Members of the Investigation Team.

When investigating a crime, there are many different individuals involved within the investigation of the crime. Each individual has their own specific job role in order to contribute to the investigation. The job roles involved help to ensure that the evidence from a crime scene remains secure and has not been contaminated or disturbed. It is also important for the evidence to safely travel through a secure audit trail, ensuring that the evidence is again not contaminated or disturbed in anyway. Every whereabouts of the evidence is to be recorded to ensure that it has not been handled by somebody who is not authorised to do so.

The investigation of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman involved several members. These members included:

·         The police.

·         Detectives.

·         Several scenes of crime officers.

·         Members who specialised in certain areas, such as a pathologist.

·         A first attending officer.

·         And finally, forensic scientists.

On my webpage, there are tabs which can be easily accessed, that go into more detail about the actual roles and job descriptions of the investigation team within the O.J. Simpson case. The next part of this page will involve a description of how any evidence was handled, how team members contribute to the security of the audit trail of evidence, and how the roles and responsibilities contribute to the investigation process. I will also be going into great detail about this mistakes that were made throughout the investigation, which may have hindered the case in some way.

Three main pieces of evidence found at the scene of the crime were:

·         The bodies of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman.

·         A glove that was said to belong to O.J. Simpson.

·         Blood of the victims and possibly the suspect.

To find further details, click on each of the bullet points above.

Within any criminal investigation, it is important that all of the members of the investigation team work together. This is so that the investigation is carried out effectively and efficiently. When the members of an investigation team work together it is much more likely that a secure audit trail will be recognised and maintained, this is because all of the members will be cooperating in eventually ensuring that evidence is kept secure and that the crime is solved and the correct individual convicted.

Although many mistakes were made during this investigation, the team worked together in order to ensure that the investigation was carried out. An example of this is when the detectives and the SOCOs worked together as a team. Due to the SOCOs arriving several hours after the detectives, the detectives communicated with the SOCOs and told them what had happened and the whereabouts of any significant evidence. Not only did the detectives communicate about the evidence, they also kept a close watch on the SOCOs as they collected the evidence. If the previous mistakes had not occurred, then the investigation may have been effective enough in order to ensure that a conviction was secured. This would have happened as the SOCOs collected relevant evidence which pointed to Simpson being the perpetrator of the crime. However, mistakes were made by almost all of the investigation team, which lead to the acquittal of O.J. Simpson.

Within the investigation in to the murder of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman it was clear that not only did careless forensic evidence collection occur but the members involved within the investigation were not communicating enough with each other in order for the collection and preservation of evidence to be secure. Because of this, the audit trail did not work how it should, which had a great impact on the case as a whole. Police officers, such as Detective Fuhrman, Detective Riske and Detective Vannetter did not communicate with each other when handing over the crime scene. This led to vital evidence such as the bloody fingerprint, not being collected and therefore this evidence could not benefit the investigation to lead to the suspect.

 As lead detectives at the murder scene, and as the authority figure should have, they should have ensured all practices and procedures were carried out by Scene of Crime Officers when collecting evidence to ensure that the reliability and condition of the evidence was not impaired. As the authority figures they too should have followed the correct procedures when entering a crime scene and worn PPE to make sure that no evidence from the crime scene was cross-contaminated. Because of their mistakes, this made a detrimental error on the case. As the officers did not, this shows little expertise and also decreased the value of evidence at the scene. Police officers at the crime scene should have guaranteed that the evidence collected from the crime scene would be transported to the forensic laboratories in the same condition. As no care was taken for evidence at the crime scene this was shown with the large amount of evidence that analysts were unable to determine as potential evidence to aid the investigation. Due to a lot of the evidence not being valid enough, they were unable to be used in court, which helped with the jury’s decision to free Simpson.

Also lead detectives at the scene should have been keeping track on how untidy the SOCO’s were working. As the authority figure at the crime scene they should have kept track of the audit trail, confirming that all evidence collected was entered in to the chain of custody. Although SOCO’s will have been trained to collect evidence following precise procedures, Scene of Crime Officers should ensure that these procedures are carried out when collecting evidence from the scene. SOCO’s should always following the correct procedures for bagging and tagging the evidence when it is being collected to ensure that the other members of the investigation team who receive the evidence next all have the relevant information about the evidence. This also keeps the evidence secure and preserved as it travels along the chain of custody.

In this case, these practises and procedures were not carried out sufficiently because of the lack of communication at the scene of the crime, resulting in a lot of the evidence not being useful for reliable in court. Because these pieces of evidence were not put through the audit trail correctly, they were not entered into the chain of custody, meaning that the evidence was not valid as nobody could be sure whether it was tampered with or damaged.

The role of the forensic scientists was to analyse the evidence collected, and to do it effectively. The scientists were able to analyse the blood samples found at the scene in order to determine where the blood came from, and more importantly… who it belonged to. All of the evidence from the lab was analysed by forensic scientists, and the results were passed back to police officers or the lead investigators who were involved in the case. In the Simpson case, the evidence that was sent back to the lab had not been recorded in the audit trail, meaning no matter what the result is, it could not be used. The forensic scientists forwarded this information on to the police officers to inform them that the evidence is not valid enough to be used in court, and they were unable to make out if the evidence had been contaminated or tampered. This happened due to the sloppy work of the SOCO’s who did not correctly label the evidence, and did not put it through the audit trail.