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.

Media coverage

When the trial began, all of the networks were getting these hate-mail letters because people's soap operas were being interrupted for the Simpson trial. But then what happened was the people who liked soap operas got addicted to the Simpson trial. And they got really upset when the Simpson trial was over, and people would come up to me on the street and say, 'God, I loved your show.'— Marcia Clark, 2010

The murders and trial – "the biggest story I have ever seen", said a producer of NBC's Today – received extensive media coverage from the very beginning; at least one instant book was proposed two hours after the bodies were found, and scheduled to publish only a few weeks later.  The case was a seminal event in the history of reality television.  The Los Angeles Times covered the case on its front page for more than 300 days after the murders. The Big Three television networks' nightly news broadcasts gave more air time to the case than to the Bosnian War and the Oklahoma City bombing combined. The media outlets served an enthusiastic audience; one company put the loss of national productivity from employees following the case instead of working at $40 billion.  The Tonight Show with Jay Leno aired many skits on the trial, and the Dancing Itos – a troupe of dancers dressed as the judge – was a popular recurring segment.   According to Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post, the acquittal was "the most dramatic courtroom verdict in the history of Western civilization".

Participants in the case received much media coverage. Fans approached Clark at restaurants and malls, and when she got a new hairstyle during the trial, the prosecutor received a standing ovation on the courthouse steps; People approved of the change, but advised her to wear "more fitted suits and tailored skirts". While Cochran, Bailey and Dershowitz were already well-known, others like Kaelin became celebrities, and Resnick and Simpson's girlfriend Paula Barbieri appeared in Playboy. Those involved in the trial followed their own media coverage; when Larry King appeared in the courtroom after a meeting with Ito, both Simpson and Clark praised King's talk show. Interest in the case was worldwide; Russian president Boris Yeltsin's first question to President Clinton when they met in 1995 was, "Do you think O.J. did it?".

The issue of whether to allow any video cameras into the courtroom was among the first issues Judge Ito had to decide, ultimately ruling that live camera coverage was warranted.  Ito was later criticized for this decision by other legal professionals. Dershowitz said that he believed that Ito, along with others related to the case such as Clark, Fuhrman and Kaelin, was influenced to some degree by the media presence and related publicity. The trial was covered in 2,237 news segments from 1994 through 1997.  Ito was also criticized for allowing the trial to become a media circus and not doing enough to regulate the court proceedings.

Among the reporters who covered the trial daily from the courtroom, and a media area that was dubbed "Camp O.J.", were Steve Futterman of CBS News, Linda Deutsch and Michael Fleeman of the Associated Press, Dan Whitcomb of Reuters, Janet Gilmore of the Los Angeles Daily News, Andrea Ford of the Los Angeles Times, Michelle Caruso of the New York Daily News, Dan Abrams of Court TV, Harvey Levin of KCBS and David Margolick of The New York Times. Writers Dominick Dunne, Joe McGinniss and Joseph Bosco also had full-time seats in the courtroom.

On June 27, 1994, Time published a cover story, "An American Tragedy," with a photo of Simpson on the cover.  The image was darker than a typical magazine image, and the Time photo was darker than the original, as shown on a Newsweek cover released at the same time. Time became the subject of a media scandal.  Commentators found that its staff had used photo manipulation to darken the photo, and speculated it was to make Simpson appear more menacing. After the publication of the photo drew widespread criticism of racist editorializing and yellow journalism, Time publicly apologized.

Charles Ogletree, a former criminal defense attorney and current professor at Harvard Law School, said in a 2005 interview for PBS' Frontline that the best investigative reporting around the events and facts of the murder, and the evidence of the trial, was by the National Enquirer.