Case Study: O.

J Simpson
(from the book, Bodies of Evidence by Dr. Scott Christianson)

The O.J Simpson case assembled a “dream team” of top lawyers and forensic experts who put the LAPD’s shoddy
crime scene investigation under the microscope to show that much of the crucial scientific evidence had been
contaminated or didn’t add up.
When Nicole brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were found slashed to death at the entrance to the
Simpson’s home at 875 South Bundy Drive Los Angeles on the night of June 12, 1994, suspicion quickly fell on her
estranged husband, O.J Simpson, the famous actor and former football star. He had previously been involved in
domestic violence incidents with her and some of his ex-wife’s relatives immediately told the police that he had
“finally killed her.” Crime scene investigator started
swarming over the site and LAPD detectives also
began looking for O.J. Simpson at his upscale
compound five minutes away on Rockingham
Avenue.
By the time an LAPD detective contacted
O.J. Simpson by telephone to inform him that his
wife had been “killed,” he was in Chicago on a
business engagement and he rushed home. Police
already had found several incriminating clues,
including blood on the door of his parked Ford
Bronco as well as blood drops leading into his
mansion. Detective Mark Fuhrman reported
finding a bloody glove at the crime scene as well as
From left to right: Robert Shapiro (lead defense attorney),
a matching glove on the south service pathway to Johnny Cochran (defense attorney), and OJ Simpson.
O.J.’s home on Rockingham. (Testing would
later show blood that was consistent with O.J., Nicole, and Goldman. The glove also contained African-American
limb hairs and hairs consistent with Goldman and Nicole, as well as blue-black cotton fiber consistent with the
clothes that O.J.’s roommate Kato Kaelin said he saw Simpson wearing on the night if the murders.)
Shortly after O.J.’s return from Chicago, the police noticed his bandaged hand and began questioning
him, photographing the wound, taking samples of his blood and hair, and finally they arrested him for the
murder.
But Simpson was unlike other defendants. He was rich. And he began using some of his resources to hire
the best legal defense team ever assembled in the United States---a group with so many legal stars that the news
media dubbed in the “Dream Team.” The new lead counsel, Robert Shapiro, and his colleagues, Johnnie Cochran, F
Lee Bailey, Alan Dershowitz, and several others, quickly realized the role that forensic evidence would play in the
case, and they in turn brought in several of the nation’s premier forensic expert to assist in the defense. They
included: Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, two New York-based lawyers specializing in DNA; Dr. Michael Baden of
New York, regarded as the top pathologist and medical examiner; renowned criminalist Dr. Henry C. Lee of
Connecticut; Herb McDonald, the world’s leading blood pattern experts; Chuck Morton, a famous trace evidence
expert; crime scene expert Larry Ragle, and several others. Most of the experts retained by the defense were among
the best-known authorities in their fields, and were usually employed by the prosecution; their integrity and
credibility were well established.
As it would turn out, unlike virtually and other high-profile case tried Los Angeles, this high-powered defense
team would have at its disposal almost as many resources as the prosecution, amounting to enough talent to make
the Simpson case one of the greatest American courtroom battles. Ultimately the trial would involve 126 witnesses
and 857 pieces of evidence. It would receive the most intensive coverage of any criminal trial in history, with live
televised broadcasts of the proceedings and endless commentary by scores of talking heads. Networks and
supermarket tabloids paid huge fee in exchange for eyewitness “scoops.”
 Before the Simpson trial, crime scene investigators for the LAPD (and many other major police departments)
were accustomed to handling much of their blood and other biological evidence much more casually, even sloppily.
Cops had not been sufficiently trained to deal with DNA.
But as the Simpson trial made clear, the power of scientific evidence can cut both ways: on the one hand, DNA
can establish guilt or innocence more clearly than anything else; on the other mistakes by the police at anyone link in the
evidentiary chain, either by failing to properly gather or store blood swatches and other evidence, or by bungling its
handling in the laboratory, can destroy even an open-and-shut case. If nothing else,
the jury’s “not-guilty” verdict should have shaken big-city police
departments, especially LA’s, out of their small-time forensics
complacency.
One of the trials most dramatic moments involved the
bloody gloves that detective Fuhrman said he had found. With
help from FBI, the prosecution established that Nicole had
purchased two identical pair of Aris leather gloves, size extra
large, and records showed the gloves were very rare. The
prosecution claimed the gloves had belonged to O.J. and that he
had worn them to commit the murders.
But Christopher Darden, the assistant prosecutor, allowed
Simpson to demonstrate whether the gloves actually fit. Experts
had already claimed that the blood and other material on them
would not have caused them to shrink. But when Simpson
attempted to try them on in full view of the jury, they appeared to OJ Simpson demonstrates that the Aris gloves
be too small for his large hands. And as defense lawyer Johnnie apparently do not fit. One more seed of doubt
Cochran later concluded in his summation: “If the gloves don’t fit, you was planted in the minds of the jury. All the
must acquit.” forensic evidence was steadily undermined.
In theory, the prosecution should have been able to ensure
that comparisons of DNA from blood found at the crime scene, Simpson’s car, his house gate, and a sock found in his
home, all proved that he had committed the murders. But in light of questions raised about the police department’s
sloppy handling of the evidence, and the racial attitudes of some of the officers, jurors were left questioning how the
DNA might have ended up there. In the end, such questions created doubts that resulted in Simpson’s acquittal.

Looking back on what transpired in the O.J. Simpson case, experts identified some of the LAPD’s most glaring
forensics mistakes as follows:
• The defense repeatedly used some of the LAPD’s own crime scene photography, both still pictures and
videography to reveal mistakes in police handling of evidence, as well as to show that some of the alleged
evidence had never been photographed or did not appear at the original crime scene, thus raising questions
about whether it had been planted.
• Crime scene investigators had failed to collect pieces of crucial evidence. For example, police photos of
Nicole Simpson’s corpse revealed blood spatters on her upturned back that analysts later concluded must
have originated from someone else – perhaps her killer. But police investigators failed to take a genetic
sample of the blood before turning the victim over, thereby contaminating any possible samples.
• Renowned criminalist Dr. Henry Lee testified for the defense that he found a new trail of seven blood drops
leading away from the killing scene that hadn’t been visible in the LAPD’s poor-quality pictures given to him
for review. He also criticized the quality of LAPD laboratory microscopes and other equipment.
• The prosecution presented compelling photographic evidence claiming to show O.J. Simpson wearing the
same type of extremely rare, size 12 Bruno Magli shoes, with soles that matched bloody footprints found
leading from the bodies. But this evidence was challenged as a fake. (The case had already been marked by
 a highly publicized doctored image in the form of an altered image of O.J. Simpson that had been published
on the news magazine cover.)
• Police took more than two weeks to remove blood from a fence, a lapse that left many observers wondering
if it had been planted. Scientists pointed out that the long outdoors relay had fatally damaged the evidence.
• Among the other items of useful evidence, the police failed to reserve or record a dish of melting Ben &
Jerry’s ice cream found in Nicole’s home – evidence that could have been extremely helpful in pinpointing
the time of death.
• The collection of evidence at the crime scene was incredibly sloppy. John Gerdes, M.D., A DNA expert and
the clinical director of Immunological Associates of Denver (IAD) who testified for the defense, watched the
police video of the crime scene with the jury and pointed out many problems with evidence collection,
including LAPD Criminalist Andrea Mazzola swabbing up blood drops while leaning a gloved hand on dirty
ground, touching tweezers with the same hand, then using the same tweezers to manipulate a bloody
swatch. She also placed wet swatches in plastic bags where Gerdes said bacteria could grow and “cleaned”
the tweezers by merely wiping them with clear water – a procedure that was not likely to remove the DNA.
• LAPD Criminalist Mazzola testified she took swatches from bloodstains at Simpson’s Rockingham estate,
placed them in paper envelopes, and put them in the crime lab truck. Her testimony confirmed that she had
not put them in proper containers or immediately put them under refrigeration to prevent their degradation
and contamination.
• Other personnel working at the crime scene were shown to have operated without wear the required
gloves, hairnets, booties, and other protective equipment.
• LAPD criminalists were shown to have collected hair, fiber, and other trace evidence in a sloppy way by
putting all such evidence into the same container, thereby rendering it contaminated.
• To facilitate access to the blood-covered crime scene, police used bath towels from the house to mop up
large quantities of blood lying in the entranceway. Some workers had actually dumped some of the towels,
used gloves, and other debris on top of a victim’s body. They had also stepped all over the bloody surface
and tracked blood from place to place.
• One of the worst mistakes was that the victim’s bodies were left lying in the open air for hours, without
being examined by a medical examiner. He
was not even notified until ten hours after
the bodies were found.
• Still-wet blood was belatedly found on
socks of O.J.’s home (but not photographed
close-up there) and when tested the blood
appeared to consist of a mixture of O.J.’s,
Nicole’s, and Goldman’s. But the defense
was able to challenge this evidence by
questioning how it could have remained
wet for such a long time, and the defense’s
forensic toxicologist testified he found the
preservative EDTA (ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid), which prevents blood from coagulating, in the bloody
socks and in a stain on the back gate of Simpson’s ex-wife condominium. The toxicologist concluded there
were only two possible sources for the EDTA – from a blood sample tube or through contamination of the
 bloodstains in the laboratory. Either way, doubts were
raised about the integrity of this blood evidence. (Dr. Robin
Cotton, laboratory director of Cell Mark Diagnostics,
Germantown, MD, had testified that tests showed that
blood on the socks had the same genetic fingerprint as
Nicole’s, characteristics that matched only one in 9.7 billion
Caucasians; it was her blood. But her testimony was
gradually drained of its authority through day after day of
highly technical questioning, not only of the integrity of the
evidence but also the methods and principles of DNA testing
itself).
• Detective Phillip Vannatter left the police station with a vial
of O.J.’s blood in his back pocket, then he drove to the
Bundy house and walked around the crime scene still
holding the blood sample, until he finally handed it off to a
criminalist for testing. This was a serious mistake because
he did not handle the sample properly from a scientific perspective and he also may have compromised its
legal status.
• After the murders, the football star claimed that cuts on his hands had been caused by a broken glass in his
Chicago hotel room, but police failed to preserve and test the glass.
• Police failed to record and account for the precise amount of blood taken from O.J. and later used for
various testing, thereby giving rise to suspicions that some of it may have been used to plant evidence
against him.
• The coroner failed to analyze and record properly the contents of the victims’ stomachs and thereby
compromised his ability to estimate the time of death. In all, Dr. Baden noted at least 16 mistakes in the
autopsy.
In the end, the O.J. Simpson case educated not only the police, but also the world about some of the power,
complexities, and pitfalls of forensic science. Everybody learned that forensics can cut both ways.
Name________________________________ Date_______________________ Block___________

Case Study Questions: O.J. Simpson

2. What was the accusation against OJ Simpson?

Who:
2. Who was Nicole Brown Simpson? Who was Ronald Goldman?

3. How was OJ Simpson famous before the murder case?

4. Who made up what was known as the “Dream Team?” Identify names and their roles.

5. Who was Mark Fuhrman and what role did he play?

When/ Where:
6. Time of Day and Year:

7. Physical and Geographical Location:

Evidence:
8. What was the significance of the white Ford Bronco police chase?

9. How did the defense dismantle the prosecution’s case against OJ?

10. What was the role of the bloody glove?

11. Was there any DNA evidence against OJ? Explain.

Outcome:
12. Legal outcome of case?

Reflections:
13. Generally, what was the reaction to the verdict in the African American community? White community?
 OJ Simpson Case: Focus on Evidence

14. OJ Simpson’s “Dream Team” of lawyers and forensic experts were able to raise serious doubts about the CSI
work and analysis of evidence by the LAPD. Below is a list of some of the issues raised by OJ’s defense team.
Explain the errors that were made with more specific details.

Issue raised by OJ’s Explain errors that were made with more specific details
defense
a) Issues with LAPD’s
photographs of crime
scene

b) Issues with unrecorded

c) Issues with photos of

d) Issues with possible

e) Issues with how the

15. In your opinion, are the issues raised regarding the LAPD’s handling of evidence enough to warrant a “not
guilty” verdict by the jury? Explain.

16. After studying this case, has your opinion changed? Explain.