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 million sources of blood--and that O. Simpson fit the profile.
The second came from blood found on two black socks at the foot of O. According to prosecution testimony, only 1 out of 6. Nicole Brown Simpson might well be the only person on earth whose blood matched the blood found on the socks. 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 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. 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. 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. They don't fit. 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. 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 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, , 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. 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. 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.
Jury forewoman, Amanda Cooley, called Lee "a very impressive gentleman. An angry Judge Lance Ito. 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.
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. 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.
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. Lee Bailey leaked stories to the press about Shapiro's ego, one of many indications there was infighting within the group.
However, the blow that removed Shapiro from his lead status was when Cochran won Simpson's favor by visiting him in jail — something Shapiro preferred not to do with any of his clients.
Once Cochran took over as lead counsel, Shapiro was vocally critical and attempted to distance himself from his team's chosen strategies. He would later tell Barbara Walters that "not only did we play the race card, we dealt it from the bottom of the deck. Having moved up the legal ranks in L. In , he was considered one of the best trial lawyers in the nation, and it was Simpson himself who asked Shapiro to bring Cochran onto the team.
Once Cochran gained control of Simpson's defense strategy and pushed Shapiro to the side, he wooed the courtroom and media. Using his "Black preacher" style approach, he controversially used the race card to curry sympathy for Simpson. After prosecutor Darden made the mistake of demanding Simpson try on the ill-fitted bloody gloves, Cochran uttered the famous phrase: "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.
Before Lance Ito was appointed to the bench in , he was an attorney for the L. A fan of media attention, Ito was arguably too lax about different aspects of the Simpson trial, giving interviews and inviting celebrities and journalists into his chambers.
Judge Ito was further criticized on his decision to allow cameras in the courtroom and letting attorneys stall and have too many sidebars. His willingness to include Detective Mark Fuhrman's old taped interviews, in which he denigrated Black people, was also a huge source of contention for the prosecution. In a strange twist, the tapes also revealed Fuhrman had made disparaging remarks about Ito's wife, Margaret York, who was Fuhrman's department superior at the time.
When those comments were exposed, the prosecution asked for Ito to recuse himself due to his possible bias against Fuhrman, but later the request was withdrawn. Among the most controversial figures of the Simpson trial was L. Although Fuhrman denied ever having racist tendencies or using the n-word, a taped interview he had chosen to do 10 years earlier revealed otherwise. In the recording, he was quoted as saying to incarcerated Black people: "You do what you're told, understand, n—r?
A wave of backlash hit Fuhrman, but he continued denying being a racist and also pushed back against the defense's theory that he planted the bloody glove to frame Simpson. As the prosecution's witness, Dennis Fung — the LAPD criminologist who collected evidence at the murder scene — ended up spending the longest time testifying on the stand.
For nine days, Fung recalled how he collected samples of blood, albeit admittedly overlooking some important areas where blood drops were identified and not always using gloves. The defense ate up Fung's inefficient and careless actions and implicated him as a liar who was part of a larger LAPD conspiracy against Simpson. The Society of Professional Journalists, for its part, abhors the practice of paying sources for information, saying it "threatens to corrupt journalism.
For lawyers, "cash for trash" forces them into the awkward position of convincing a jury that witnesses who have taken money for information are still honest. Perhaps the payment was inconsequential.
Perhaps the witness had already given police the exact same statement and was merely repeating it for the public. But it isn't hard for defense attorneys to launch their attack. During Michael Jackson's child molestation trial -- which presented a similar feast of information for tabloid writers -- a housekeeper who'd spoken to "Hard Copy" for cash was attacked by Jackson's lawyers as a non-credible witness.
At Jackson's trial, his lawyers used the same argument to question the validity of other former employees' statements. In the Simpson case, lead prosecutor Marcia Clark chose to ignore Shively and others who took money from news organizations to the stand -- even though their voices might have bolstered her argument.
Simpson's attorneys took swipes at the duo's integrity anyway. Mitchell Mesko and Dale St. John were not called at all. The former had caddied for Simpson on a golf course hours before the murders but spoke to Fox's "A Current Affair" and the latter saw Simpson show up 15 minutes late for his limo but a New Yorker piece alleged he gave "Hard Copy" a scoop.
Those in favor of paying for information find their argument rests on the firm ground of free speech: People should be able to speak their minds regardless of cash flow. Crushing checkbook journalism, some argue, is a form of censorship if sources would otherwise have simply kept their mouths shut. But others disagree. Calling laws to ban the practice "noble" back in , former USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky argued in a Los Angeles Times op-ed about the case that there is actually little hard evidence that witnesses selling stories "pose a threat to the fair administration of justice.
There's even some evidence that paying for news leads to public awareness of issues that can prompt much-needed policy changes. Since then, the league has been forced to address incidents of domestic violence among its players. In the Simpson trial, however, the exact effect that checkbook journalism had on the case is impossible to quantify.
Eyewitness testimony suggesting Simpson was near the scene of the crime after he'd bought a inch knife and acted oddly on the golf course might have swayed some members of the jury. Or, taken with all the other witness testimony and physical evidence, its effect might have been negligible. Main Menu U.
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