Real Crime Stories/Paranormal Hauntings

The O. J. Simpson Murder Trial (Part II)

Preliminary hearing

On June 20, Simpson was arraigned and pleaded not guilty to both murders. As expected, the presiding judge ordered that Simpson be held without bail. The following day, a grand jury was called to determine whether to indict him for the two murders. Two days later, on June 23, the grand jury was dismissed as a result of excessive media coverage, which could have influenced its neutrality.

Jill Shively testified to the 1994 grand jury that soon after the time of the murders she saw a white Ford Bronco speeding away from Bundy Drive in such a hurry that it almost collided with a Nissan at the intersection of Bundy and San Vicente Boulevard, and that she recognized Simpson's voice. She talked to the television show Hard Copy for $5,000, after which prosecutors declined to use her testimony at trial.

As well as Shively, the grand jury hearing included Ross Cutlery providing store receipts showing Simpson had purchased a 12-inch (305 mm) stiletto knife from salesman Jose Camacho six weeks before the murders. The knife was determined to be similar to the one the coroner said caused the stab wounds. The prosecution did not present this evidence at trial after discovering that Camacho had sold his story to the National Enquirer for $12,500. The knife was later collected from Simpson's residence by his attorneys; they presented it to Judge Ito and it was subsequently sealed in a manila envelope to be opened only if brought up at trial. This was not the murder weapon: tests on the knife determined that an oil used on new cutlery was still present on the knife, indicating it had never been used. The police searched Simpson's estate three times and could not find this knife. Simpson told his attorneys exactly where it was in the house and it was promptly recovered. Fuhrman thinks the murder weapon was a Victorinox Swiss Army knife. Simpson allegedly told a limo driver "You could kill somebody with one of these."

Rather than a grand jury hearing, authorities held a probable cause hearing to determine whether or not to bring Simpson to trial. This was a minor victory for Simpson's lawyers because it would give them access to evidence as it was being presented by the prosecution in contrast to the procedure in a grand jury hearing. After a week-long court hearing, California Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy-Powell ruled on July 7 that there was sufficient evidence to bring Simpson to trial for the murders. At his second arraignment on July 22, when asked how he pleaded to the murders, Simpson, breaking a courtroom practice that says the accused may plead using only the words "guilty" or "not guilty", firmly stated: "Absolutely, one hundred percent, not guilty."

On November 13, former NFL player and pastor Rosey Grier visited Simpson at the Los Angeles County Jail in the days following the murders. A jailhouse guard, Jeff Stuart, testified to Judge Ito that at one point Simpson yelled to Grier that he "didn't mean to do it," after which Grier had urged Simpson to come clean. Ito ruled that the evidence was hearsay and could not be allowed in court.

At first, Simpson's defense sought to show that one or more hitmen hired by drug dealers had murdered Brown and Goldman – giving Brown a "Colombian necktie" – because they were looking for Brown's friend, Faye Resnick, a known cocaine user who had failed to pay for her drugs. She had stayed for several days at Brown's condo until entering rehab four days before the killings. Ito ruled that the defenses drug killer theory was "highly speculative" and with no evidence to support it. The police added that the fact that Nicole Brown's home was not burglarized after the murders undermines their theory as well. Consequently, Ito barred the jury from hearing it and prohibited Christian Reichardt from testifying about his former girlfriend Resnick's drug problems.

Defense lawyer Johnnie Cochran produced a potential alibi witness, Rosa Lopez, a neighbor's Spanish-speaking housekeeper, who testified that she had seen Simpson's car parked outside his house at the time of the murders. However, Lopez's account was pulled apart under intense cross-examination by Clark, when she was forced to admit that she could not be sure of the precise time she saw Simpson's Bronco outside his house. Consequently, the defense dropped her from the witness list and the jury never heard her testimony.

Trial

Simpson wanted a speedy trial, and the defense and prosecuting attorneys worked around the clock for several months to prepare their cases. The trial began on January 24, 1995, and was televised by Court TV, and in part by other cable and network news outlets, for 134 days. Judge Lance Ito presided over the trial in the C.S. Foltz Criminal Courts Building. Within days after the start of the trial, lawyers and those viewing the trial from a single closed-circuit TV camera in the courtroom saw an emerging pattern: continual and countless interruptions with objections from both sides of the courtroom, as well as one sidebar conference after another with the judge, beyond earshot of the unseen jury located just below and out of the camera's frame.

Jury

District Attorney Gil Garcetti elected to file charges in downtown Los Angeles, as opposed to Santa Monica, where the crime took place. The decision would prove to be highly controversial, especially after Simpson was acquitted. It likely resulted in a jury pool with more blacks, Latinos, Asian-Americans, and blue-collar workers than would have been found from Santa Monica.

C.S. Foltz Criminal Courts Building

In October 1994, Judge Lance Ito started interviewing 304 prospective jurors, each of whom had to fill out a 75-page questionnaire. On November 3, twelve jurors were seated with twelve alternates. Over the course of the trial, ten were dismissed for a wide variety of reasons. Only four of the original jurors remained on the final panel.

According to media reports, Clark thought that women, regardless of race, would sympathize with the domestic violence aspect of the case and connect with her personally. On the other hand, the defense's research suggested that women generally were more likely to acquit than men, and that jurors did not respond well to Clark's combative style of litigation. The defense also speculated that black women would not be as sympathetic as white women to the victim, who was white, because of tensions about interracial marriages. Both sides accepted a disproportionate number of female jurors. 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. It broke the previous record with more than a month left to go.

On April 5, 1995, juror Jeanette Harris was dismissed because Judge Ito learned she had failed to disclose an incident of domestic abuse. Afterwards, Harris gave an interview and accused the deputies of racism and claimed the jurors are dividing themselves along racial lines. Ito then met with the jurors, who all denied Harris's allegations of racial tension among themselves. Two, however, did complain about the deputies, with one being Tracy Hampton. The following day, Judge Ito dismissed the three deputies, which upset those jurors who had not complained. On April 21, thirteen of the eighteen jurors refused to come to court until they spoke with Ito about it. Ito then ordered them to court and the 13 protesters responded by wearing all black and refusing to come out to the jury box upon arrival. The media described this incident as a "Jury Revolt" and the protesters wearing all black as resembling a "funeral procession". Ito's dismissal of the deputies lent credence to Harris's allegations, which the protesters felt was not deserved.