Evidence Handled by Team Members - The Bodies

The first piece of evidence, which can be identified as being handled by different team members involved in the investigation, was the bodies of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman. The Police, Detectives, Scenes Of Crime Officer’s and the Pathologist handled this evidence.

The first team members to handle the bodies of the victims were the police, primarily officer Robert Riske. It can be identified that he and other police officers failed to keep this evidence secure. The reasons for this are detailed below. Upon the discovery of the bodies he checked their pulses to determine whether the victims were still alive or not. This is common practice upon attendance at crime scenes to determine whether victims need first aid or not, however then officer Riske then failed to cordon off and secure the scene correctly which is a primary job role of the police, as this was not completed many unauthorised personnel were able to gain access into the scene. Many of these people obviously were interested in the bodies and therefore many of them came into contact with them – as none of these individuals were wearing Personal Protective Equipment, this led to the evidence (the bodies) potentially becoming contaminated.

When the investigation was taken over by detectives from the Los Angeles Homicide Division the evidence within the scene was also passed into their supervision. They were therefore the next people to handle the bodies, like the police they also failed to ensure that a secure audit trail was maintained. The detectives in the OJ Simpson case were Detective Fuhrman, Detective Lange and Detective Vannatter. These team members made mistakes in the handling of the bodies. The detectives were supposed to ensure that no contamination occurred to the bodies prior to them being processed for potential evidence. However due to large amounts of neighbours, media and other individuals gathering at the entrance to the crime scene Detective Lange took a blanket from within the house and placed it over the body of Nicole, to prevent pictures of the body being taken. This however led to contamination, as fibres, hairs and anything else that had been on the blanket would have transferred to the body. This mistake was detrimental to the investigation as a hair fibre found to belong to OJ Simpson was found on Nicole’s body, however this was dismissed in court as it was argued that this could have come from the blanket that had been previously innocently used by Simpson within the house – The dismissal of this evidence was a contributing factor to Simpson eventually being acquitted. 

As stated above the scenes of crime officers and the pathologist also handled the bodies. These members of the investigation in relation to the bodies are tasked with ensuring a secure audit trail, this is because they should ensure that any evidence on the body is packaged and labelled correctly, they then must ensure that this evidence is checked into the chain of custody – monitored by an exhibits officer the purpose of this chain of custody is in order to record who has handled the evidence, where the evidence was found within the crime scene and also to record where the evidence should go to be processed and analysed. Within the OJ Simpson case the scenes of crime officers and the pathologist did this correctly, however as the previous team members who handled the bodies had already contaminated the evidence, the SOCO’s and pathologist were unable to effectively secure the evidence within the audit trail - which is designed to prevent contamination occurring.