Investigating Leads

The fifth stage in the investigation process is where they investigate the leads that they had already found from the previous stages. This allows the police to look more deeply at and analyse what they know about the crime which will hopefully lead to an arrest. Many thinks happen during this stage such as forensic strategy which is when the police analyse the  physical evidence that was found at the crime and think about how it can be used in court as evidence to support their theory, house to house inquiries would also take place which would  give the police a better understanding of where the crime took place and they might also get information that they did not know before which might help progress the case, intelligence strategy would also take place which is where they would expand on the evidence that they already have, surveillance would also take place such as examining the CCTV files that where taken from around the scene of the crime which could give the police more suspects. The police working on the case have to follow a similar procedure with all of the suspects, this is known as Trace-Interview-Eliminate. the first step to this procedure is trace in which the police use the evidence that has previously been found to point them in the direction of a suspect, the police then interview them, depending on the answers they get from the interview the police will either eliminate them from being a suspect or will keep them as a suspect. This is done until the police have norrowed the suspects down to a reasonable number.

OJ Simpson:

As soon as the bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were found by the police and all evidence found at the scene was collected the police saw OJ Simpson as the primary suspect of the crime. Straight after the police where done with the crime scene detective Mark Fuhrman was tasked with going to OJ's house to inform him of the murder and also question him to see if he knew anything about what had happened, when he arrived he found that OJ had took a late night flight out of town which led Fuhrman to believe that he was involved in the case which is why he decided to investigate his house without a warrant. In the house he found a key piece of evidence which was a glove that was identical to one found at the scene. OJ was informed by the police about the murder of Nicole and Ronald which resulted in OJ getting a flight back to Los Angeles, he was then taken in by the police and questioned.

Soon after Robert Shapiro was appointed as his defense councilor the police decided that they had enough evidence to convict OJ for the murders of Nicole and Ronald, this led to a car chase as OJ decided to flee from the police. The whole chase could be watched by the public on TV as it was being recorded live which created a big stir in the media. When OJ finally stopped he turned himself into the police.