Analysis of the Procedures

The majority of the procedures at the crime scene where the bodies of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman had been found can be analysed as being harming to the investigation because so many mistakes were made by different members of the investigation team, at almost every step of the procedures at a crime scene and during the collection and securing of evidence. Therefore causing contamination to occur to the evidence and allowing the validity of the investigation to be questioned. Some examples of the mistakes made during the investigation which were identified when analysing the procedures are as follows:

During the analysis of the procedures carried out at the crime scene one procedure which can be identified as being carried out wrong and damaging the case was the wearing of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment). Almost nobody who entered into the crime scene wore PPE, therefore any contact they made with anything in the crime scene caused contamination to occur to vital pieces of evidence. Also in regards to the procedure of wearing PPE, the scenes of crime officers wore the same gloves whilst collecting all the evidence, therefore causing cross contamination to occur. It can therefore be analysed that the collection of evidence was not valid due to this contamination, which occurred to the evidence – any critical evidence would not be able to be believed because of the contamination. If the PPE had been worn as it was supposed to be by every member of the investigation team who entered the crime scene the evidence would be secured in the sense that no contamination would have been caused by transfer from an member of the team’s shoes, clothes or fingers (fingerprints).

When analysing the procedures another mistake which can be identified  in the procedures carried out during the investigation of the deaths of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman was that the cordoning off of the scene was not carried out effectively, this being because only the immediate area of the scene was cordoned off therefore allowing any evidence outside this narrow cordon to become contaminated by the public passing by. Therefore any evidence outside this cordon would not have been able to be submitted as evidence – possibly losing vital evidence indicating the guilty individual. The procedure of cordoning off the scene should have carried out using a much wider cordon to allow for any evidence on the pavement or road outside Nicole’s property to be found and collected prior to it being contaminated by the building number of onlookers. If the cordon were too wide the correct procedure would have been to narrow it after any evidence had been collected.

An analysis of the procedures when collecting the evidence can identify issues with the bagging of evidence, which was carried out by the scenes of crime officers. The correct procedure when bagging evidence is to bag each individual piece of evidence separately in the correct packaging and seal the bags, this is in order to prevent contamination occurring whilst the evidence is transported from the crime scene to the laboratory to be analysed. However in the OJ Simpson case a large number of blood evidence collected on swabs was packaged in the same bag, therefore allowing cross contamination to occur to all of the evidence, if the evidence had been packaged correctly following the correct procedures this would not have happened. Due to this error, the majority of blood evidence was thrown out of court during the trial and the defence were able to build a string case based on the contamination and degradation, which had occurred to the blood evidence.

A final example of a procedure during the collection of evidence, which can be analysed as being damaging to the overall case, was the incorrect use of the chain of custody during the Simpson case. Many pieces of evidence were not checked into the chain of custody as soon as they had been collected – as is the correct procedure, instead they were carried around for hours by members of the investigation team. This mistake can be analysed as being damaging to the overall investigation because it allowed for the question to be brought up regarding whether in that time evidence could have been manipulated or planted by the investigation team, therefore allowing the defence to use this as an argument when criticising the conduct and performance of the investigation team.