O.J. SIMPSON CASE: EVIDENCE AND VERDICT
This research paper examines how the evidence in this case was used by the jury to find the defendant, O. J. Simpson, not guilty. The predominantly black and female jury took less than four hours to arrive at its verdict. Such a speedy decision appeared to many to be strange behavior after a case which took nine months to try and involved 1015 pieces of evidence, 45,000 pages of transcript and scores of witnesses (Behind 27). This led many observers to conclude that the jury had ignored a 'mountain of evidence' against Simpson and had voted to acquit based on its emotional biases and external perceptions unrelated to the evidence. A more accurate interpretation would be that the jury made up its mind before it began its deliberations and found that a reasonable doubt existed as to Simpson's guilt, largely because it selectively relied on some items of evidence, principally the jurors' perception that the police may have framed him and that the authorities had mishandled key items of blood evidence, and discounted other evidence, which was more than sufficient to sustain a guilty verdict. In arriving at their verdict, the jury was influenced by many factors before and during the trial, including police and prosecutorial errors, questionable rulings by the trial judge Lance Ito, media-created impressions and clever playing of the race card by the defense Dream Team.
Importance of pre-trial events and decisions
Middle-aged, college-educated female black juror Sheila Woods said publicly that "she couldn't convict him [Simpson] on the evidence" and 40 year old Brenda Moore, another black female, said on television: "We were fair. It wasn't a matter of sympathy . . . [or] favoritism. It was a matter of that evidence" (Cockburn 27; Adams A26). Even if one makes the debatable assumption that their reactions were representative of the entire jury, only a superhuman jury could have avoided b...