Real Crime Stories/Paranormal Hauntings

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

Books

In 1996, Cochran wrote and published a book about the trial. It was titled Journey to Justice, and described his involvement in the case. That same year, Shapiro also published a book about the trial called The Search for Justice. He criticized Bailey as a "loose cannon" and Cochran for bringing race into the trial. In contrast to Cochran's book, Shapiro said that he does not believe that Simpson was framed by the LAPD, but considered the verdict correct due to reasonable doubt. In a subsequent interview with Barbara Walters, Shapiro vowed that he would never again work with either Bailey or Cochran.

Clark published a book about the case titled Without a Doubt (1998). Her book recounts the trial proceedings, from jury selection to final summation. She concluded that nothing could have saved her case, given the defense's strategy of highlighting racial issues related to Simpson and the LAPD, and the predominance of blacks on the jury. In Clark's opinion, the prosecution's factual evidence, particularly the DNA, should have easily convicted Simpson. That it did not, she says, attests to a judicial system compromised by issues of race and celebrity.

In 1996, former Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi wrote a book titled Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O. J. Simpson Got Away with Murder. Bugliosi was very critical of Clark and Darden, faulting them, among other reasons, for not introducing the note that Simpson had written before trying to flee. He contended that the note "reeked" of guilt and that the jury should have been allowed to see it. He also noted that the jury was never informed about items found in the Bronco. The prosecution said that they felt these items of evidence would bring up emotional issues on Simpson's part that could harm their case, despite the fact that the items seemed as though they could be used for fleeing. He also criticized them for not wanting the jury to see or hear Simpson denying guilt, when there would not be a trial had Simpson not entered a not guilty plea. Bugliosi also said the prosecutors should have gone into more detail about Simpson's domestic abuse and presented evidence contrary to the defense's assertion that Simpson was a leader in the black community. Bugliosi also criticized the prosecution for trying the murder in Los Angeles, rather than Santa Monica, and described the prosecution's closing statements as inadequate. During the jury selection process, the defense made it difficult for the prosecution to challenge potential black jurors, on the grounds that it is illegal to dismiss someone from the jury for racially motivated reasons. (California courts barred peremptory challenges to jurors based on race in People v. Wheeler, years before the U.S. Supreme Court would do so in Batson v. Kentucky).

Defense forensic DNA expert Dr. Henry Lee published Blood Evidence: How DNA Is Revolutionizing The Way We Solve Crimes (2003). He devotes the last two chapters to explaining the arguments of Scheck and Neufeld against the DNA evidence in the Simpson case. Lee notes that Scheck and Neufeld had established national reputations for doubting the scientific underpinnings of DNA testing and challenging their admissibility in court. It was only recently before the trial, in 1992, they accepted the validity of DNA testing and founded the Innocence Project. Lee writes that neither of the defenses' forensic DNA experts, Dr. Henry Lee or Dr. Edward Blake, considered Scheck and Neufeld's reasonable doubt theory about the blood evidence plausible. In hindsight, Dr. Lee opines that Scheck and Neufeld's claim that "the blood evidence is only as good as the people collecting it" was an obfuscation tactic to conflate the validity of the evidence with the integrity of the LAPD and then attack the latter because both Scheck and Neufeld knew that the defense's forensic DNA experts reached the same conclusion as the prosecution: the mistakes made during evidence collection did not render the results unreliable. Lee opines that the jury did not understand the significance and precision of the DNA evidence. He bases this on comments from jurors after the trial, some of which included claims that the blood at the crime scene that matched Simpson had "degraded" and could possibly have been from Simpson's children or from one of the officials who collected the evidence. He attributes this misinterpretation to Scheck and Neufeld's deliberate obfuscation and deception about the reliability of the results. Lee believes the jury thought Scheck and Neufeld were trustworthy because of their work with the Innocence Project and suggests that is the reason why they considered their arguments reasonable. After the trial, the jurors faced harsh criticism for doubting the DNA evidence while Scheck and Neufeld received praise. Lee believes that the scathing criticism the jurors faced for doubting the DNA evidence based on the arguments Scheck and Neufeld made might have been the reason why they were the only two DNA experts from the criminal trial to decline to return for the subsequent civil trial to make those claims again.