I’m a Celebrity: O. J. Simpson

 

The O. J. Simpson murder case is one of the most highly publicized crime cases of the last few decades. The reason is that the man charged with double murder was a high-profile American football star. He had retired from football in 1979, long before the murders, and since then had pursued a modest career as a sports commentator and a minor film actor. It is one of those unusual cases where the chief suspect is a celebrity, and this ensures saturation coverage by the media.

At the end of a long trial, Simpson was acquitted. The verdict was blurred when afterwards, in a civil court hearing, Simpson was found liable for the wrongful killing of Ronald Goldman. There were therefore two conflicting verdicts on the case, one saying that he didn’t do it and one saying that he did.

Just before midnight on 12 June 1994, one of O. J. Simpson’s former wives, Nicole Brown Simpson, was found dead outside her home in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles. Beside her body was a second body, that of her boyfriend, Ronald Goldman. Nicole Brown’s children was asleep in an upstairs bedroom. The evidence found at the scene by police investigators led the police to think that O. J. Simpson, who had divorced Nicole Brown two years earlier, might have been the murderer.

Simpson’s lawyers persuaded the Los Angeles Police Department to let him turn himself in to the police at eleven o’clock in the morning on 17 June. The charge of double murder meant that he would get no bail and, if convicted, the death sentence. In California, double homicide is a capital offence. As events turned out, the prosecution decided to seek a life sentence, not the death penalty.

The case was very large in scale, because of Simpson’s celebrity status. He had eleven lawyers working on his defence; another twenty-five lawyers worked for the prosecution. One hundred and fifty witnesses were called. The nine-month trial became the longest running trial in California’s history, accumulating costs of more than $20 million. The presiding judge felt sorry for the marathon hearing to which the jurors were subjected, and laid on some diversions for them, including a theatre trip, a sightseeing trip in an airship and a boat trip to Catalania Island. The murder trial attracted more media coverage that any previous criminal trial since the Lindbergh kidnapping case way back in the 1930s.

One major problem in the case was that Orenthal James Simpson was black. There was a presumption within the black community that he would not receive justice, simply because of his colour. There was also a presumption among whites that he would not be found guilty by a jury composed mostly of representatives of minority groups; they would be unlikely to convict a black celebrity, regardless of the weight of evidence against him. It was an insoluble problem. The lost lives of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goodman seemed to dwindle into insignificance as O. J. Simpson took the centre of the stage; his right to justice and his right to be free of bigotry seemed to override the need for justice for the victims.

On 17 June 1994, a thousand journalists waited to see Simpson give himself up to the police and give a media statement. But he failed to appear. At two o’clock the police began to search for him as Robert Kardashian, one of Simpson’s lawyers, read out a rambling letter from him that sounded like a suicide note. ‘First everyone understand I had nothing to do with Nicole’s murder . . . Don’t feel sorry for me. I’ve had a great life.’ The journalists joined in the hunt for Simpson.

In the early evening, at a quarter to seven, a police patrol car spotted a white Ford Bronco travelling north on Interstate 405. The car belonged to one of Simpson’s friends, Al Cowlings. The officer approached Cowlings, who was driving, and Cowlings shouted that Simpson was naked inside the car and holding a gun to his head. The office backed away and a low-speed chase began. The chase was filmed from helicopters and it was reported live on the media. Many people watched from bridges crossing the highway. Eventually Cowlings drove Simpson back to his home, 360 North Rockingham Avenue, Brentwood. Simpson did not emerge from the vehicle for another forty-five minutes. When he did, police took from him $8,000 in cash, a passport, a false moustache and beard, and a loaded gun (a Smith and Wesson .357). In spite of the numerous infringements of the law involved in this escapade, Simpson was never charged for any of them.

When Simpson first appeared in court on 20 June he pleaded not guilty to the two murders. Two days later the grand jury was dismissed because of the excessive media coverage, which could have affected the jury’s objectivity and so produced a false verdict. At a second court appearance, a month later, Simpson claimed confidently that he was ‘one hundred per cent not guilty’.

The trial began on 24 January 1995. The prosecution case, led by Marcia Clark, opened with the assertion that Simpson killed his ex-wife in a jealous rage. Evidence was produced in the form of an emergency phone call made by Nicole Brown Simpson in 1989; she said she was frightened that Simpson would do her physical harm. There were also expert witnesses who gave evidence from fingerprints, shoe prints and DNA that placed Simpson at the crime scene. They also presented a picture of the relationship that gave him a motive for murder.

Allan Park, a limousine driver, said he was unable to contact anyone at Simpson’s gate at a quarter to eleven on 12 June, when he was due to pick Simpson up. At ten to eleven he saw a large figure go into the house, some lights were switched on and then Simpson answered Park on the intercom. The two men loaded baggage into the car and left for the airport at a quarter past eleven.

Simpson’s expensive defence lawyers argued that Simpson was the victim of police fraud and sloppy handling of evidence which had led to DNA contamination. His lawyers went so far as to accuse LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman of planting evidence at the crime scene. Fuhrman found himself on the stand, having to defence himself against charges of racist language. He denied he had used the word ‘nigger’ to describe black people during the ten years beforehand, but the defence team had found nine-year-old audio tapes on which he could be heard using the word repeatedly. The tape had been made by a screenwriter gathering background material for a story she was writing on policewomen. The notorious Fuhrman tapes became a cornerstone of the defence case. They showed that some of the testimony at least was biased, and helped Simpson towards acquittal. As a result of his testimony, Fuhrman was later tried for perjury; he did not contest the charge.

A leather glove was found at the crime scene. It was alleged to belong to Simpson. The prosecution team decided not to ask Simpson to try on the glove in the courtroom, to show that it fitted, because they suspected that soaking in blood, alteration by forensic testing and freezing several times would have shrunk it. But the assistant prosecutor, Darden, was goaded by Cochran into asking Simpson to try it on. The glove was now too tight for Simpson to pull on over his latex-gloved hand. The moment was a gift to the defence. Cochran quipped to the jury, as he had several times earlier in the trial relating to evidence in general, ‘If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.’ The assistant prosecutor, Christopher Darden, told the judge in desperation that Simpson had arthritis and his failure to take anti-inflammatory drugs that day had caused his hand to swell. The prosecution team also knew that the glove had probably shrunk significantly since the crimes were committed.

The prosecution maintained that drops of Simpson’s blood found at the crime scene had resulted from cuts on the middle finger of Simpson’s left hand, which he (allegedly) sustained in the struggle with Ronald Goldman. The problem with this is that none of Simpson’s gloves had any cuts. There was blood on the glove found at the crime scene, but none on the glove found back at Simpson’s house. This suggested that someone had fixed the evidence.

In spite of the several major gaffes in their case, the prosecution team was confident of a conviction. In the United States generally, the case was seen in broad socio-political terms. Many black Americans were convinced that Simpson was innocent and that he should be acquitted; a conviction would encourage further police misconduct. Many white Americans believed Simpson was guilty. As a result, racial tensions intensified. Many in authority feared that a guilty verdict might incite a repeat of the 1992 riots in Los Angeles.

The jury considered its verdict for three hours before deciding the Simpson was not guilty. The verdict was announced at ten in the morning on 3 October 1995. But was Simpson really not guilty? There was in fact quite a lot of evidence that incriminated him:

 

1. Traces of blood belonging to Nicole and Ronald as well as Simpson himself in and on Simpson’s car (DNA analysis).

2. The bloodstained socks found in Simpson’s bedroom were soaked in Nicole’s blood (DNA analysis).

3. Hairs on Ronald’s shirt belonged to Simpson, though Simpson claimed never to have met Ronald.

4. Blood on Simpson’s gloves belonged to Nicole, Ronald and Simpson.

5. The gloves carried fibres from Ronald’s hair and the carpet in Simpson’s car.

6. There were documents showing that Simpson had earlier been arrested for beating Nicole. The documents included photos showing her battered face. Simpson was sentenced to three years’ community service for this earlier violence.

7. Nicole had lost a set of house keys. She had told family members she was afraid Simpson had taken them in order to get into her house. The keys were found at Simpson’s house.

8. Nicole had finally broken with Simpson on the day of the murders; he seemed very disturbed by this.

9. The left hand glove found at Nicole’s house matched the right hand glove found at Simpson’s house.

10. Under oath, Simpson claimed he did not own any Aris Isotoner gloves, but media photographs show him wearing some.

11. The bloody footprints at the crime scene were made by Bruno Magli shoes. These are expensive and rare. The size twelve prints matched Simpson’s shoe size.

12. Under oath, Simpson claimed he did not own any Bruno Magli shoes, but a photo taken at a football game shows him wearing them. Simpson claimed that the photo had been doctored, but another photo emerged also showing him wearing the shoes.

13. Nicole’s friends and family were well aware that Simpson was stalking her. Nicole said that Simpson had told her he would kill her if her ever found her with another man.

14. A store receipt showed that Simpson had purchased a twelve-inch knife six weeks before the murders. The type of knife purchased exactly matched the wounds on Ronald and Nicole.

 

Whether O. J. Simpson was actually guilty of the double murder or not is still not known, but this is an impressive list of evidence for the prosecution. If the accused had been less well-known, if he had been unable to pay for expensive defence lawyers, there can be little doubt that in a routine court hearing he would have been found guilty on this evidence. The team for the prosecution was in fact profoundly shocked at the not guilty verdict, which it had genuinely not expected. Some observers who did not approve of the verdict blamed it on bias or ignorance on the part of the jurors. Apparently only two of the jurors had received a college education, which was cited as an indication of their intelligence (which of course it is not). On the other hand, their lack of education may account for the jurors’ lack of awareness of the significance of the DNA evidence. Some of them evidently thought they were being given old-fashioned blood-group information and had no idea of the uniqueness of a DNA profile. Prosecutors heard more than one juror making comments such as, ‘Well, lots of people have the same blood type.’

Some jurors were prepared to be interviewed; some said they thought Simpson had probably committed the murders, but the prosecution had bungled the case. In this criticism, they were very much closer to the mark. The high-profile prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, who numbered the famous Manson trial among his cases, took the same view. He wrote a book with the unequivocal title Outrage: The Five Reasons O. J. Simpson Got Away With Murder. In it he roundly criticized the leading members of the prosecution teams, listing their mistakes. He drew attention to the prosecution’s mistake in not introducing the note Simpson wrote before trying to escape, pointing out that it ‘reeked of guilt’. The prosecution should have shown it to the jury. He also argued that a bigger case should have been made out of Simpson’s significant history of physical abuse of Nicole.

O. J. Simpson’s skin colour was nothing whatever to do with his guilt or innocence. Bugliosi argued that the defence lawyers had opened a door for the prosecution once they painted a (false) picture of Simpson as a leader in the black community. The defence’s remark was clearly designed to elicit sympathy and support from the jury, but the prosecution could have countered that Simpson had had little impact in the black community and had done nothing to help black people less fortunate than himself. Bugliosi argued that the prosecution needed to do this in order to prevent the jury from allowing Simpson’s colour to bias their verdict, which it may have done.

This tilting of the jury may have been a major deciding factor, and it has been suggested that if the trial had been held in mainly white Santa Monica, rather than ‘minority-rich’ Los Angeles, its outcome might have been different.

Since the case, O. J. Simpson has tried to persuade the world of his innocence. He has said that he would look for the real murderer of Nicole. On the other hand, there is little evidence that he has gone to any trouble to track this hit man down. Conspiracy theorists have it that there has been a string of murders of friends of Ronald, Nicole and O. J. A friend of Simpson’s, Casimir Sucharski, was murdered shortly after Nicole. But if the double murder was part of a sequence, O. J. himself would have a vested interest in hunting down the killer, which he does not appear to be attempting. A more promising line of enquiry might be the Mafia or drugs. Nicole was apparently planning to open a restaurant with Ronald Goldman and, allegedly, finance it with cocaine profits; rumour had it that the pair of them were well out of their depth in a deal with drug dealers. This is no more than hearsay and speculation, but there were always possibilities other than O. J. Simpson.

William Dear has suggested that O. J’s. son Jason might have been the murderer and that all O. J. was guilty of was covering up for him. The hypothesis is that Jason had a crush on Nicole, was jealous of her relationship with Ronald and had no alibi on the night of the murder. It is ingenious but ultimately unconvincing.

In November 2006, Regan Books announced that they were about to publish a book by Simpson entitled If I Did It. The idea was that Simpson would explain exactly how he would have committed the murders – if he had committed them. This was seen by some as a back-door route to a confession. But later that month, after a barrage of hostile public reaction, the parent company of Regan Books cancelled Simpson’s book.

The case is unique. It may be that O. J. Simpson was guilty; it may even be that many of the people who were involved in engineering his acquittal thought that he was guilty, too. There were, even so, many reasons for deciding to find him innocent.