The prosecution next produced a set of witnesses--including limousine driver Allan Park, Kato Kaelin , and officers of the LAPD--to establish a timeline of events that left Simpson with ample opportunity to commit murder.
Limo driver Allan Park proved to be one of the prosecution's most effective witnesses. Park testified that he arrived at the Simpson home on Rockingham at to pick O. He said he rang the doorbell repeatedly, but received no answer. Shortly before , according to Park, a shadowy figure--black, tall, about pounds, and wearing dark clothes-- walked up the driveway and entered the house. A few minutes later, Simpson emerged, telling Park he had overslept.
Park testified that as he entered the limo, he carried a small black bag which the prosecution hoped the jury would conclude contained the murder weapon. Park testified that Simpson would not let him touch the bag. The bag has never been seen since. A skycap at the Los Angeles Airport testified that he saw Simpson near a rubbish bin.
Prosecutor Marcia Clark points to exhibit during trial. Simpson house guest Kato Kaelin, one of the trials more colorful characters, testified that he and Simpson returned from a run for Big Macs and french fries at After that, Kaelin couldn't account for Simpson's whereabouts.
He told of hearing thumps on his wall just before , about the same time that Park witnessed the shadowy figure enter the house. The prosecution also produced telephone records that show Simpson used his automobile cell phone to call his girlfriend, Paula Barbieri, at The defense did not attempt to explain why Simpson would make a call on his car cell phone at a time he claimed to be in his backyard practicing his golf stroke.
Finally, the prosecution began to put forward witnesses directly tying Simpson to the two murders. The evidence was technical and circumstantial, relating mostly of the results of blood, hair, fiber, and footprint analysis from the Bundy crime scene and Simpson's Rockingham home.
The most compelling testimony--if one assumed the accuracy of the testing--concerned two RFLP tests. The first indicated that blood found at the crime scene could have come from only 1 out of million sources of blood--and that O.
Simpson fit the profile. The second came from blood found on two black socks at the foot of O. According to prosecution testimony, only 1 out of 6. Nicole Brown Simpson might well be the only person on earth whose blood matched the blood found on the socks. The LAPD officer who found a bloody glove outside Kato Kaelin's bedroom turned out to be a godsend for the defense's corrupt-police theory. The officer, Mark Fuhrman , testified for the prosecution on March 9 and In his book about the trial, Robert Shapiro wrote: "A suddenly charming Marcia Clark treated him like he was a poster boy for apple pie and American values.
Lee Bailey began a bullying cross-examination of Fuhrman in which he asked the detective, whether, in the past ten years, he had ever used "the n word.
It was a lie. A second prosecution disaster followed. Prosecutor Christopher Darden , confident that the bloody gloves belonged to Simpson, decided to make a dramatic courtroom demonstration.
He would ask Simpson, in full view of the jury, to try on the gloves worn by Nicole's killer. Judge Ito asked a bailiff to escort Simpson to a position near the jury box. Darden instructed Simpson, "Pull them on, pull them on. They don't fit.
Later, Cochran would offer the memorable refrain, "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit. A field trip that included the judge, the jury, lawyers for both sides, the defendant, and a bevy of trailing media types illustrates how the defense early on in the trial saw the race issue as playing to its advantage on a jury that included nine African- Americans.
The trip to the Bundy Avenue crime scene and Simpson's Rockingham home was intended to provide the jury with a better basis for understanding testimony concerning locations of bodies, gloves, and socks. The defense saw it as an opportunity to put a favorable spin on Simpson's life. Before the jury arrived at Simpson's home, down came a picture of Paula Barbieri, O.
In its place, up went a Norman Rockwell print from Johnnie Cochran's office that depicted a black girl being escorted to school by federal marshals. Pictures of Simpson standing with white golfing buddies were replaced with pictures of his mother and other black people. A Bible was installed conspicuously on an end table in the living room. The tour seemed to go wonderfully well for the defense. As the group toured his home, Simpson pointed to a backyard play area and said, "That's where I practiced my golf swing.
The strategy of Simpson's defense team, called the "Dream Team" in the media, was to undermine the prosecution's evidence concerning motive, suggest Simpson was physically incapable of committing the crime, raise doubts about the prosecution's timeline, and finally to suggest that the key physical evidence against Simpson was either contaminated or planted, or both.
On July 10, , Simpson's daughter Arnelle took the stand as the first defense witness. She would be followed by Simpson's sister and his mother, Eunice Simpson.
By the time Simpson's mother finished her testimony, it was apparent to some courtroom observers that jury members were showing more empathy for the Simpson family than for the families of the victims. As successful as it turned out to be, the defense effort was not without its own miscalculations. After Simpson's doctor, Robert Huizenga, testified that O. The video showed Simpson leading demanding physical exercises. Especially embarrassing for the defense was a quip on the tape from Simpson as he performed an exercise that consisted in part of punching his arms back and forth.
Simpson suggested people might try this workout "with the wife. The most talked-about aspect of the defense case undoubtedly concerned Mark Fuhrman, the LAPD officer who had found the bloody glove and who, as a prosecution witness, denied using the word "nigger.
Laura Hart McKinny, an aspiring screenwriter from North Carolina, had hired Fuhrman to consult with her on police issues for a script she was writing. McKinny taped her interviews with Fuhrman, who not only used the offensive racial slur, but disclosed that he had sometimes planted evidence to help secure convictions.
Needless to say, the defense wanted McKinny on the stand, and they wanted the jury to hear selected portions of her tapes. The prosecution strenuously objected, arguing that McKinny's testimony was irrelevant absent some plausible evidence suggesting that evidence was planted in the Simpson case. The prejudicial value of the testimony, the prosecution insisted, would exceed its probative value. Judge Ito, somewhat reluctantly, allowed the defense evidence.
Ito's decision opened the door for the defense to offer its rather fantastic theory that Fuhrman took a glove from the Bundy crime scene, rubbed it in Nicole's blood, then took it to Rockingham to drop outside Kaelin's bedroom so as to frame Simpson.
It may not, however, have been Fuhrman, but rather a soft-spoken Chinese-American forensic expert named Henry Lee that won Simpson his acquittal.
Lee had solid credentials, smiled at the jury, and provided what seemed to be a plausible justification for questioning the prosecution's key physical evidence. Lee raised doubts with blood splatter demonstrations, his suggestion that shoe print evidence suggested more than one assailant, and his simple conclusion about the prosecution's DNA tests: "Something's wrong.
Jury forewoman, Amanda Cooley, called Lee "a very impressive gentleman. An angry Judge Lance Ito. By the time closing arguments began in the Simpson case, the trial had already broken the record set by the Charles Manson case as the longest jury trial in California history.
The jury had been sequestered for the better part of a year and was showing signs of strain and exhaustion. Judge Ito was under attack for the allowing the trial to drag on and his seeming inability to keep lawyers under control.
Marcia Clark's summation for the prosecution sought, among other things, to do damage control on the Fuhrman issue. Clark denounced Fuhrman as a racist, the "worst type" of cop, and as someone we didn't want "on this planet. She took the jury again through the prosecution's "mountain of evidence" as puzzle pieces on a video screen accumulated to reveal the face of O. Christopher Darden followed Clark, telling the jury that Simpson could be "a great football player" and "a murderer" as well.
Johnnie Cochran's summation for the defense added controversy to an already very controversial trial. His co-counsel, Robert Shapiro, was later to condemn his closing for "not only playing the race card, but playing it from the bottom of the deck.
There was another man not too long ago in this world who had those same views, who wanted to burn people, who had racist views, and ultimately had power over people in his country. People didn't care. People said he's crazy. He's just a half-baked painter. And they didn't do anything about it.
This man, this scourge, became one of the worst people in the world, Adolf Hitler, because people didn't care, didn't stop him. He had the power over his racism and his anti-religionism. Nobody wanted to stop him And so Fuhrman. Fuhrman wants to take all black people now and burn them or bomb them. That's genocidal racism. Is that ethnic purity? We're paying this man's salary to espouse these views As America watched at 10 a.
PST on October 3, , Ito's clerk, Deidre Robertson, announced the jury's verdict: "We the jury in the above entitled action find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty of the crime of murder. The Dream Team gathered in a victory huddle. After prosecutor Darden made the mistake of demanding Simpson try on the ill-fitted bloody gloves, Cochran uttered the famous phrase: "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.
Before Lance Ito was appointed to the bench in , he was an attorney for the L. A fan of media attention, Ito was arguably too lax about different aspects of the Simpson trial, giving interviews and inviting celebrities and journalists into his chambers.
Judge Ito was further criticized on his decision to allow cameras in the courtroom and letting attorneys stall and have too many sidebars. His willingness to include Detective Mark Fuhrman's old taped interviews, in which he denigrated Black people, was also a huge source of contention for the prosecution. In a strange twist, the tapes also revealed Fuhrman had made disparaging remarks about Ito's wife, Margaret York, who was Fuhrman's department superior at the time.
When those comments were exposed, the prosecution asked for Ito to recuse himself due to his possible bias against Fuhrman, but later the request was withdrawn. Among the most controversial figures of the Simpson trial was L. Although Fuhrman denied ever having racist tendencies or using the n-word, a taped interview he had chosen to do 10 years earlier revealed otherwise.
In the recording, he was quoted as saying to incarcerated Black people: "You do what you're told, understand, n—r? A wave of backlash hit Fuhrman, but he continued denying being a racist and also pushed back against the defense's theory that he planted the bloody glove to frame Simpson. As the prosecution's witness, Dennis Fung — the LAPD criminologist who collected evidence at the murder scene — ended up spending the longest time testifying on the stand.
For nine days, Fung recalled how he collected samples of blood, albeit admittedly overlooking some important areas where blood drops were identified and not always using gloves. The defense ate up Fung's inefficient and careless actions and implicated him as a liar who was part of a larger LAPD conspiracy against Simpson. Aspiring actor and houseguest of Simpson, Brian "Kato" Kaelin was a star witness for the prosecution. Present at Simpson's Rockingham mansion at the time of the murders, Kaelin claimed that he ate dinner with Simpson that night but could not account for the star athlete's whereabouts between the hours of p.
Due to Kaelin's shiftiness on the stand, prosecutor Clark turned against him and treated him as a hostile witness. Regardless, Kaelin — with his thick tufts of blond hair and surfer dude ways — gained considerable popularity in the media as a likable and comedic character of the trial.
As the limousine driver who was hired to drive Simpson to the airport for his evening flight to Chicago, Allan Park was a vital witness to the prosecution. Competent and composed, Park helped bolster the idea that Simpson may not have been at the Rockingham mansion when the double homicide occurred.
Still, the jury did not give much weight to his testimony, asking for his transcript only hours before deliberation. Reportedly, one juror wholly dismissed Park's testimony because he was unable to recall the number of cars parked at the Rockingham mansion.
Upon hearing this, Park was shocked his testimony was so casually disregarded. From the Bronco chase to inside the California courtroom, here are the key moments from the trial of the former NFL running back. Lyle and Erik provided some much-needed advice to the fallen football star as all three awaited their trials on murder charges in the same Los Angeles prison.
Before they were reality TV royalty with 'Keeping Up With the Kardashians,' the family had a long-rooted friendship with the former football player. These anti-war activists were charged for igniting violent demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention. The August slayings of the movie star and others rocked Hollywood and introduced the world to the twisted mind of Charles Manson.
More than two decades since the murder suspect's low-speed chase, the infamous car sits in a Tennessee crime museum. Peterson was declared guilty of the crimes in , but in , his death sentence was overturned, setting the stage for a never-ending legal saga. In , the financial advisor pled guilty to running the biggest investment fraud the world has ever known, with many notable names as his clients.
Here are some of the most familiar faces that played pivotal roles in the trial. Marcia Clark Prosecution.
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