Concluding The Case

In the case of the murders of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman the investigating team reached the conclusion that both of the murders had been carried out by Nicole’s ex husband – OJ Simpson. They were able to conclude that he had gone round to her home and what they stated as in a “jealous rage” attacked and killed both Ronald and Nicole before fleeing the scene and returning home.

The conclusions reached by the investigation team can be said to have been justified as a large amount of incriminating evidence was not only found at the scene of the murders but also at Simpson’s own house. This evidence pointed to him being guilty of the murders and allowed the investigation team to build a case against him to present in court to attempt to prove to the jury that Simpson was guilty and therefore secure a prosecution by which Simpson would be punished and would serve time in prison.

As mentioned above and throughout this blog a number of pieces of evidence which were found, collected and later presented, in court during the trial pointed to and allowed the investigation team to conclude that Simpson had committed the murders. The evidence which allowed them to reach this conclusion included huge amounts of blood samples which were collected at the murder scene, at Simpsons house and also from inside his car other evidence included witness testimonies, primarily the statement given by Simpson’s limo driver Alan Park.  

The first major pieces of evidence, which allowed the investigation team to conclude that Simpson was guilty of the murders, came in the form of biological evidence and DNA test results which came back from the testing of some blood droplets found at the scene of the two murders.  The investigation team was able to use this evidence to link Simpson to the crime as the accuracy of the test gave them results which could be seen as extremely strong in indicating Simpsons guilt. These DNA results indicated that the blood could only have come from approximately one out of 170 million sources of blood and that the sample was a match to Simpson’s blood. Also blood found in a pair of socks found in OJ Simpsons bedroom were tested and DNA analysis found that the blood matched Nicole and that only one out of 6.8 billion sources of blood would have been a match. Therefore the fact that Simpson’s blood was found at the murder scene allowed the investigation team to conclude that he must have been present at the scene and injured himself in some way which caused him to bleed, and also more incriminatingly the blood on OJ’s socks which matched Nicole allowed investigators to conclude that he must have been the murderer as the person who had committed the brutal attacks would have been covered in blood and therefore this would have been the reason as to why the blood was on the socks. The investigation team asked why else would Nicole’s blood be on a pair of his socks if he hadn’t been the one committing the murders?

The witness statement taken from Alan Park, Simpson’s personal limo driver was also able to allow the investigation team to make links indicating that Simpson was guilty of the crimes. Park was able to provide testament that whilst waiting outside Simpson’s residence to take him to the airport, he observed an individual matching Simpson’s description sneaking into the house, shortly after the time the murders would have occurred. This witness testimony was able to provide the investigators with testament providing the strong possibility that Simpson was out of his house and without an alibi for the time the murders occurred – as Simpson had claimed that he was in his home for the entire time at which the murders would have occurred, if he was spotted out of his house, this would provide investigators with reason to doubt Simpson’s innocence as he was clearly hiding something from them and lying about his whereabouts. The doubt about Simpson’s alibi that this witness testimony provided the investigators as well as other evidence collected at the scene which indicated Simpson’s guilt and also at Simpson’s home gave the investigators justified reason to conclude that he was guilty.

As mentioned throughout this blog there were many different pieces of evidence collected by the investigation team during the course of the investigation into the murders of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman. A final example of a major piece of evidence which was able to link Simpson to the crime and therefore lead the investigation team to making a justified conclusion regarding Simpson’s guilt was the leather gloves, one of which was found at the scene of the crime and the other found on the pathway behind Simpson’s property. The reason as to why this evidence was able to allow the investigating team to reach their conclusion that Simpson was guilty of the murders was that firstly they were soaked in blood which testing found to be Nicole’s and Ron’s, therefore only the killer could have worn these gloves also as one of the pair was found at Simpson’s property this therefore linked him strongly to the crime.

As discussed there was a large amount of evidence providing strong evidence of Simpson being guilty of the murders of both Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman. This evidence allowed the investigation team to reach the conclusion that he was guilty and therefore take the case to court, presenting evidence to prove to the jury Simpson’s guilt.

However after the trial started it was apparent that the investigation team and the prosecution’s case was not as straight forward as the actual evidence indicated it to be. At the end of the highly televised trial, Simpson was acquitted by the jury of the murders, this occurred even with the evidence indicating his guilt.

The acquittal of Simpson despite the incriminating evidence can be said to be because of a number of different errors made by the investigation team, these will be discussed and evaluated below. There are a number of set procedures which have to be followed by the investigation team when investigating a crime, in the OJ Simpson case errors can be identified at each stage of the investigation process and therefore these can be identified as weaknesses of the process.

The first weakness that can be identified in the investigation process is that the Scenes of crime officers at the scene used the same gloves and tweezers whilst collecting different pieces of blood evidence and other types of evidence. This was a weakness as contamination of evidence would have occurred, between the collection of each of the pieces of evidence this therefore

Another weakness made in the investigation process by the investigation team was that separate pieces of blood evidence, belonging to Nicole, Ronald and what was found to be OJ Simpson, were placed within the same evidence bags. This therefore led to all of the blood evidence becoming cross contaminated, this led to the evidence being criticized and thrown out in the eventual court case that occurred, leading to the acquittal of Simpson.

Another weakness within the investigation process was that a sample from OJ Simpson to be used for comparison against blood collected at the crime scene was left unlabeled and no police documents were filled out regarding the amount of blood taken. This error proved detrimental further on in the case when the medical personnel who took the blood was asked how much they had taken, at the trial in court. They were only able to guess that it must be around 8ml, as this is the amount normally taken in a blood test, however only 6.5ml was in the test tube when it arrived at the forensics lab for analysis. This error in the labeling procedure led to the defense to be able to argue that the missing blood must have been planted at the scene to frame OJ Simpson. This was one of the main arguments that were believed to have helped Simpson be acquitted of the murders.

Weaknesses regarding the evidence trail was that firstly items were not correctly checked into the exhibits officers in charge of the chain of custody, this can be identified as very few blood swabs were down in the chain of evidence as being submitted for testing, however a much larger number of swabs actually arrived at the laboratory to be tested – therefore meaning that the majority had not gone through the chain of custody. This can be seen as negative as if the items were not logged into the chain of custody any of the evidence could have been taken or gone missing and none of the detectives or SOCO’s would have known.

Also a number of items of evidence including the blood sample taken for comparison from OJ Simpson were carried around by officers for considerable amounts of time before being passed into the chain of custody, whereas as soon as the officers were handed this evidence it should have been logged immediately. This error allowed Simpson’s defense to argue that the evidence linking Simpson to the murders could easily have been planted or contaminated in order to frame him.

No strengths can be identified as part of the procedures followed by the investigation team. This is because there were so many weaknesses and errors made by the investigation team that it compromised the case and even though the evidence against Simpson was strong at indicating that he was guilty, the errors made compromised the case and led the jury to doubt the validity of the evidence and have doubts that it could have been planted or doctored by police officers to make Simpson look guilty.

The conclusion reached by the investigation team was that Simpson was guilty of the murders of Nicole and Ronald, this conclusion can be justified as there was a large amount of evidence at the crime scene and corresponding evidence at Simpson’s property and within his car, also there was evidence in the form of witness statements which proved that Simpson’s alibi for the time of the murders was not correct. Although it can be said that the conclusions came to by the investigation team were justified by the amount of evidence which pointed to Simpsons guilt, the outcome of the case was that Simpson was acquitted. This was because of the number of mistakes made throughout the investigation by different members of the investigation team enabled the jury to doubt Simpsons guilt. If Simpson was in fact guilty this means that a murder was allowed to get a way with it and live his life as a free man. The recommendations for alterative conclusions would just be that the investigation process should have been carried more professionally following guidelines in order to ensure that mistakes were kept to a minimum and therefore this would mean that the integrity of the evidence collected would have been intact and this would have more likely allowed the jury to come to the conclusion that Simpson was guilty. This would be because the evidence indicating Simpson’s guilt would not have possibly been contaminated or contaminated with and therefore would be reliable.