THE MOST FAMOUS TRIAL IN THE US: THE O.J SIMPSON TRIAL

The US are known for its high amount of crimes that every year the court has to take to trial.  But among all those trials there’s one that every American (and non-American) will remember: the O.J Simpson trial.

 If you live on the Earth, you have probably heard of O.J Simpson, also known as the Juice, who was accused in 1995 of a double murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ronald Goldman. He’s known for being one of the most famous footballers in America… at least until the night he was arrested.

But let’s go back and retrace the events.

 

The victims were found stabbed to death at 12.10 am of June 1994 in front of Nicole’s house in Los Angeles. Police only arrived at the crime scene at 5 am and found some odd evidence that, apparently, placed O.J Simpson in the crime scene. What the police found was a right-hand glove covered in blood, a knitted hat and footprints of blood. The blood on the glove and the hair under the hat were proven to belong to O.J. The footprints matched his size and the pattern even matched a pair of shoes that he owned.  Later on, a sock with Nicole’s blood was found inside O.J’ s house.

 

But Simpson had left the city the night the bodies were found: he took a flight to Chicago.

When the prosecutor called him to inform that his ex-wife was dead, the only thing he said was: “who killed her?”.  Why would he assume that she had been killed? Suspicious.

 

He was interrogated by LAPD but released after three hours. A curios fact that adds to the evidence is that he had a cut on his finger when police interviewed him.

Four days after he was charged of two counts of murder. He didn’t surrender to the police so he was declared a fugitive. This was followed by a famous police chase named “the Bronco chase”, by the white car O.J Simpson was in.

The chase was televised and seen by 95 million people. The car was driven by a friend of O.J, A.C. According to him, O.J was sitting in the back holding a gun to his head: that’s why he didn’t stop, otherwise he would have killed himself. The chase ended once the car stopped at O.J Simpson’s house.

 Inside the car the police found makeup adhesive, a fake moustache, O.J’ s passport and a gun: he was trying to escape under another identity.

                                            

 Before he tried to escape, he wrote an essay where he confessed his innocence and his will to commit suicide.

Added to the evidence that put O.J on the crime scene, there was the fact that he was already reported to the police for the abuses on his ex-wife Nicole.

But let’s get into the real trial.

During the trial the first witnesses said that O.J had a motive to kill the victims: apparently Nicole and O.J had gone through a divorce and she’d become very close to Ronald.

A second one, a friend of O.J, told that he used to tell him about having “dreams of killing his wife”. Not points in its favour, right? That, added to the evidence, was enough to sentence him.

 

So how did the defence team win the lawsuit? Yes, the jury acquitted O.J Simpson. 

The defence lawyer played the card of racism, accusing the attorney (who found the glove all alone) to have framed O.J. However, this factor had been exploited to take the attention away from the evidence that could charge him. In fact, the jury was composed of seven Afro-Americans.

The defence also brought to the jury’s attention some technical mistakes made by the forensic team which created doubts over the accuracy of the evidence. Some evidence was not packaged correctly and even left in a car to overheat, which brought the defence team to suggest that the crime scene may have been contaminated and the evidence altered.

During the trial, the defence team also had O.J try on the glove found at the crime scene but it was too small. This moment was followed by his lawyer’s line “if it doesn’t fit, you must acquit”.

But it needs to be mentioned that the prosecution was against O.J trying on the glove because it had been frozen multiple times and this frozen thing might have made the glove smaller.

 

 

Despite all the evidence against O.J, the jury gave a verdict of non-guilty in less than four hours of deliberation.

He ended up in prison, by the way. Some years later, in 2007, O.J Simpson was arrested with the accuse of kidnapping and armed robberies and he was sentenced to 33 years in prison. However, he was released on parole in 2017.

 

What do you think? Was he guilty of the murders or not?

MARIA, 3scB