Concluding the case.

This case was all about the deaths of Nicole Simpson Brown and Ronald Goldman. After going through a trial that had lasted for 8 long months, the outcome of it was that O.J. Simpson was found to be not guilty of the murders, and was acquitted by the jury. Although there was a huge amount of evidence that pointed towards Simpson being guilty, an acquittal was expected due to the amount of evidence that was available to show that Simpson may actually have been “framed” due to evidence being contaminated and destroyed. Different pieces of evidence such as the glove, the blood droplets and Fuhrman’s tape recordings all made a huge impact on the case, which evidently affected the decision of the jury. However, if all of these mistakes had not been made then due to the amount of evidence against him, O.J. Simpson would have been found guilty of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ronald Goldman.

The conclusion that was reached by the investigation team is said to have been justified due to a large amount of evidence that was not only found at the scene of where the murders took place, but also at Simpson’s home. This evidence then indicated to him being guilty of the murders, which then allowed the investigation team to build up a case against him, which they were then able to present in court, in front of a jury in order to try and prove that Simpson was guilty, and to attempt to prosecute Simpson, punishing him and making him serve time in prison for the crimes.

When the findings of the evidence were presented in court, a number of mistakes were made. These mistakes include the trying on of the glove that was worn by the suspect at the time of the murders. During this, Simpson attempted to put on a glove, which was actually a very crucial piece of evidence from the scene. When trying on the glove, O.J could not get his hand inside of it due to the glove being “too small”. Not only did he claim that the glove was too small, but he was also wearing a latex glove underneath. Although this was to prevent any cross-contamination of evidence, it also meant there was added friction which was stopping Simpson from being able to put the glove on properly, hence why the glove was “too small”.

Another mistake made was using the tapes recorded of Detective Mark Fuhrman. These tapes were played in court by the defence team in order to show the members of public and members of the court- importantly the jury- that Mark Fuhrman was not a trustworthy man. This was done due to Fuhrman swearing that he never used racial slur throughout his time with LAPD, yet the tapes showed otherwise. The sections of the tapes that were played in court had shown that Fuhrman had used certain racist words approximately 40 times, which proved he had lied about this in court, and had lied whilst under oath. This resulted in the jury's thoughts on Detective Mark Fuhrman to become negative. Because of this, the reliability of other pieces of evidence throughout the case that had been collected by Fuhrman were then affected, which meant that the jury would be more likely to support O.J. Due to the comments made by Fuhrman against Simpson, the trial became one of the most historical events in American history, due to its racism and its unreliability.

The procedures that should have been followed during this case were not followed appropriately as they should have been. If the investigators had all worn PPE when working at the scene, the chances of evidence contamination would have been diminished by a large amount. The collection of evidence without the use of gloves when touching particular things caused a very high amount of evidence to be contaminated whilst at the scene, which then resulted in large amounts of extremely vital evidence being destroyed, and not being suitable to be used in court. If the investigating officers and others who attended the scene had have worn the correct PPE, contamination would not have occurred, which means that there would have been much more valid and reliable evidence that could have been used in court, which also may have resulted in O.J. being found guilty.

As mentioned several times throughout this blog, there were a number of pieces of evidence that had been found and collected from several scenes, and then presented in court that had all pointed to Simpson being guilty of the murders. The most important piece of evidence which allowed the investigation team to say Simpson was guilty was the great amount of blood samples that had been collected from: the murder scene, Simpson’s house and inside his Ford Bronco. Other pieces of evidence that helped lead the team to this conclusion included witness testimonies, especially the one that was given by Simpson’s limousine driver, Alan Park.

The evidence collected from the crime scene pointed to OJ Simpson being the main suspect for the murders. Even though the evidence pointed to Simpson being guilty, the jury still came to the conclusion that OJ Simpson was not guilty of the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. This is because even though the evidence showed it was Simpson, the way it was handled by the investigation team and all other circumstances of the case, such as racism issues and unreliability of the witness statements made it impossible for the court to find Simpson guilty.

The evidence that connected Simpson to the murders involved: blood that matched Simpson's; hair strands that matched Simpsons; blood that matched the victims on Simpson's belongings; shoeprints that matched Simpson's shoes, which were specially made due to the size of Simpson’s feet; the glove that matched the size of the gloves that Simpson wore. There was also evidence that showed a motive for Simpson to commit this act against Nicole. This evidence was the numerous amounts of 911 phone calls that had been made by Nicole, suggesting that Simpson was abusive to her several times in the past. There were also records of police going out to Nicole’s home after receiving the phone calls. All of this evidence is what led the investigation to think Simpson was accountable for the murders.

As stated previously, due to the way the investigation was carried out, the jury found OJ Simpson not guilty for the murders. A lot of the evidence from the case was seen as invalid due to it being contaminated during collection and preservation, especially whilst going through each stage of the audit trail. Another reason for this is because it was thought that a member of the team had planted blood which belonged to Simpson at the crime scene, because a blood sample was taken from him by the same investigator before it was put into his pocket and taken to the scene.

The "Glove Catastrophe" also had a huge influence on the decision of OJ's innocence. The glove evidence was thought to be of main significance to the case as it is what tied Simpson directly to the crime scene. However, there was thought to be issues because when the glove was presented in court, Simpson was made to try it on and it did not fit on his hand. This meant that the glove evidence was acquitted, which introduced the quote from Johnnie Cochran "if it doesn't fit, you must acquit", and it proved Simpson's innocence to the jury even more. There was wide speculation about this after it was known that Simpson wore a latex glove whilst trying on the glove used in evidence. Due to him wearing the latex glove, the friction of the materials together meant that Simpson’s hand wasn’t able to fully fit inside the glove.  It was also thought that the evidence had been tampered with because the analysis showed that the glove was the same size and same type that Simpson had previously worn, but during when it was tried on it did not fit.

Other issues in this case involve the race problems that happened during the trial. In this trail, the defence team were slammed by newspapers who said that they were “playing the race card”, meaning that they tried to use racism as a way of overlooking all the evidence that was pointing to Simpson being guilty. The jury was made up of almost all black people meaning it was likely that OJ's race would greatly influence their decision. It was also found that Detective Fuhrman was a racist as there was taped evidence of him using racist slurs against black people, after he lied under oath, stating that he had never used racial language in all his years of working for the police. These tapes were used in court during the trial, meaning the jury were aware of this. This was a huge problem and may have been one of the main reasons the jury decided Simpson was not guilty- meaning there was a possibility that the jury acquitted Simpson because they felt sorry for him and did not think the racism should be tolerated (which they are right to think this, but the evidence was overlooked due to the racism). It was thought that because Fuhrman was a racist, he suspected OJ Simpson for committing the murders because he is of a different race.

In conclusion, the evidence that had been collected at the crime scene of the murders, and at  Simpson's home all pointed to OJ Simpson being responsible for the murders. However, due to the amount of mistakes that were made with the evidence and the problems that occurred with the investigation team in the court room, Simpson was found not guilty.

In my own opinion, I believe that Simpson was the correct suspect throughout this trial, and that he did commit the crimes against his ex-wife and her friend. Due to the law in America, known as "Double Jeopardy", that stated that once tried, the suspect in question cannot be tried again, the families were unable to have a retrial, meaning that no justice had be done for Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman. I do not believe that it was right that the evidence was overlooked due to the obvious signs of racism, and I also do not believe that racism should have played such a big part in the trial. I think that the jury should have looked into more detail about the evidence, and they should have spent longer than 4 hours when coming up with their decision on whether they found Simpson to be guilty or not guilty. Even though the evidence all had their own mistakes made to them, they all still pointed to Simpson being responsible for the crimes.