Evidence Handled by Team Members - The Gloves

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 a pair of blood covered leather gloves, one of which was found at the scene of the murders and another found behind OJ Simpson’s property. The police, detectives, scenes of crime officers and forensic scientists all handled this evidence.

Each of the members of the investigation team who handled this piece of evidence had the responsibility to ensure that it was part of a secure audit trail – ensuring that the evidence remained intact and uncontaminated – by correctly bagging and labelling the evidence and also by ensuring that the evidence was passed through a complete chain of custody in order to make it to the forensics lab to be analysed.

Officer Robert Riske –the first attending officer at the scene was the first team member to find the evidence in the form of the first leather glove found at the scene of the murders. Officer Riske approached the glove and handled it in order to investigate whether the perpetrator may have dropped the glove or whether it belonged to one of the victims. This can be identified as being a mistake as Officer Riske should not have handled the evidence prior to the scenes of crime officers arriving. Also as he was not wearing personal protective equipment he would have contaminated the glove when handling it. Also a similar situation occurred when detectives discovered the leather glove behind Simpsons property – the detectives handled the glove to determine if it matched the glove from the murder scene, however again they were not wearing personal protective equipment in order to prevent contamination occurring to the glove.

Also primarily at the scene of the murders of Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown both the police and the detectives failed to correctly secure the scene allowing a large amount of people who were not clothed in appropriate personal protective equipment, including members of the public into the crime scene. As all these people were walking around various areas of the scene the evidence was not protected or kept secure as it could easily have been contaminated or moved by different individuals. These mistakes that were made by both the police officers and the detectives therefore can be identified as being a failure in keeping the evidence within a secure audit trail. These mistakes also proved to be detrimental to the case as it again allowed the defence to argue that if the evidence was contaminated by the team members who were supposed to keep it secure, it could also easily have been altered and blood evidence planted on the gloves by the team members or other individuals in order to frame Simpson, these mistakes and the argument of contamination of evidence was a contributing factor which ended in the acquittal of Simpson.