O.J. Simpson Murder Case
Famous US Cases
The O. J. Simpson murder case (officially the People of the State of California vs. Orenthal James Simpson) was a criminal trial held at the Superior Court in Los Angeles County, California, that spanned from the jury being sworn in on November 2, 1994 to opening statements on January 24, 1995, to a verdict on October 3, 1995.] The former professional football star and actor O. J. Simpson was tried on two counts of murder after the deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and a waiter, Ronald Lyle Goldman, in June 1994. The case has been described as the most publicized criminal trial in American history. Simpson was acquitted after a trial that lasted more than eight months.
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Although the 1995 criminal trial of
O.
J. Simpson for the murders of Nicole
Brown Simpson and Ronald
Goldman has been called "a great trash novel come to life," no one
can deny the pull it had on the American public. If the early
reports
of the murder of the wife of the
ex-football-star-turned-sports-announcer
hadn't caught people's full attention, Simpson's surreal Bronco ride on
the day of his arrest certainly did--ninety-five million television
viewers
witnessed the slow police chase live. The 133 days of televised
courtroom
testimony turned countless viewers into Simpson trial junkies.
Even
foreign leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and Boris Yeltsin eagerly
gossiped
about the trial. When Yeltsin stepped off his plane to meet
President
Clinton, the first question he asked was, "Do you think O. J. did
it?"
When, at 10 a.m. PST on October 3, Judge Ito's clerk read the jury's
verdict
of "Not Guilty," 91% of all persons viewing television were glued to
the
unfolding scene in the Los Angeles courtroom.
Exactly what happened sometime
after ten
o'clock on the Sunday night
of June 12, 1994 is still disputed, but most likely a single male came
through the back entrance of Nicole Brown Simpson's condominium
on Bundy Drive in the prestigious Brentwood area of Los Angeles. In a small, nearly enclosed area near the
front
gate, the man brutally slashed Nicole, almost severing her neck from
her
body. Then he struggled with and repeatedly--about thirty
times--stabbed
Ronald Goldman. Ronald Goldman was a twenty-five-year-old
acquaintance
of Nicole's, who had come to her condominium to return a pair of
sunglasses
that her mother had left earlier that evening at the Mezzaluna
restaurant.
(A person would later post a sign outside the Mezzaluna reading, "Don't
forget your sunglasses.")
Just after midnight, Nicole's
howling
Akita, with blood on its belly
and legs, attracted the attention of a neighbor, who then discovered
the
two bodies. The ill-fated investigation of the Brown-Simpson and
Goldman murders began.
Nicole Brown Simpson's ex-husband,
former
football great and media personality
O. J. Simpson, meanwhile, was aboard American Airlines flight #668 to
Chicago.
Simpson had taken off from Los Angeles at 11:45 after receiving a ride
to the airport in a limousine driven by Allan
Park, an employee of the Town and Country Limousine Company.
The limousine had left the Simpson estate on Rockingham Avenueabout half an hour late, after
Park
called to report at 10:25 that no one answered his ring at the
door.
Park observed a man he assumed to be Simpson enter his house at 10:56.
Police called Simpson early Monday
morning at the O'Hare Plaza Hotel
in Chicago, where Simpson had planned to attend a convention of the
Hertz
rental car company. When informed that his wife had been killed,
Simpson did not ask how, when, or by whom. He did--according to
his
later testimony--smash a glass in grief, badly cutting his left
hand.
Prosecutors would have a different explanation for the injury.
Simpson
boarded the next flight to Los Angeles, arriving home about noon to
find
a full-scale police investigation underway. Police tape stretched
across his front gate and cardboard tags marked bloodstains on the
driveway.
Los Angeles police questioned
Simpson for
about a half hour that day.
They asked Simpson a number of questions about the deep cut on his
right
hand. Simpson initially claimed not to know the source of the
cut.
Later in the interview he suggested the hand was cut when he reached
into
his Bronco on the night of the murders, then reopened the cut when he
broke
a glass in his Chicago hotel room after being informed of Nicole's
murder.
From the standpoint of the police, the interview was remarkably
inept.
Officers did not ask obvious follow-up questions and whole areas of
potentially
fruitful inquiry were ignored. So unhelpful was this interview
that
neither side chose to introduce it into evidence at the trial.
Eventually, however, police
accumulated
enough evidence indicating Simpson's
guilt in the murders that they sought and obtained a warrant for his
arrest.
Under an agreement worked out with Simpson's attorney, Robert
Shapiro, Simpson was to turn himself in at police headquarters by
10:00
on the morning of June 17, the day following Nicole's funeral.
When
Simpson didn't show by the agreed upon time, police told Shapiro that
they
would be driving to his Brentwood home to pick him up. Sometime
after
one o'clock, four officers knocked on Simpson's front door. Soon
they and Shapiro discovered that Simpson had disappeared--off, it
turned
out, on perhaps the most famous ride in American history since Paul
Revere
warned Bostonians of the arrival of the British. Simpson left behind a
letter. Addressed to "To whom it may concern," it had all the
markings of a suicide letter. It ended: "Don't feel sorry for
me.
I've had a great life, great friends. Please think of the real O.
J. and not this lost person. Thanks for making my life
special.
I hope I helped yours. Peace and love, O. J." Around 6:20 a
motorist
in Orange County saw Simpson riding in the white Bronco of his friend,
A. C. Cowlings, and notified police. Soon a dozen police cars,
news
helicopters, and some curious members of the public were following in
pursuit
of the Bronco. The slow-motion chase would finally end with
Simpson's
arrest in his own driveway. After making the arrest, police
discovered
$8,750 in cash, a false beard and mustache, a loaded gun, and a
passport
in Cowlings' vehicle.
For the prosecution, the biggest
mistake
of the trial may well have
been to file the Simpson case in the downtown district rather than--as
is normal procedure--in the district in which the crime occurred, in
this
case Santa Monica. Implausibly, the prosecution explained its
decision
as an effort to reduce the commuting time of prosecutors and better
accommodate
the expected media crush. More likely, the decision was a
political
one, based on concerns that a conviction by what would be a largely
white
jury in Santa Monica might spark racial protests--or even riots similar
to those that occurred following the trial of four LAPD officers
accused
of beating Rodney King. The prosecutors probably believed that
their
case against Simpson was so strong that even the more racially diverse
jury likely in downtown Los Angeles would have no choice but to
convict.
Filing downtown would be only the
first
of many decisions that may have
cost prosecutors the case. The decision of prosecutors not to
seek
the death penalty cost prosecutors the advantage of not having a
"death-qualified"
jury, which numerous studies suggest, would be more likely to
convict.
(A death-qualified jury is one from which all jurors whose opposition
to
capital punishment might prevent them from imposing a death sentence
have
been excluded. Typically, excluded jurors are disproportionately
black and female.) Prosecutors also would be criticized for
ignoring
the advice of their own jury consultants, who urged them to use their
peremptory
challenges--to the extent that they might do so constitutionally--to
exclude
black and female potential jurors. ( Once
the trial began, there would be other blunders. To name just a
few:
the decision to have Simpson try the glove used in the murder, the
decision
to call Mark Fuhrman to the stand, and the strategy of presenting so
much
evidence from so many witnesses over so many weeks that the case lost
much
of its force.)
On July 22, 1994, Simpson answered
the
question " How do you plead?"
at his arraignment with "Absolutely one hundred percent not guilty,
Your
Honor." Months of discovery, jury selection, and hearings on
issues
such as whether to permit cameras in the courtroom and the
admissibility
of DNA test results followed.
The opening day of trial--Tuesday,
January 24, 1995-- finally came.
Under drizzling skies, reporters and camera person converged for what
writer
Dominick Dunne called "the Super Bowl of murder trials." Judge
Lance Ito in his opening remarks told those assembled in the
courtroom
that he expected to see "some fabulous lawyering skills."
Christopher
Darden led off the prosecution's opening statement by portraying
Simpson
as an abusive husband and a jealous lover of Nicole Brown Simpson.
Darden
told jurors, "If he couldn't have her, he didn't want anybody else to
have
her." Marcia Clark followed with a statement laying out the facts
proving Simpson's guilt that the prosecution would establish during the
trial. The next day Johnnie
Cochran gave an opening statement for the defense in which he
presented
a confused timeline of events and suggested that Simpson was so
crippled
by arthritis that he couldn't have possibly pulled off a double
murder.
Cochran told the jury that the defense would prove that the evidence
against
Simpson was "contaminated, compromised, and ultimately corrupted."
Over the next 99 days of trial, the
prosecution put forward 72 witnesses.
The first set of witnesses suggested that Simpson had the motive and
opportunity
to kill. The second set of witnesses suggested that Simpson had
in
fact used his opportunity to kill his ex-wife and Ronald Goldman.
The first group of witnesses
included
relatives and friends of Nicole,
friends of O. J., and a 9-1-1 dispatcher, all produced to demonstrate
Simpson's
motive and his history of domestic abuse. Nicole's sister, Denise
Brown, described seeing O. J. at the dance recital of his daughter,
Sydney,
on the day of the murder. She testified that Simpson looked
"scary,"
like a "madman." She told of a dinner attended by her, Nicole,
and
other friends in which O. J. grabbed Nicole's crotch and said, "This is
where babies come from, and this belongs to me." Tearfully, she
told
of an incident in which an enraged Simpson picked up her sister and
threw
her against a wall. Ron
Shipp, a friend of O.J.'s, testified that Simpson told him, "I've
had
some dreams of killing Nicole." A 9-1-1 dispatcher took the stand
so that the prosecution might play for the jury a terrifying 9-1-1
call from Nicole describing an ongoing assault by Simpson.
The prosecution next produced a set
of
witnesses--including limousine
driver Allan Park, Kato
Kaelin, and officers of the LAPD--to establish a timeline of events
that left Simpson with ample opportunity to commit murder. Limo
driver
Allan Park proved to be one of the prosecution's most effective
witnesses.
Park testified that he arrived at the Simpson home on Rockingham at
10:25
to pick O. J. up for his scheduled flight to Chicago. He said he
rang the doorbell repeatedly, but received no answer. Shortly
before
11:00, according to Park, a shadowy figure--black, tall, about 200
pounds,
and wearing dark clothes-- walked up the driveway and entered the
house.
A few minutes later, Simpson emerged, telling Park he had
overslept.
Park testified that as he entered the limo, he carried a small black
bag
(which the prosecution hoped the jury would conclude contained the
murder
weapon). Park testified that Simpson would not let him touch the
bag. The bag has never been seen since. A skycap at the Los
Angeles
Airport testified that he saw Simpson near a rubbish bin.
Prosecutor Marcia Clark points to exhibit during trial
Simpson house guest Kato Kaelin,
one of
the trials more colorful characters,
testified that he and Simpson returned from a run for Big Macs and
french
fries at 9:36. After that, Kaelin couldn't account for Simpson's
whereabouts. He told of hearing thumps on his wall just before
11:00,
about the same time that Park witnessed the shadowy figure enter the
house.
The prosecution also produced telephone records that show Simpson used
his automobile cell phone to call his girlfriend, Paula Barbieri, at
10:03.
The defense did not attempt to explain why Simpson would make a call on
his car cell phone at a time he claimed to be in his backyard
practicing
his golf stroke.
Finally, the prosecution began to
put
forward witnesses directly tying
Simpson to the two murders. The evidence was technical and
circumstantial,
relating mostly of the results of blood, hair, fiber, and footprint
analysis
from the Bundy crime scene and Simpson's Rockingham home. The
most
compelling testimony--if one assumed the accuracy of the
testing--concerned
two RFLP tests. The first indicated that blood found at the crime
scene could have come from only 1 out of 170 million sources of
blood--and
that O. J. Simpson fit the profile. The second came from blood
found
on two black socks at the foot of O. J.'s bedroom. According to
prosecution
testimony, only 1 out of 6.8 billion sources of blood matched the
sample.
Nicole Brown Simpson might well be the only person on earth whose blood
matched the blood found on the socks. On cross-examination of the
prosecution's DNA experts, the defense had little choice but to begin
to
develop the theory that either the blood samples were contaminated or
they
were planted by corrupt police officers [LINK
TO SUMMARY OF KEY PROSECUTION EVIDENCE].
The LAPD officer who found a bloody
glove
outside Kato Kaelin's bedroom
turned out to be a godsend for the defense's corrupt-police
theory.
The officer, Mark
Fuhrman, testified for the prosecution on March 9 and 10. In
his book about the trial, Robert Shapiro wrote: "A suddenly charming Marcia
Clark treated him like he was a poster boy for apple pie and
American
values." Three days later, F.
Lee Bailey began a bullying cross-examination of Fuhrman in which
he
asked the detective, whether, in the past ten years, he had ever used
"the n
word." Fuhrman replied that he absolutely never had done
so.
It was a lie.
A second prosecution disaster
followed. Prosecutor Christopher
Darden, confident that the bloody gloves belonged to Simpson,
decided
to make a dramatic courtroom demonstration. He would ask Simpson,
in full view of the jury, to try on the gloves worn by Nicole's
killer.
Judge Ito asked a bailiff to escort Simpson to a position near the jury
box. Darden instructed Simpson, "Pull them on, pull them
on."
Simpson seemed to struggle with the gloves, then said, "They don't
fit.
See? They don't fit." Later, it would turn out that there
were
good reasons why they didn't fit--the gloves may have shrunk because of
the blood, photos would turn up showing Simpson wearing ill-fitting
gloves--but
the damage had been done. Later, Cochran would offer the
memorable
refrain, "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."
A field trip that included the
judge, the
jury, lawyers for both sides,
the defendant, and a bevy of trailing media types illustrates how the
defense
early on in the trial saw the race issue as playing to its advantage on
a jury that included nine African- Americans. The trip to the
Bundy
Avenue crime scene and Simpson's Rockingham home was intended to
provide
the jury with a better basis for understanding testimony concerning
locations
of bodies, gloves, and socks. The defense saw it as an
opportunity
to put a favorable spin on Simpson's life. Before the jury
arrived
at Simpson's home, down came a picture of Paula Barbieri, O. J.'s
girlfriend.
In its place, up went a Norman Rockwell print from Johnnie Cochran's
office
that depicted a black girl being escorted to school by federal
marshals.
Pictures of Simpson standing with white golfing buddies were replaced
with
pictures of his mother and other black people. A Bible was
installed
conspicuously on an end table in the living room. The tour seemed
to go wonderfully well for the defense. As the group toured his
home,
Simpson pointed to a backyard play area and said, "That's where I
practiced
my golf swing."
The Dream Team Takes Center Stage
The strategy of Simpson's defense
team,
called the "Dream Team" in the
media, was to undermine the prosecution's evidence concerning motive,
suggest
Simpson was physically incapable of committing the crime, raise doubts
about the prosecution's timeline, and finally to suggest that the key
physical
evidence against Simpson was either contaminated or planted, or both.
On July 10, 1995, Simpson's
daughter
Arnelle took the stand as the first
defense witness. She would be followed by Simpson's sister and
his
mother, Eunice Simpson. By the time Simpson's mother finished her
testimony, it was apparent to some courtroom observers that jury
members
were showing more empathy for the Simpson family than for the families
of the victims.
As successful as it turned out to
be, the
defense effort was not without
its own miscalculations. After Simpson's doctor, Robert Huizenga,
testified that O. J.--despite looking like Tarzan--was in about as good
of a condition as "Tarzan's grandfather" and suffered from arthritis
and
other problems, the prosecution produced a video taken shortly before
the
murders. The video showed Simpson leading demanding physical
exercises.
Especially embarrassing for the defense was a quip on the tape from
Simpson
as he performed an exercise that consisted in part of punching his arms
back and forth. Simpson suggested people might try this workout
"with
the wife."
The most talked-about aspect of the
defense case undoubtedly concerned
Mark Fuhrman, the LAPD officer who had found the bloody glove and who,
as a prosecution witness, denied using the word "nigger." It
turned
out that Fuhrman had used "the n word"--many times--and it was
on
tape. Laura Hart McKinny, an aspiring screenwriter from North
Carolina,
had hired Fuhrman to consult with her on police issues for a script she
was writing. McKinny taped her interviews with Fuhrman, who not
only
used the offensive racial slur, but disclosed that he had sometimes
planted
evidence to help secure convictions. Needless to say, the defense
wanted McKinny on the stand, and they wanted the jury to hear selected
portions of her tapes. The prosecution strenuously objected,
arguing
that McKinny's testimony was irrelevant absent some plausible evidence
suggesting that evidence was planted in the Simpson case. The
prejudicial
value of the testimony, the prosecution insisted, would exceed its
probative
value. Judge Ito, somewhat reluctantly, allowed the defense
evidence.
Ito's decision opened the door for the defense to offer its rather
fantastic
theory that Fuhrman took a glove from the Bundy crime scene, rubbed it
in Nicole's blood, then took it to Rockingham to drop outside Kaelin's
bedroom so as to frame Simpson.
It may not, however, have been
Fuhrman,
but rather a soft-spoken Chinese-American
forensic expert named Henry Lee that won Simpson his acquittal.
Lee
had solid credentials, smiled at the jury, and provided what seemed to
be a plausible justification for questioning the prosecution's key
physical
evidence. Lee raised doubts with blood splatter demonstrations, his
suggestion
that shoe print evidence suggested more than one assailant, and his
simple
conclusion about the prosecution's DNA tests: "Something's
wrong."
He might have, as Christopher Darden speculated after the trial, been
the person who gave the jury "permission" to do what they wanted to do
anyway: acquit Simpson. Jury forewoman, Amanda Cooley, called Lee
"a very impressive gentleman." Another juror agreed, describing
Lee
as "the most credible witness," a person who "had a lot of impact on a
lot of people."
An angry Judge Lance Ito
The Jury Acquits
By the time closing arguments began
in
the Simpson case, the trial had
already broken the record set by the Charles Manson case as the longest
jury trial in California history. The jury had been sequestered
for
the better part of a year and was showing signs of strain and
exhaustion.
Judge Ito was under attack for the allowing the trial to drag on and
his
seeming inability to keep lawyers under control.
Marcia Clark's summation for the
prosecution sought, among other things,
to do damage control on the Fuhrman issue. Clark denounced
Fuhrman
as a racist, the "worst type" of cop, and as someone we didn't want "on
this planet." But, she told the jury, that doesn't mean there was
a frame-up. She took the jury again through the prosecution's
"mountain
of evidence" as puzzle pieces on a video screen accumulated to reveal
the
face of O. J. Simpson. Christopher Darden followed Clark, telling
the jury that Simpson could be "a great football player" and "a
murderer"
as well.
Johnnie Cochran's summation for the
defense added controversy to an
already very controversial trial. His co-counsel, Robert Shapiro,
was later to condemn his closing for "not only playing the race card,
but
playing it from the bottom of the deck." Cochran compared the
prosecution
case to Hitler's campaign against the Jews:
There was another
man not
too long ago in this world who
had those same views, who wanted to burn people, who had racist views,
and ultimately had power over people in his country. People
didn't
care. People said he's crazy. He's just a half-baked
painter.
And they didn't do anything about it. This man, this scourge,
became
one of the worst people in the world, Adolf Hitler, because people
didn't
care, didn't stop him. He had the power over his racism and his
anti-religionism.
Nobody wanted to stop him....And so Fuhrman. Fuhrman wants to
take
all black people now and burn them or bomb them. That's genocidal
racism. Is that ethnic purity? We're paying this man's
salary
to espouse these views...
The jury spent only three hours
deliberating the case that had produced
150 witnesses over 133 days and had cost $15 million to try. As
America
watched at 10 a.m. PST on October 3, 1995, Ito's clerk, Deidre
Robertson,
announced the jury's verdict: "We the jury in the above entitled action
find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty of the crime of
murder." Simpson sighed in relief, Cochran pumped his fist and
slapped
Simpson on the back. The Dream Team gathered in a victory
huddle.
From the audience came the searing moans of Kim Goldman, Ron's sister,
and the cry of his mother Patti Goldman, "Oh my God! Oh my God!"
Simpson announced after the verdict
that
he would devote the rest of
his life to tracking down the real killer of his ex-wife, but he would
soon be preoccupied with a civil trial. The trial, held in Santa
Monica, would take just three months and would produce a very different
result. Simpson was forced to testify, clumsily trying to explain
the unexplainable. Photos showing Simpson wearing the size 12
Bruno
Magli shoes that he claimed not to own turned up first in one
newspaper,
then in others. The judge in the civil trial, Hiroshi Fujisaki,
proved
he was no Lance Ito, and prevented the Simpson defense from introducing
fanciful theories of a top-to-bottom conspiracy. After seventeen
hours of deliberation, the jury concluded--using the preponderance of
the
evidence test applicable in civil cases--that O. J. Simpson had
wrongfully
caused the death of Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson. The
jury ordered Simpson to pay compensatory damages of $8.5 million and
punitive
damages of $25 million. Under California law, however, Simpson
can
continue to survive on the $25,000-a-month income from a judgment-proof
pension fund.
The Simpson trial demonstrated
the
polarization of racial attitudes
on issues such as law enforcement that still exists in our country. It may be for that,
more than anything, that the trial will be remembered. But it had
other effects. It created a greater awareness of domestic
violence
issues, provided lessons in how not to run a criminal trial, slowed the
trend toward the use of cameras in courtrooms, and created a new type
of
"immersion" journalism that still flourishes today.
Sources: wikipedia.org
Douglas O. Linder- http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/simpson/simpson.htm
Sources: wikipedia.org
Douglas O. Linder- http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/simpson/simpson.htm