Fears grew that race riots, similar to the riots in 1992, would erupt across Los Angeles and the rest of the country if Simpson were convicted of the murders. As a result, all Los Angeles police officers were put on 12-hour shifts. The police arranged for more than 100 police officers on horseback to surround the Los Angeles County courthouse on the day the verdict was announced, in case of rioting by the crowd. President Bill Clinton was briefed on security measures if rioting were to occur nationwide.
From an original jury pool of 40 percent white, 28 percent black, 17 percent Hispanic, and 15 percent Asian, the final jury for the trial had ten women and two men, of whom nine were black, two white and one Hispanic. The jury was sequestered for 265 days, the most in American history.
Bailey suggested that he then planted the glove in order to frame Simpson, with the motive either being racism or a desire to become the hero in a high-profile case. Scheck also suggested that Fuhrman broke into Simpson's Bronco and used the glove like a paint brush to plant blood onto and inside the Bronco.
The defense team's reasonable doubt theory was summarized as "compromised, contaminated, corrupted" in opening statements. They argued that the DNA evidence against Simpson was "compromised" by the mishandling of criminalists Dennis Fung and Andrea Mazzola during the collection phase of evidence gathering, and that 100% of the "real killer (s)" DNA had vanished from the evidence samples. The evidence was then "contaminated" in the LAPD crime lab by criminalist Collin Yamauchi, and Simpson's DNA from his reference vial was transferred to all but three exhibits. The remaining three exhibits were planted by the police and thus "corrupted" by police fraud. The defense also questioned the timeline, claiming the murders happened around 11:00pm that night.
The two lead prosecutors were Deputy District Attorneys Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden. Clark was designated as the lead prosecutor and Darden became Clark's co-counsel. Prosecutors Hank Goldberg and William Hodgman, who have successfully prosecuted high-profile cases in the past, assisted Clark and Darden. Two prosecutors who were DNA experts, Rockne Harmon and George "Woody" Clarke, were brought in to present the DNA evidence in the case and were assisted by Prosecutor Lisa Kahn.
J. Simpson was tried and acquitted for the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald "Ron" Goldman.
The prosecution denied that the mistakes made by Fung and Mazzola changed the validity of the results. They noted that all of the evidence samples were testable and that most of the DNA testing was done at the two consulting labs, not the LAPD crime lab where contamination supposedly happened. Since all of the samples the consulting labs received were testable, while Scheck and Neufeld's theory predicted that they should have been inconclusive after being "100% degraded", the claim that all the DNA was lost to bacterial degradation was not credible. The prosecution denied that contamination happened in the LAPD crime lab as well because the result would be a mixture of the "real killer (s)" DNA and Simpson's DNA but the results showed that only Simpson's DNA was present. The prosecution also noted the defense declined to challenge any of those results by testing the evidence themselves. Marcia Clark called Scheck and Neufeld's claims a "smoke screen."
The Simpson trial featured a ton of courtroom stunts, like the prosecutor attempting to get Simpson to try on bloody gloves from the murder scene (that one backfired on him) and the defense playing the “race card” by accusing one of the police officers of racism.
Perlman noted that many trial lawyers come into a courtroom paying lip service to the justice system, but then will use every trick to weigh a jury in their favor. Perlman has often knocked a juror off his panel when they seem biased. Not just biased against him, but biased FOR him.
After the Sheppard trials, televisions were basically banned from the courtroom until Judge Ito made his horrible decision. And American justice changed for the worse. A jury consultant who does extensive survey research said that the OJ Simpson trial completely changed how Americans thought about trial lawyers.
One of the worst moves in American judicial history was Judge Lance Ito’s decision to allow the OJ Simpson murder trial in 1995 to be televised. Making a bad idea worse, Ito went on The Tonight Show and other entertainment programs like a small-time comic trying to work his way to Vegas.
When we look back 100 years from now, no one will ever remember Judge Ito or even OJ Simpson for that matter. Ito got to be an instant celebrity, but, as Kennedy noted, there is an important distinction between fame and accomplishment.
Kennedy also said in his inaugural speech, that history should be “the final judge of our deeds.”. When we look back 100 years from now, no one will ever remember Judge Ito or even OJ Simpson for that matter.
The OJ Simpson trial was the precursor of the modern reality television series. Take OJ one step further and 20 years later, we have Jersey Shore and Duck Dynasty. Actually the Simpson trial was more like Ozzy Osbourne’s reality show. One famous person, surrounded by not-so-famous people, who are all thrust into primetime.
O.J. served nine years in prison for unrelated charged and was paroled in 2017. He now lives in Las Vegas. Ford Bronco OJ Simpson. In memoriam Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ron Goldman.
Among those most often mentioned were (1) barring cameras from courtrooms, (2) curbing the use of jury consultants, (3) restricting closing arguments, and (4) blocking or regulating the ability of witnesses and participants from selling their stories or writing books about them.
No matter what we think about the verdict, we live in a post-racial world and in the criminal justice system, race matters. It is about who gets arrested, the degree of the punishment, and whether the defendant has a chance of getting acquitted.
Secondly, there is now a better understanding about how race plays about implicit bias, which is the more difficult to challenge to go after than explicit bias. Some prosecutors, for instance, now think twice about using a witness if they believe the witness harbors racial animosities.
He served a year in prison until the trial was over, then served another 9 years because the criminal justice system got lucky and snagged him on another stupid crime he got himself into. The majority of society, who know Simpson committed double homicide, wanted revenge. They were waiting to get him on whatever stupid thing he did next…and he gave them what they wanted. He was brought up on charges in a petty offense that he wouldn’t have been charged with probably, had he not committed the murders. The jury was eager to convict him, and the judge was thrilled to throw the maximum sentence at him. That was 15 years, but he was paroled this past October after serving 9 years behind bars because the system couldn’t make a good case to continue holding him for a different crime.
The killer, OJ Simpson, didn’t exactly get away with his crimes unscathed. He served a year in prison until the trial was over, then served another 9 years because the criminal justice system got lucky and snagged him on another stupid crime he got himself i
So why isn’t OJ tracking down the real killer, as he said he would? Because OJ believes Jason did it, and he loves his son too much to turn him in. OJ also loved Nicole too much, as he told his Dream Team attorneys not to bring up Nicole’s drug use. That would have helped his defense by showing drug dealers likely killed Nicole. Jason & Rogers may have been dealing drugs to Ron & Nicole. Extending major credit. When they didn’t pay, they both may have killed them, on orders of bigger drug dealers. Furhman himself may have worked with some of these drug dealers, as they often work off some of their charges, helping arrest others. Furhman may have made a deal with some of them, to get leniency in exchange for killing Ron & Nicole.
Jason was on psych meds and on probation for assaulting a former employer, with a kni
Drug dealers are the most common suspects. Nicole and Ron were heavily in debt to drug dealers, and when they couldn’t pay, they killed them both. It was a professional job, cuts to the vocal chords first, so they couldn’t scream or call for help. Then teaser cuts for torture, and finally the fatal cuts deeper. Henry Lee testified he saw cuts from two different knives. More than one person was there, at least two, with each cutting the vocal chords first. Why didn’t they ever yell? Neighbors and passers by were there, and hear nothing, except “Hey hey” then silence.
Read former LAPD Det. William Dear’s book “OJ is Innocent and I Can Prove it”
The truly sad thing though is he did get away with the murder of his wife, the mother of his children Nicole Brown Simpson and an innocent who had only been at the residence to return an item she had left at the restaurant he worked at the previous night.
The Simpson cases illustrate perfectly how the burden of proof in a criminal case differs from the burden of proof in a civil case. Both the criminal and civil juries heard the same evidence. The results were very different.
Many people have wondered why OJ Simpson was found not guilty of murdering his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, then subsequently proven to cause her death and held liable to the families for wrongful death.
Civil Case: 51st Yard Line Achieved. After the criminal case, Nicole Brown Simpson's and Ronald Goldman's parents sued Simpson for wrongful death in civil court. In this case, the plaintiff's attorney was able to prove that Simpson committed both murders beyond a preponderance of the evidence.
Any and all of these theories may or may not be true - and the opposing jury verdicts may be a result of differing burdens of proof. The burden of proof in the criminal case was much higher than the burden of proof in the personal injury wrongful death case, a civil case.