Evidence Handled by Team Members - Blood Evidence

Another piece of evidence that was handled by a number of different members of the investigation team investigating the murders of Nicole brown and Ronald Goldman, was blood evidence, some of this was taken from the scene of the murder, other blood evidence was taken from Simpson’s Ford Bronco and more was taken from Simpson himself in order to make comparisons to the blood suspected to be from the perpetrator and taken from the scene of the crime. The detectives, scenes of crime officers and forensic scientists handled this evidence and were supposed to play a part in ensuring a secure audit trail of the evidence was maintained.

The detectives were the first team members to actually handle the blood evidence, this was because they performed a walk through of the crime scene prior to the scenes of crime officers arriving, this was in order to make a list of evidence within their notes that they felt were significant and needed to be collected and secured within the audit trail. One of the main detectives involved with this walk through was Detective Mark Fuhrman, at this point mistakes were made in regards to the securing of the blood evidence. When Detective Fuhrman finished his shift at the crime scene he was supposed to brief the detectives who were taking over about the significant evidence present at the scene. This was so that they would be able to inform the SOCO’s, who would then be able to collect this and enter it into the chain of custody. However Detective Fuhrman failed to tell the detectives taking over at the crime scene that there was a blood on a gate at the property, as no one was aware of this blood evidence it was overlooked and not collected during the initial investigation at the scene of the crime. It was however collected a couple of weeks afterwards. However because of the mistake Fuhrman made in not properly ensuring the evidence was secured, even though this blood came back indicating that it belonged to OJ Simpson it was thrown out of court due to the possibility that it was planted after the crime occurred by officers. This again helped contribute to the final decision of the jury – the acquittal of OJ Simpson.

Another detective who was part of the investigation team and handled blood evidence was Detective Vannatter, he was the detective who accompanied Simpson to the police station in order to have his blood taken as a sample to be analysed and compared to blood from the crime scene. After the blood had been taken Vannatter’s job role tasked him with securely taking the blood evidence and handing it to the exhibits officer in charge of the evidence from this case, then the blood would have been booked into the chain of custody and a secure audit trail established. However Vannatter made a mistake and took the blood sample with him in his pocket back to the crime scene where it stayed whilst he worked the scene and for hours afterwards, until he eventually gave this evidence to the senior scenes of crime officer who then labelled the evidence and booked it into the exhibits log. This mishandling of evidence proved detrimental to the case as at the trial, questions were asked about whether an amount had blood had gone missing from the sample, and as the blood was not correctly labelled nor was a secure audit trail established until hours after the blood had been drawn, the missing blood could not be explained, nor could Vannatter explain why instead of booking the blood sample into the chain of custody straight away, he carried it around and even entered back into the crime scene with it on him. This mistake again added to OJ Simpson being acquitted.

The scenes of crime officers who were members of the investigation team also handled all of the blood evidence. Their job role tasked them with swabbing blood samples from the scene of the murders and other areas – such as inside Simpsons ford bronco. They then were required to bag these samples separately and securely within the appropriate evidence bags and label the swabs stating exactly where the blood evidence had come from in relation to the crime scene and who had collected it. All of these procedures should have been followed in order to ensure that the evidence was a part of a secure audit trail. However within the OJ Simpson case the scenes of crime officers made a number of mistakes when collecting the blood evidence. Firstly many of the blood swabs collected by the SOCO’s were placed into the same evidence bag – the correct practice for the collection of this evidence is for each swab to be placed into its own separate bag. This therefore meant that all of the swabs that were packaged together were cross-contaminated. Another mistake made by the SOCO’s was that the majority of the blood evidence was not labelled at all – therefore it was impossible to know where any of the blood samples had come from within the scene – leading to a large amount of confusion. Finally a mistake made in relation to the chain of custody was that only a small number of blood swabs were actually recorded as being checked into the audit trail. However the forensics lab received considerably more blood swabs that had neither record of being collected at the scene nor any record indicating who had handled the evidence before it arrived at the labs. This meant that as no actual record had been kept regarding the amount of blood swabs collected nobody could be sure that they had not been tampered with, or whether some swabs may have got lost or been removed from the evidence. All of these mistakes made by the scenes of crime officers meant that a secure audit trail for the majority of all the blood evidence was not established. This therefore allowed the defence and jury to question how reliable the evidence against Simpson actually was, these mistakes and the questions they raised were a contributing factor to OJ Simpson eventually being acquitted even though a large amount of evidence pointed to him being the killer of Nicole and Ronald.