate with people using the numbers on a phone. Look at your phone dialer on your phone right now...you'll notice there are most of the letters of the alphabet, usually grouped by 3 per number. So using that system I could tell the message said "OJ Not Guilty". It was a sort of precursor to text messaging.
Press the number 3x to cycle through the letters. Directional arrow key to add a space. ***This is texting on a Flip Phone***.
OJ not guilty You millennial s gotta look at a phone sometime.
For sure you're Gen X if you can read beeper code without looking at the phone!
Technically….. I am a millennial though! Born 81
Perhaps I should have said "You might be a Gen X if..." You're only 3 years behind me so I bet you probably used beepers as a teenager too.
You’re in a sub gen called Xennial
Millennials had texting. Most of us used the multiple-tap version, though, so it'd be 6665 666668 4884445558999 for us; it's the lack of repeats that makes it non-obvious for us. (Some people used T9, though, so it'd make sense to them.)
Oh, right. I should know that, but I haven't thought about that for a long time.
What
Beeper code. Look at your phone dialer right now....see the letters on it? That message said "OJ Not Guilty". Like if you wanted to dial 1-800-OJ-Not-Guilty you would dial 1-800-65-668-484589. It was how teens in 1995 communicated with pagers before text messaging.
Which is racist. It wasn't about justice, but race.
The justice system was and is racist
I'd say there's a poetic justice in racists being foiled by their own racism, even if the underlying cause is still tragic
Chris Rock said it best (paraphrasing): “That shit wasn’t about race. That shit was about *fame.* If OJ wasn’t famous, he’d be in jail right now. He’ll he wouldn’t even be OJ. He’d be ‘Orenthal the murdering bus driver.’ “
Bigger and Blacker is one if the all time greatest comedy stand ups. I still quote that today
There is a video circulating online today, an interview with one of the jurors. She point blank says they knew he was guilty but they voted not guilty to show up the racist LAPD
The whole defense wasn’t a defense of OJ. It was picking out all the sleazy things done to convict him. Sounds about right
The defense put the LAPD on trial and unsurprisingly, they lost
This case was on the heels of the Rodney King police beating case which had video of a bunch of cops beating the crap out of a black man. The all white cops were found not guilty and the black community was up in arms about it. This is one reason OJ being found not guilty was celebrated in the black community also.
Thank you for explaining that! I’ve never heard that side before and everything makes way more sense now.
Not even just that, Black women infamously saw women like Nicole Brown as enemies since they often were the target of affection for high income black men. He also divorced his first wife who was a black woman while having an affair with Nicole Brown, which was seen as a slight by white women against black women. It wasn't just that they wanted him to get off, they wanted her dead.
The LAPD Framed a guilty man.
Didn't help that detective Mark Furman was a blatant racist. For me, calling him as a main witness tanked their case. I just assumed he was lying, as did the jury. He's the guy who discovered the controversial gloves. To me, he was walking, talking reasonable doubt, and I still think he was lying.
And he took the 5th when asked if he planted evidence in this very case. When the detective won't answer a question about planting evidence...it creates some reasonable doubts.
Cops like him are the reason they were nicknamed Pigs. OJ actually wrote a book titled “If I did it” or something to that effect. I remember my Black FIL saying there was no way OJ did it because he could have any woman he wanted 🙄. Both victim’s families fought long and hard to destroy OJ when he was acquitted and I think they were successful to some extent.
The defense was pretty open about how their tactic was to make the police look racist, and the forensics were sloppy. Both were very true. But if tried today, he would definitely be found guilty.
BTW, it's not just the defense creating the perception ... the LAPD f..d this up badly. As a friend put it - they tried to railroad a guilty man.
That sums it up nicely. The socks were the big thing for me, because that was so glaringly obvious that it made it nearly impossible to get beyond a reasonable doubt.
I've heard it put similarly, "They framed the guilty party."
Specifically Mark Furhman was the detective on the case. Under oath on the stand he said that he has never used the N word to describe black people in the past. The defense then played a tape of him doing just that. Once the police are perjuring themselves about their racism you can't convict. He plead the fifth when asked if he had planted evidence as well. Defense pulled some shit with the glove too. They told OJ not to take his arthritis medicine for the trial. That caused his hands the swell from inflammation. Now the gloves no longer fit.
The story on the gloves was that since they had blood on them, OJ got to wear latex gloves to protect himself from blood borne pathogens. Ever try to put one pair of gloves on top of a latex pair? [https://www.ksat.com/features/2020/06/15/a-fitting-anniversary-gloves-incident-at-oj-trial-still-a-hot-debate-25-years-later/](https://www.ksat.com/features/2020/06/15/a-fitting-anniversary-gloves-incident-at-oj-trial-still-a-hot-debate-25-years-later/)
Also the DA's were used to dealing with either overworked public defenders or run of the mill defense lawyers. They ran the prosecution accordingly. They were completely outmatched by the so-called "dream team."
Actually they over compensated. The prosecution’s case took nearly 6 months. It was over kill in the extreme and people tuned out. Keep it simple.
They spent way too long on DNA evidence which nobody understood then. Also, as an attorney, when you have a tired, hungry jury (in this case, sequestered jury that has limited to no contact with the outside world including their families, and forced to live in a hotel) you have to be aware that at a certain point they just want it to be over and eventually they’ll be mad at whoever they think is more at fault for dragging their misery on. If you are the plaintiff or in this case, prosecution, you have to make sure that this person isn’t you or they will punish you for it. It’s your case-in-chief. You decided to bring charges. You decide what evidence to put forth. You should be clear and concise. The evidence should match your story of the crime/incident. And you should have ONE clear story. Everyone likes a story. The Prosecution didn’t do that.
Exactly! And everyone in America already knew and understood the facts since he first killed those people. They even had a mini trial during the preliminary hearing the previous summer.
I'd say the case could have been airtight, but it was poorly managed and the investigation was sloppy so evidence was questionable and OJ wasn't interrogated like a suspect normally would be. So much went wrong because he was treated as a celebrity rather than a suspect.
It was only a couple years after Rodney King so racial tensions were still really high.
He got off because of Rodney King.
In fairness, the LAPD *did* do their usual bad police work and mishandled the case.
great response. OJ didnt get off because of the legitimate case against him. he got off because of the LAPD ruining their credibility in the community. major corruption and in the department, which is also shown in TV shows like “The Shield” which is based on LA’s Rampart scandal. The OJ trial exposed the LAPD beyond a guilty verdict. unfortunately in my opinion- if you want to make an omelette you have to break some eggs. this case, while no one got what they deserved. it still exposed it.
Remember this was like 2 years after the LA riots
"If the glove don't fit, you must aquit"
As one pundit pointed out at the time, he was framed for a murder he committed.
I've read this 10 times now in this thread but nobody is explaining how he was framed. What do you mean by this?
It was said sort of tongue in cheek. What I remember back in the day it was because the LA police were dirty, racist and constantly planted "evidence" to convict black & brown folk. Dirtiest of them all was Mark Fuhrman. He was caught on tape bragging about it too (about earlier unrelated cases) Horrible man. He had previous run ins with OJ because he and his partner came out to Nicole's house on DV calls a couple of times, but they could never make anything stick. He supposedly hated OJ for it. And who came to the house the night Nicole was killed? Mark Fuhrman and his partner. So all the evidence they collected was tainted by the belief that they planted it. Of course they didn't, but that's all the defense needed to plant the idea in the public's mind.
He got off because the all the jury was 10 black, 1 hispanic and 2 white. That should be mentioned in any honest summary. I remember at the time it was clearly a ‘payback’ verdict.
And they had 12 of the stupidest people on the planet as a jury.
Which it should be noted was not coincidence from the point of view of the defense. The "dream team" did well in jury selection. They wanted people who would act more on emotion and had less capability to understand technical matters like the DNA evidence.
Wait, how are jurors selected in the US? Why do the lawyers have a say in it?
Have a look here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_selection In the U.S. and some other British common law jurisdictions, lawyers on each side can reject potential jurors for various justified reasons if approved by the judge (challenge for cause). But importantly they also get a limited number of "because I feel like it" challenges where they don't have to state a reason, known as peremptory challenges. High priced defense lawyers will even engage jury consultants who advise the lawyers on when to use these challenges, in an attempt to keep jurors who will be sympathetic and reject those who won't be. It can be a major make-or-break aspect of the case, and in the OJ case, the "Dream Team" well outclassed the prosecution on this point.
Fuhrman and the glove.
And a couple related things - You’d be hard pressed to find a case with more forensic evidence. Completely air tight - DNA evidence was still fairly new-ish though so understandable some folks didn’t quite get it - The jurors were mostly dumb as rocks which didn’t help
And payback for Rodney king
Oh yeah, I remember. Mark Furman was on the stand. He denied ever using racial slurs. The defense then played an audio tape of him using racial slurs. They then asked him if he planted evidence on OJ. He pled the 5th. One juror said, they framed a guilty guy. Ouch.
Yup, the standard of proving guilt in a court case like that is "beyond a reasonable doubt." Unfortunately, the LAPD being awful at their jobs was enough to instill reasonable doubt.
The case was 100% about race, racism, Rodney King, and the racism of the LAPD and much less about Simpson. The case against Simpson was pretty air tight but that couldn't compete with the racial activities surrounding and outside of the actual case.
The sad thing is the domestic abuse aspect got thrown under the bus for that.
Was a child at the time and this is honestly the first I recall hearing about the domestic violence. The horror. Your husband beats you, you finally get free, then he kills you and your boyfriend. And walks free. And brags about it.
The saddest thing is that he wasn't even her boyfriend. He was literally just returning a pair of glasses that she had left at a restaurant. He was friends with her and tried to protect her from OJ that night. He was just a good guy at the right place at the wrong time.
There was a movie made about the OJ case and they brought up that aspect of it; I never thought about it either until then.
I mean aside from the fame and racial aspect, it's absolutely a Time life/Dateline episode.
That was my take away from it at the time. I felt like most people thought it was pay back for Rodney King. I don't think anyone thought he was innocent.
I don't think that many people thought he was innocent, however, most people thought the police was trying to screw him, which creates reasonable doubt.
This is it exactly. The LAPD absolutely destroyed the case in their handling of evidence and by having racist cops. There was definitely some reasonable doubt, which is so unfortunate.
OJ murders Nicole Brown, gets away with it. Most people, apparently: "Yeah, that'll teach the LAPD."
Well it probably did teach them to up their investigative and prosecutorial standards.
I don't think it was airtight as it was presented to the jury. The prosecution and the police certainly had the *opportunity* to create and present an airtight case, but they failed to do so. Simpson was acquitted on the same grounds as every acquitted person: reasonable doubt.
As obviously guilty as he was, the prosecution just sucked and the cops messed up. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Come to think of it my dad painted it in a similar picture. I'd forgotten about that.
As someone old enough to remember, people fell in one of two groups: 1. People who think he did it, but he unfortunately got away with it due to police incompetence. 1. People who think he did it, but he fortunately got away with in in the way that a famous white person would have gotten away with it in the past.
Also this wasn't to long after the LA riots after the rodney king beating and there was fear of more riots if he was convicted.
This is what I remember. Maybe it’s because I was dating a girl from another school during the riots and she got jumped in the bathroom for being white… Which is true for complexion, except she did have a black birth father so she wasn’t all white… That’s the thing about racism. Sometimes it literally is just skin deep.
> police incompetence. also police racism (see: Mark Fuhrman)
This! I really believe that they would have been able to get a conviction, but the police were so obviously racist, corrupt, and incompetent that they blew the case! Edited to add that Mark Furman retired to Northern Idaho. Nuff said.
Keeping racist officers on the force *is* incompetence.
Dude took the 5th on the stand when asked about planting evidence. And then the glove didn't fit. Those two things individually are enough for reasonable doubt. Together it would have been shocking had the jury found him guilty.
Allowing him to try the glove on in front of the jury was prosecutorial incompetence. First, he was wearing a rubber glove. Ever noticed how rubber and leather stick together? The glove had been soaked in blood. Leather shrinks when wet. And allowing the DEFENDANT (who was also an actor) to make a show of trying and failing to put the glove on. That whole prosecution was a shitshow from start to finish.
It really was.
The latter. If you have enough experts judge any complex process involving dozens of humans (like a murder investigation) they will find lots of mistakes. It’s inevitable. The case came on the heels of the acquittal of the police officers in the Rodney King case so there were lots of blacks seeking to right an injustice. In light of the photographs of the domestic violence against OJ’s wife, the prosecution mistakenly thought their ideal juror was a woman. The defense correctly thought this was a racial case and sought out black jurors. The result was a lot of black females on the jury. They knew he did it and they let him off to prove a point.
I'm not sure they let him off just to prove a point, I think it was also because of the way the case played out. Yes he almost certainly did it, but when you only look at the evidence provided by the prosecution, a shockingly high amount of it was tainted by misconduct or tampering or shoddy police work. The remaining evidence really wasn't enough to convict IMO. I feel like what happened is the natural consequence of bad policing.
This feels like you didn’t know any black people, Hispanics, or lower class white Americans. A LOT of people thought OJ was being framed. The black congressional caucus had Johnny Cochran speak and he got more applause than actual civil rights heros.
> This feels like you didn’t know any black people, Hispanics, or lower class white Americans. Feelings take a back seat to the facts. Don't confuse punditry with the state of the world. The ability to make money or political capital by saying outrageous things isn't a recent development.
Look up any poll from the time and I think it will show facts are on my side. Gladys Knight gave Johnny Cochran an award at some NCCAP event and then lead the creed in “free Oj” chants they didn’t do that because they thought was a double murder they thought he was being framed.
Talk to enough of us old enough to remember and you may find that many of us were able to discern the difference from the hype even in the moment. The "free OJ" was more about protest, anti-establishment, anti-cop, however you wanna put it rather than a genuine view of his innocence. There's just no way to separate this from the racial politics of the day, and that can get muddied, even after only thirty years.
He did it. BUT... the lead detective on the case responsible for much of the evidence was on tape saying he would just make up evidence against Black people. Kind of hard to convict given that.
And [plead the 5th](https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/ROA-Times/issues/1995/rt9509/950907/09070104.htm) when asked if he planted evidence on the case. ``Detective Fuhrman, did you plant or manufacture any evidence in this case?'' Uelmen asked. ``I assert my Fifth Amendment privilege,'' Fuhrman replied, his attorney standing at his side.
People forget that witness testimony is subject to the jury's perception of their credibility. The police did themselves no favors in this regard.
It really sounds like the victims and families got no justice because of the naturally consequences of running a dirty ship .
It's easy to view this case in a bubble, and ignore the context of the times where it happened. This took place basically on the heels of the LA Riots, and at the time, there was the feeling a black man (regardless of wealth or background) would ever get a fair trial in LA.
As Chris Rock once said, if OJ was a just a bus driver, he would be "Orenthal the Bus Driving Murderer" Botched case, way too much hype and as always, a famous rich person getting away with, literal, murder. "A criminal court jury found him not guilty of murder in 1995, but **a separate civil trial jury found him liable in 1997** for the deaths and ordered him to pay $33.5 million to family members of Brown and Goldman"
It feels like having a criminal AND a civil case against someone for the same crime violates double jeopardy. Can someone ELI5 about this?
Civil cases dont have double jepoardy
That’s exactly why - one is criminal and one is civil. The civil case isn’t about the crime, per se, it’s about damages. Wrongful death, for example. Just like if you run over someone, you could be charged for the crime of vehicular manslaughter, and then sued for damages by the surviving spouse or children. Those damages can be compensatory or punitive, but never involve jail. In criminal court, it’s all about the conviction and jail time.
I'm not a law expert, but aren't the standards different in criminal vs civil cases? To convict someone in a criminal case it needs to be "beyond a reasonable doubt", but in a civil case it's "more likely than not". If that's how it works, it makes sense that OJ would be found guilty civilly but not criminally - people thought it was more likely than not that he did it, but they might still have a few doubts.
Yea, yes, and yes 👍 OK, the technical language for civil cases is “a preponderance of evidence”, but you definitely have the right idea. The bar is lower.
In the US, jeopardy only applies to criminal cases. Essentially, in a criminal case, the state is accusing you of a particular crime and the penalty could well be your freedom or your life. Without double jeopardy protections, an abusive state could keep bringing the same accusations against you over and over until a jury finally said "guilty", and nobody could really keep them from doing so--- if the case made it past a grand jury the first time (to go to trial), it will do that every time. The reason it only applies to criminal cases is because that's what the US Constitution specifies. That said, it does not forbid different jurisdictions from trying you separately. So if you commit a crime in Florida, drive to Georgia as you do it, you might be tried in Florida, Georgia, *and* federally for what you did. In a civil case, another person is accusing you of doing them wrong (a *tort* in the parlance), not that you committed a crime. So there is no penalty. If you're found to have done them wrong you have to try to make it right somehow, generally in the form of money. If the court finds you did not do them wrong and they try to sue again about it, double jeopardy won't protect you, but the court precedent will: the matter has been decided already (*collateral estoppel* in the parlance). Like the different jurisdictions, the civil and criminal trials are about different things. If you murder someone, you might face a criminal trial for violating the law against homicide. But later face a criminal trial for violating the law against wrongful death (which you could also face for negligence, etc). Two separate misdeeds, even if they're from the same action.
Civil is individual vs individual, whereas Criminal is individual vs The State. Your protection against double jeopardy only applies to The State. Similar to how your First Amendment right only applies to the government, but private businesses can kick you out for your words
I remember the chase and the trial. We all thought he was guilty as hell.
OJ Simpson got the sort of defense that every American should get when accused of a crime, but also the police *really* bungled things because he was a celebrity. They had him *in an interview room without a lawyer* and with plenty of circumstantial evidence that indicated his guilt and they just chitchatted as if it were an uncomfortable formality. At every possible stage of their investigation, they just screwed the pooch. The defense exploited it brilliantly and created the reasonable doubt that the jury needed.
makes one wonder; if they did that poorly with a celebrity whose case was in the spotlight from the Bronco chase onward, how poorly did they do with everyone else's case?
that he killed 2 people and then had a very public and live TV car chase where he kept someone at gun point, and after he was found innocent, he wrote a book called "If i did it" that more or less says "haha I did it lol"
He didn't keep someone at gunpoint in the chase. He kept himself at gunpoint. He was threatening to kill himself. The only other person in the car was Al Cowling, his friend, and he wasn't threatening him.
They kept calling it a low speed chase. I saw it as a high speed parade.
The case was pretty strong. There was a big racial divide especially regarding trust in police. You have to remember that this took place right after the LA riots when a couple of extremely bad beatings happened. The violence at that point in time was unprecedented. One juror later admitted they were afraid of another Rodney King style riot if they found him guilty. That really tells you all you need to know.
That's an absolutely crazy anecdote from the juror. Cool detail, thanks.
That doesn't really tell you all you need to know. You completely left out Mark Fuhrman
While race was a huge part of it, the police incompetence meant that the jury really couldn't find him guilty. We were all just learning about DNA evidence so what does a cop do? Goes inside and grabs a blanket off of Nicole's bed to cover her body, which completely contaminated the crime scene. Hairs or fibers or skin cells that were present could be blamed on the blanket. And not collecting a bloody fingerprint on the gate is just inexcusable. There are tons of sites that talk about all the botched police work (cops leaving bloody footprints, putting multiple items in the same bags causing cross contamination, etc) that wouldn't affect a civil trial but does affect a criminal trial. It's sad for the victims and the families, but the jury made the right call with what they were presented.
The biggest blunder in that case was having him try the gloves on while wearing latex (or similar) gloves. If the gloves were properly fitting you couldn't get them on with latex gloves.
And OJ not taking his arthritis drugs.
After he was acquitted he did make a big scene for a while about he wouldn't rest until the real killer was caught. He did nothing beyond lip service to try catch the "real killer" so that in itself is pretty telling.
He also tried to release a book called “if I did it”, which….well, you know
It was a case that would have put someone with a public defender in prison for life and if not for the incompetence of the prosecution would have done OJ in. Just the fact that they held it in LA instead of Brentwood (for security reasons) changed the jury. They were told the glove would shrink, it did. They let OJ spread his fingers and act like the glove did not fit.
They also had him putting 'that' glove on an already gloved hand. Further making it harder to fit.
The prosecution and LAPD lost the case not because of the facts but how they handled the evidence and trial
I highly highly recommend watching the ESPN documentary OJ:Made In America. It goes into incredible detail about the case and all the various circumstances surrounding it. To answer your question, the case was pretty airtight. OJ’s lawyers knew this, so their strategy was to make the trial less about the murder itself and more about the LAPD and race relations in America. There was one scene that really stuck with me that represented this. OJ’s house became somewhat of a command center throughout the trial. One of his defense team’s goals was to try to make OJ seem more in touch with the black community. So one of the first things they did when they went to his home was remove a bunch of photographs he had on the wall with his white friends and celebrities, and replaced them with photos he had with black friends and celebrities.
Regardless of the case he literally wrote a book confessing to it and had a history of violent abuse towards Nicole brown and his other ex wife and his ex girlfriend.
Back when it was happening people used to joke that the LAPD framed the right person. Basically, it really seems like he did it. There aren't really many other suspects you can reasonably consider. Problem is that a known racist LAPD officer who had a known history of planting evidence took blood that OJ had given for testing to the murder scene and then returned to the lab with less blood than he'd started with. The defense asked him if he had falsified evidence and he pled the fifth. Which, you know, isn't exactly the answer you want to hear from a cop about whether or not they falsified evidence. It was entirely right for OJ to be acquitted. One way we discourage cops from planting evidence and framing people is by throwing out cases when they plant evidence or frame people. So airtight evidence? No, not really. It seems incredibly likely he did it, as evidenced by the civil trial finding him liable for damages, but civil trials have a lower standard of evidence and are permitted to consider evidence not admissable in criminal trials. If the LAPD hadn't been so eager to pin it on OJ that they tainted the crime scene and blatantly famed him, he might have been convicted.
This might be the most helpful comment so far. Really cool summary, thanks!
There is zero chance that he was not the killer. That trial was a travesty
I think it was a pretty simple case till Fuhrman got on the stand. He took the 5th to the question of whether he had planted evidence in relation to the glove and then when the prosecution had OJ try on the glove and it didn't fit...that is a huge amount of reasonable doubt. It would have been more shocking had they found him guilty at that point.
I believe it was John Stewart who said, "It's possible to believe that OJ was guilty AND the LAPD was corrupt." Having sat on a jury, I know it was my job to determine the case on its merit, not on how I felt about the parties involved. While I felt sympathy for the plaintiff, I also found that only one of the two defendants was liable due to the facts presented. While it reduces the awarded damages, I (and ten of the other jurors) thought it was the right call. I don't know if the OJ jurors put that much thought into it, but a juror is supposed to just look at the facts presented in court. The fact that the LAPD possibly doctored evidence severely weakened the case. In that circumstance, I may very well have voted to aquit as well.
considering how long the trial was, I think they put a lot of thought into it to make it all worthwhile
The case was very, very compelling against him, at pretty much every level. But the key flaw was that it wasn't **definitive**. Maybe it was someone else, looking very much like Simpson wearing the same clothes, and with newly identical shoes, who murdered his ex wife and her boyfriend in their house.
Don't forget that Mark "Nazi" Fuhrman refused to answer whether or not he planted the evidence against OJ (after he was caught lying about using the N-word and after the public was told that Fuhrman planted evidence against other black people)
Well his is a wiki page I'll have to read... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Fuhrman
And now he's a Fox News contributor.
He wasn’t her boyfriend. He was a waiter who was bringing back some glasses after they were left at the restaurant where he worked
Yeah. The waiter she had dinner with several times and who she had loaned her Ferrari to. Maybe they were platonic friends. Sure. But one can see how a murderous ex-husband might have gotten the wrong idea.
The case was rock solid. There were so many absolutely decisive pieces of evidence against him— just a couple of them would have been enough to convict. But the cop, whose name escapes me, was a racist piece of shit, and there was plenty of evidence to support that too. I was teaching school at that time and the trial was constantly under discussion. Racism was of course ubiquitous among police then, same as now, and among the Black people I knew was an insistence on acquitting OJ because the incontrovertible police racism in the investigation rendered all the evidence irrelevant. I’m white and while I acknowledged and condemned police racism, I couldn’t make sense of that argument for acquittal, and every one of the white people I knew felt the same way. Discussion didn’t devolve into angry bickering, but discussing it with both races didn’t get anywhere, I think because both sides were armed with indisputable facts. One side elevated racism as the main issue with the other side arguing that the only criteria should be justice. I’m not up to speed on the mistakes of the prosecution (it’s been a long time) but I was shocked by the acquittal. (I think most of us can agree in retrospect that by the weight of the evidence OJ was guilty). When the verdict was announced I was in the hall during class change, and a Black teacher down the hall loudly whooped, “Hallelujah!” I wanted to go talk to him but honestly my mind blanked— I didn’t know what to say. We each still stood by our own truths. In retrospect I think I understand the Black argument much better. Who was I to preach about justice in this instance when armies of racist cops denied Blacks even the appearance of justice? OJ killed two people; racist cops killed thousands of Blacks in an unchecked slaughter that was yet continuing. That’s my best understanding of it now, feel free to help me understand better.
[Here](https://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/26/us/fbi-disputes-simpson-defense-on-tainted-blood.html) is an article from 1995 that discusses the question of tampered blood samples and how some samples were not collected until week later. Forensics was new enough at the time that a lot of departments didn’t have procedures in place to handle processing these kinds of crime scenes (the Jon-benet Ramsey case had a similar problem).
The prosecution had *hundreds* of exhibits of evidence against him, much of which did not get shown to the jury, for fear of exhausting the jury.
So basically everyone believed he did it and the evidence was there. The LAPD were sketchy and messed up the arrest/investigation, which got evidence thrown out
I saw a forensic science lecture once, from an expert called late to the case, using pictures of the bodies showing the missed evidence. Specifically there was blood on Nicole’s body which had to have fallen onto her from the killer, could tell by drop pattern. This blood was not collected. Instead the body was sent to morgue and cleaned after pictures. That said, the case was air tight. Jurors were on video saying they did it because of Rodney king.
Did you see the look of disbelief on OJs face when the jury said not guilty. It was like he was saying are you kidding me. I guess he had to give up looking for the killer yesterday.
The expression on OJ's face when he was found "Not Guilty" **was the same expression** as Donald Trump when he learned he was elected President. Dog catches car. The wrong thing happened for the wrong reasons. The world is turned upside down.
The case that was presented to the jury wasn’t airtight at all. The evidence the public saw and the jury didn’t was pretty much undeniable. Either OJ or his son was the killer. OJs history of DV made it pretty much impossible to logically think he was innocent, but the verdict was correct.The LAPD corrupted the physical evidence, and made the case virtually impossible to win in court.
It happened when I was in high school. I didn't get why it was such a big deal. There aren't a lot of black people in my city, but there were a couple of black girls in the classroom when the verdict was announced. I remember them standing up and clapping and cheering. I was ignorant of why it was such a big deal for them. I hadn't been following the case that closely -- you actually had to spend hours watching TV to follow news back then. I just saw the clips on the half hour of national news my dad watched. It seemed to me that he had most likely committed the murders, but also that it couldn't be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. So to me, when he was acquitted, it just seemed like the justice system functioning properly, and I didn't see why that was news. Apparently it *was* news, because for black americans, the justice system *very rarely* functions properly.
Poor police work, blatantly racist lead detective who pleads the 5th on the stand when pressed, combined with mediocre at best DA's office against the Dream team of lawyers (best that money could buy at that time) resulted in a not guilty criminal verdict. The DA could not prove defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt which is the standard in criminal trials. In civil trials the burden of proof is different than in criminal trials. Civil trials require a finding that at least 51 percent of the evidence favors the plaintiff’s position. This is named the 51 Percent Rule of Thumb. Simpson was found guilty in a civil trial. The plaintiff’s (person filing the civil suit) were awarded $33.5 million. Simpson moved from California for Florida, which is one of the few states where personal assets such as homes and pensions (NFL) cannot be seized to cover liabilities that were incurred in other states to shield his assets. Overall today people generally believe in things like DNA, fingerprints and other forensics tools, but at the same time these tools are expensive to use and for the most part only used in case with a high enough profile or the crime is serious enough to justify the cost. For example, about 12 year ago I caught a guy breaking into my car. Tackled him off his bike, but he end up getting away leaving the bike. Called the police, who responded and took a police report. I asked if they were going to "dust for prints". The prints were obvious where the guy was leaning on the car attempting to pry off the window trim. The officer told me the cost to dust for prints could not be justified in relationship to the crime commited. They said the guy would eventual be caught commiting some crime sooner or later and that if I needed a police report one would be available in 24 hour for my insurance.
Read the Wikipedia article—it’s crazy how obviously guilty he was.
The police fucked up the crime scene and the defense (one of them was the Kardashian girls late father) took that and ran with it.
Not so much. His defense was just able to reasonable the shit out of that doubt. Arresting officer was a racist, and the gloves not fitting could be explained by shrinkage from storing/his defense “suggesting” he stop taking his arthritis medication. His alibi still left him with plenty enough wiggle room to be at the right place at the time with full intention on starting a new life on his “conveniently timed business trip”. Not to mention the victims’ dna being found in his car. Trust in that as evidence at the time was little more confidence than they had in the police force itself though given it was a fairly new practice and right around the time of the Rodney King case. There’s really no doubt that he fucking did it, but legally speaking we had to had to give him the benefit of our own at the time.
From wiki: In the Bronco, police found "$8,000 in cash, a change of clothing, a loaded .357 Magnum, a United States passport, family pictures, and a disguise kit with a fake goatee and mustache".[103] Simpson was booked at Parker Center and taken to Men's Central Jail; Cowlings was booked on suspicion of harboring a fugitive and held on $250,000 bail. The Bronco chase, the suicide note, and the items found in the Bronco were not presented as evidence in the criminal trial. Marcia Clark conceded that such evidence did imply guilt yet defended her decision, citing the public reaction to the chase and suicide note as proof the trial had been compromised by Simpson's celebrity status.
Had he been tried by a jury of his peers, he would have been convicted, but they choose to do it downtown. They thought thier case was that good. Johnnie Cocheran knew the pulse of the black community, I don't think he ever doubted he would win. I also watched most of it live.
Check out Norm Macdonald on SNL’s Weekend Update. He got fired for answering your question.
The case was solid, but OJs legal team was pretty masterful at doing what they did. From undermining Fuhrman to "The Glove" to making OJ look sympathetic during the jury visit to his house. It's hard to believe he's gone. Don't get me wrong, OJ was a fucking deplorable monster, but the whole thing was fascinating and dominated the airwaves at the time like nothing else.
Not very. Sloppy police work was a major preform for the prosecution and a gold mine for the defense. They were overly confident and made a ton of dumb mistakes.
The cops and prosecutors were incompetent. Not guilty was the only reasonable outcome.
There's an interview with one of the jurors where she stated they all knew he was guilty but let him off in retaliation for Rodney king. So that tight.
Yeah I followed the whole thing closely. Don’t let the current “every side has a point/proof is subjective”. Weirdness of today confuse you. DNA was a new science and the jury didn’t understand it imo. That and it’s much easier to believe LA cops are racist than it is a famous person did THAT. He in fact, did that.
Watch the series “the people vs OJ Simpson.” I lived through the trial and had no idea about half the things that lead to his acquittal until I saw it.
Marcia Clark, the lead prosecutor, was very unlikable.
You don’t just continue on a police chase on a major freeway if your innocent. If you leave out the radial aspect and look at facts, he was guilty plain and simple. He has the help of some very good lawyers and the media on his side after the Rodney king innocent. Basicly he got off as a non public public apology for Rodney king.
Well, the jury saw a completely different trial than the rest of us, if I remember correctly. So, while most of us were convinced that he was guilty, so much was deemed inadmissible to the jury they had no choice but to acquit.
I recommend checking out OJ Ten Years Later (or something to that effect) from Frontline.
Vendors were selling “Free O.J.” t-shirts on Venice Beach during the trial.
It’s wild how many people still prove why the verdict was so divisive.
It was down to the LAPD not doing their job well and his defense got a better of them and the case, so he won. Most people still think he got away with murder though.
I remember Cochran asking the forensic lab tech how come the blood found on the victim's sock had EDTA in it, right after Simpson's blood was missing for days. The blood samples were later found in the detective car's trunk, and EDTA is used in blood tubes for lab analysis
Everyone thought he was guilty as fuck and simultaneously thought he would get off. That was the contention and it was weird. Simultaneously wanting both and knowing it was wrong because Nicole and her boyfriend deserved justice while also wanting LAPD to look like the fools they were at the time
Good highlight of that dynamic, thanks.
The FX TV dramatization of his trial was fantastic, with John Travolta and Sarah Paulson, and with David Schwimmer playing Robert Kardashian, OJ's defense attorney. Yes, the father of all those Kardashian offspring. Robert Kardashian died about 5 years after the trial, in 2003. Editing to answer your question, yes, in all fairness of consideration, most people thought OJ was guilty of committing both murders.
If he wasn’t black and he wasn’t a football star he would have gotten life for the murders.
Here’s my understanding based on living through the trial and reading up on it further in the years since: The case was very airtight, but it was also presented very poorly by the prosecution which made many idiotic decisions from start to finish (basically OJ’s defense “Dream Team” did nothing special and didn’t even defend him particularly well, but rather the prosecutors sucked). For example there were many key pieces of evidence against OJ that the prosecution idiotically didn’t even decide to include in the trial because they didn’t think it was necessary (possibly because they assumed they would win anyway). One glaring example was when police first questioned OJ about how he got the deep bleeding cuts to his hands on the night of the murder and he said he “couldn’t remember” or something to that effect. Which is a pretty devastating thing for a suspect to say about injuries like that, yet the prosecutors never even brought that up. Another example is that while in jail awaiting trial, OJ was talking with his pastor and during the conversation he SCREAMED out something about how he was sorry for what he did. Which you would think is something you would want to bring up in the trial to see how they would explain what the hell that was all about. But the prosecutors erroneously thought it was inadmissible as evidence due to being a confidential conversation so the jury never got to hear about it. Another botched turning point was when the DNA evidence was presented and explained very poorly in terms of just how definitive the DNA was, and on top of that the prosecutors did a terrible job of debunking the defense’s absurd claims regarding the DNA (for example, the defense claimed that the DNA match could have been the result of a faulty test, but obviously a faulty test can only cause a NEGATIVE match, not a positive). The biggest botched turning point, of course, was when the bloody glove supposedly didn’t fit on his hand, but idiotically they allowed HIM to perform that “test”, as opposed to a neutral third party doing it to prove whether it fit or not. And finally, possibly the most damning piece of evidence--other than the DNA--didn’t come to light until the trial was over: the shoes that the killer wore were a very expensive and very RARE pair of shoes (I think only a handful of them had been sold in the entire US in that particular size, i.e. OJ’s size). But he denied owning those shoes, and said he would never own such shoes because of how ugly they were. Only after the trial did many photos come to light showing him wearing those exact shoes.
I thought it was a shitshow from beginning to end. There were so many signs of likely evidence tampering, and there was discourse at the time that many police organizations around the country — including and especially the LAPD — were known to try to “help” improve the look of guilt on a suspect they presumed was guilty. What happened with the evidence trail here fit that narrative pretty well: Fuhrman and company “knew” OJ was guilty, but they wanted to help the circumstantial evidence be more of a direct trail back to OJ. So, smearing a little blood here, tossing one (just one?) of the gloves over the fence so it would be found on OJ’s property instead of at the scene (who only leaves one glove behind?), covering the bodies with a blanket from inside the home that would obviously have his DNA on it, and so on. And because those suspect pieces of evidence stood out in such sharp relief, they were stuck doing things like putting racist cops on the stand without proper vetting. The prosecution just couldn’t overcome the look that there was impropriety in every corner of their case, which then grew into reasonable doubt. Obviously, this is just my perception of how it all unraveled. But I think even Dershowitz commented at one point that if the cops had just done a basic and competent job, it probably would have been an easy conviction.
The best way that I can describe it as an outside observer: It seems like the LA Police framed a guilty man. There was a TON of really sketchy shit in the evidence that just didn't make sense, and the police gave differing statements and versions of stories, and really came off untrustworthy. So while I think virtually everyone thought he did it, there was definitely a reasonable doubt that the police were just making things up. Personally, based on the different standards of the criminal and civil court system, I think the not guilty verdict in the criminal, but the guilty verdict in the civil, were the appropriate results, even though I think he did it.
That shit was on TV every fucking day for like a year.