Slide 4

The court case discussed is a controversial one, with many mishandled evidence and violations of law. Some of the legal issues include a breach of the Fourth Amendment, racial comments, perjury, and possible falsified police reports. There were also chain of custody issues with the evidence, such as undocumented blood drawn from O.J. Simpson and missing fingerprint evidence. The media had open access to the trial, which was seen as problematic. The prosecution sought life without parole for Simpson, but he was acquitted of the murder charges. However, he was successfully sued for damages. The court's decision was shocking to many due to the evidence against Simpson, including blood drops, a bloody shoe print, and his DNA on gloves and socks. The next slide will discuss the opinion on the verdict. Okay, so now on to the timeline. Here we'll get a more accurate timeline of the controversial court case. This is a very controversial court case and what I'm going to try to do is attempt to summarize the decision of the court through this timeline by first covering the legal issues, then the judicial proceedings, the procedural history, and lastly the holdings of the court. So in this slide, I want to talk about several areas of the timeline and how these areas relate to the unfolding of the case. I would try to cover what I feel are the most relevant and critical issues to present due to the case having many mishandles of evidence and violations of law. So first up, the legal issues. First I'll review the legal issues. The legal issues in this case unfortunately start at the beginning of the case. For instance, there was a Fourth Amendment breach of Simpson's home, which the U.S. Constitution protects citizens against unlawful search and seizure of private property. Detective Mark Furman of the Los Angeles Police Department jumped over a wall that led to O.J. Simpson's residence on the night of the murders without the possession and retrieval of a warrant by a judge. That's what caused the breach of Simpson's Fourth Amendment from which the U.S. Constitution protects citizens against that. So that didn't hold over well with the public. The media, of course, jumped all over that. So the detective claimed that he saw blood splatter and other evidence that something may have happened badly and was only conducting a welfare check on Simpson. So his claim was that he was checking on Simpson to make sure that everything was okay at the residence. But the problem with this notion is that Simpson was not considered a suspect at the time of the detective's approach to the residence. But not only that, but there was a murder and that even though he wasn't involved, it's still his ex-wife, so it really didn't make this scene look too good. This caused many people to believe that there was tampering of evidence involved along with other issues from the detective. Such issues as racial comments, perjury, and possible falsified police reports due to his tarnished reputation and character. Other issues discovered include a chain of custody issue, blood drawn – well, there were several chain of custody issues with the case. Blood drawn from O.J. Simpson was not documented and neither was how much blood was taken from him. The blood was passed to several different people before a chain of command of the evidence was even established. A fingerprint discovered on Simpson's gate at his residence was documented as recovered but later determined missing from the evidence database. Blood that was collected from the scene was not documented, photographed, or added as evidence in the chain of custody until several weeks later. Other blood transfer issues include socks that belonged to Nicole Brown Simpson, his ex-wife, were found together and contained blood splatter three weeks after they were found. The media was allowed to have open access to the grand jury trial, preliminary hearings, access to jury selection process, and even continual camera coverage inside the courtroom throughout the duration of the trial. This was considered problemsome for many in how the court handled the case and how the detective handled the case. So it caused a little bit of – it was a lot of scrutiny that was involved in this because this wasn't normally – in the courtroom, they didn't normally allow cameras for such a high-profile case, something that involves a grand jury, something of that nature, high murder by someone who was a professional sports player especially, which would draw more attention towards it. And then it was something that they didn't want people to favor him due to his status to the public by playing professional sports. But the judge allowed for the filming to occur. Now let's discuss the judicial proceedings of the case. The prosecution was seeking life without the possibility of parole for the murders that was believed to be responsible of O.J. Simpson at the time of the death of his ex-wife and her friend Goldman. The presiding judge over the case was Judge Lance Ilto. Judge Ilto faced much criticism from some people regarding his allowing full press coverage inside the courtroom, and he would often become angry with the media during the trial. So it would cause him to kind of get upset during the trial, and people would kind of look at that as an influence of how the public would see the trial ending. He has still yet, one of the things, Judge Ilto, he has yet to do many interviews through the media, and when he does consider it, it would be noticeably short interviews, and he didn't do much speaking in those interviews. Okay, so now we are now on the procedural history. O.J. Simpson found himself acquitted of the murder of his ex-wife and her friend outside of her condominium, but he was successfully sued for approximately $33.5 million in damages that was awarded to the family. One of the infamous lines that was presented in the court by Simpson's lawyer, Johnny Cochran, was, if it doesn't fit, you must acquit. And many people use these terms with influence, the mindset of some people, because it's similar to poetry, music. So it seemed to be effective even in this court trial. This was due to the prosecution requesting that Simpson put on a bloody glove, so that's where they get, if it doesn't fit, you must acquit. It was due to the prosecution requesting that Simpson put on a bloody glove that was found at the crime scene and believed to have been worn by the killer himself or herself. This heavily influenced the court's decision by the jury. The evidence seemed to not add up, and other evidence was inadmissible due to the careless work by the LAPD who handled and processed the evidence. Many officers involved with the processing of the evidence just carelessly documented the case. Many evidence they did not record, evidence that was right in the back of a squad car to other calls of service, and then handed in at the end of the night. So it's poor handling of cases that involve the possibility of what the acquittal proceedings are, why the acquittal, I'm sorry, was given to OJ. The court's holdings on the matter was basically the acquittal, were an acquittal. This acquittal was shocking to many viewers of the recorded live trial, because many people were expecting a guilty verdict due to the evidence against Simpson, such evidence as blood drops found near the gate of OJ's residence, along with a bloody shoe print that contained OJ's DNA. There were extra large gloves recovered, which also contained his DNA. Also, a size 12 pair of shoes that were made by the Italian shoemaker Bruner Magli was discovered at the residence, along with bloody socks discovered in his bedroom. So in his bedroom, there was bloody socks recovered. Also, the pair of size 12 is the size that OJ Simpson wears. And the pair of shoes that left the bloody footprint were of a size 12, and also OJ owned, which was used as evidence, a pair of the Italian Bruno Magli shoes, which was used as evidence in the court and was permitted. So that's why it's very alarming that the acquittal was the verdict. But we're going to talk more about what I think about the verdict in the next slide. We'll talk more a little bit deeper of what my opinion is of the verdict and why I feel that the verdict should have been a different result. Or should have came out differently, or something of that nature.