Cracking the Case

In the OJ Simpson case where OJ Simpson allegedly killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman the investigation team came to a conclusion in which they believed that OJ Simpson was indeed the one who killed his ex wife and her friend Ronald Goldman due to all the leads that they were receiving which all pointed straight to OJ Simpson, however, due to the amount of errors made by the investigation team themselves they were not actually able to sentence OJ for the crime. Most of these errors actually came from when the scene of the crime was being examined as the scenes of crime officers were very unprofessional when completing their task, evidence was contaminated and evidence was lost within the audit trail. This resulted in their being minimal evidence that was able to be used in court, and the evidence that could be used was not researched enough by the lawyers (as they did not think about how the glove which was one of the main pieces of evidence could have shrunk due to how it was stored) which eventually led to OJ Simpson getting away with the crime.

the procedures that are meant to be followed when investigating a crime scene (such as PPE, common approach path, marking pieces of evidence, etc.) were not followed out as they should of done. Robert Riske was the first attending officer at the scene shortly followed by another officer called Miguel Terrazas, it was their job to assess the scene so that when the SOCO team arrived to collected the evidence they could direct them around the scene. It was also their job to question witnesses to see what they knew about the crime that took place but it was later revealed that all the officers asked the neighbors was how they found the scene. As neither of the agents placed crime scene tape around the perimeter of the scene it was very easy for the media to enter the crime scene to take pictures of the crime that had took place, as the officers knew that they would not want the case in the papers this early (as this comes in a later stage in the investigation) they tried to cover up the evidence using towels that where found in Nicole's house to stop the evidence and the bodies being photographed, this basically destroyed a lot of the evidence at the scene as the towels had contaminated it.

As the SOCO team arrived at the scene they did not get briefed by the two officers there as they were still trying to deal with the media, there was also no path made by the officers so that the SOCO team could make their way through the scene without walking over the evidence , this led to them collecting evidence that had already been contaminated by officers Riske and Terrazas. The SOCO team was also not wearing the correct personal protection equipment (PPE) such as shoe protectors, face protectors and leaving the hoods down on their suits. By not wearing shoe protectors they contaminated the evidence as they were not set a specific path to the evidence, this meant that as they where trying to make their way around the scene they where walking all over evidence that could not be easily seen (such as footprints made by the killer), they also were not wearing face protectors which meant if they coughed or sneezed by a piece of evidence they could contaminate it, hoods were not worn which could also lead to pieces of hair falling onto bodies which could also contaminate them. They also collected the evidence in a way that could cause contamination or loss of evidence, for example, many pieces of evidence were doubled up in bags which resulted in the two pieces of evidence contaminating each other, this meant the pieces could not be used in court as evidence. There were also many pieces of evidence that were not correctly tagged which resulted in evidence being lost or misplaced within the audit trail.

One of the most useful pieces of evidence found at the crime scene were a set of bloody fingerprints that where believed to belong to OJ Simpson, as well as a trail of footprints that led right from the bodies out of the house, these where also believed to be OJ's footprints. It was later found due to extensive research that the blood the fingerprints were made out of was in fact OJ's as well as the fingerprint itself being a strong match according to reports. At the time OJ also had cuts on his hand which he claimed was from cooking, the problem being the cut on his hand was not of a large enough size to produce the amount of blood that the fingerprint was found in at the scene, Hair fibers were also found at the scene but none had any root balls attached which meant that the DNA of the hair could not be tested against OJ. Instead the forensic scientists had to perform visual and microscopic tests to see if the hairs belonged to OJ, from the examinations that they did it was concluded that the hair fibers found at the scene was a match to OJ Simpson. A valuable piece of evidence found at the scene by the police was a glove stained with blood, it was later found that the blood belonged to Nicole and the glove was also a match to the glove that was later found in OJ Simpsons house by detective Mark Fuhram. Even though a large amount of evidence was collected, only a small amount of evidence could actually be used due to how badly the evidence was collected by the forensic team. The pair of gloves that where found (one at the crime scene and one at OJ's house) were one of the main pieces of evidence used in court that could link OJ to the crime scene, however, the keep the gloves preserved they had to be frozen and due to them being wet with blood this resulted in them shrinking, this is why when OJ tried on the gloves in court they did not fit which resulted in him not being charged for the crime. A second main piece of physical evidence was also found at the scene was the shoe prints that were found which started at the bodies of Nicole and Ronald and led to the entrance of the house, it was later found that the shoes were a size twelve which is the same size as OJ Simpson and that the shoes had a very rare sole which only belonged to the shoe make Bruno Magli which OJ had a pair of.

Due to the evidence trail not being followed correctly by the members of the investigation team the amount of evidence that could be used in court decreased significantly which eventually resulted in OJ Simpson getting away with the murder of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman. All of the investigation team were involved in one way or another which meant that they all contributed to the audit trail, however some members (such as the forensic analysts) did their role much more professionally whereas others did not. The first member of the investigation team to be involved in the audit trail is the scenes of crime officers, this was done when they first collected the evidence and wrote what evidence they have collected in the exhibits log, which is then transferred to the chain of custody so that everyone else that receives the evidence collected is able to sign the chain to say that the evidence has been in their possession, they did not do their audit trail role correctly as more than half of the evidence that was collected (as well as the evidence that was missed such as the bloody fingerprint) was either not collected correctly or not labelled correctly, this resulted in the audit trail not being secure as this evidence had to constantly be removed. To contribute to the security of the audit trail the scenes of crime officers should have correctly bagged and tagged the evidence as well as correctly filled out the exhibits log stating every piece of evidence they have collected. The second member of the team to receive the trail was the forensic analysts, unlike the scenes of crime officers Henry Lee and the rest of his team did their role in the audit trail correctly, however, due to the SOCO team not collecting the evidence in the correct way a lot of evidence received was already contaminated but the forensic analysts did contribute to the audit trail in the way they should have, all evidence passed through to them was correctly analysed (the pieces that could be at least) and resealed once the examination was complete so the evidence could be stored. This results from the multiple examinations done by the forensic analysts was then sent to the lawyers so that it could then be used in court as evidence, the lawyers also did do their role correctly, however due to the SOCO team contaminating lots of evidence as well as evidence being lost as it was not labelled correctly the lawyers only ended up with three main pieces of evidence linking OJ to the scene which meant that there job was made a lot more difficult.

The three main pieces of evidence that were sent to the lawyers to use in court to link OJ Simpson to the scene of the crime were the gloves (one found at the scene and the other at his property), Nicole's blood that was found in OJ's car and the African-American hair fibers were found on the body of Ronald Goldman. In the case where OJ Simpson allegedly killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman there was a very controversial court case, in the end OJ was not convicted with the crime, many people saw this as brilliant work from the dream team which included Robert Kardashian, Lee Bailey, Robert Shapiro, Alan Dershowitz and Gerald Uelmen. The piece of evidence that at the time was the polices main link to the crime and OJ was the glove that was found at the scene which was identical to one found at his home. When OJ was in court the police wanted him to try on the glove to see if it would fit as OJ denied ever seeing the glove and claimed that detective Mark Fuhram planted the glove at his house as he was a racist. It was at this point when OJ's lawyer said to the Judge; "if it does not fit then you must acquit," meaning that if the glove did not fit OJ then he could not be charged for the crime. The glove was too small for OJ which meant that he could not be charged which shocked the police, but what they did not realise was that for the glove to be preserved it had to be frozen and due to the glove being soaked with blood the glove shrank which is why it did not fit in the court room.

The outcome of the case could have been completely different given that the members of the investigation team followed their roles as they were supposed to. Most of the fault should placed on the scenes of crime officers due to how poorly and unprofessionally they examined the scene and collected the evidence, they would have correctly collected the evidence (using the right equipment as well as wearing the correct PPE when collecting the evidence to limit the amount of contamination) and packaged it in a way in which contamination would not take place then this would have benefited the investigation as a whole. If this would have been done then the forensic analysts would have had a greater variety of evidence to come to conclusions over which would have resulted in more evidence being available to the lawyers which in turn could have resulted in OJ Simpson being sentenced for the killing of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman.