Process of Elimination

The process of elimination is the ninth stage of the investigation process that the police have to follow after a crime has been committed. During this stage, the police use the patterns and links that they had found from the previous stage in the investigation (identifying patterns and links) to see if the pieces of evidence has any correlation with any of the possible suspects of the crime. This is a very important stage in the investigation process because it allows the police to narrow down the suspects of the crime that has been committed, in most crimes the list is narrowed down to one suspect but there has been cases where the evidence found can point to multiple suspects. During this process suspects are interviewed by the police and questioned, they take into account the evidence that puts the suspect at the crime and from this interview the police decide whether to keep them as a suspect or to eliminate them from the suspect list.


OJ Simpson:

In the OJ Simpson case where he allegedly killed Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman, OJ was seen from the very start of the investigation as the man who killed Nicole and Ronald according to the police as all the evidence that was found at the scene seemed to point straight to him, but even without solid evidence the police saw OJ Simpson as the killer and then tailored the investigation from this point around him. They did not want to think about whether there was a chance that OJ did not commit the crime (e.g, set up or framed), this meant that they put very little thought into questioning other suspects and following up on them.

However, even though the police did not look into the fact that OJ Simpson could have been innocent they had every right to believe that he was the one who committed the crime due to the overwhelming amount of evidence that placed him at the scene of the crime, and this was after a large amount of the evidence had been contaminated. There where over one hundred pieces of evidence found at the scene that where linked to OJ to the crime such as a glove which was identical to one found in OJ's house, hair found on the body if Ronald Goldman which matched OJ's race and hair colour, blood found at the scene which matched his blood type (he had a cut on his hand which he could not remember how he did it) and blood found stained on the seats of his car which was later found to be Nicole's. This is only some of the evidence found that pointed directly to OJ but due to how bad the forensic work was most of the evidence found at the scene could not be used in court.

Mark Furham also played a big part on why OJ Simpson was not charged for murder as he did not exactly do his work by the books. After the evidence had been collected from the crime scene it was his job to go to OJ's house and question him about what had happened but when he got there he had found that OJ had got on a late night flight out of the city, Furham hopped the fence of OJ's house without a warrant to look for evidence to link him to the crime, this is where the other glove was found. However, Furham has been openly racist on camera which led the defending team of OJ to suggest that Furham had planted the evidence found as he was discriminating OJ because of the colour of his skin, he also should not have trespassed into OJ's house as he did not have a warrant.