O. J. Simpson Murder Case - Arrest and Trial

Arrest and Trial

On June 20, Simpson was arraigned and pleaded not guilty to both murders. As expected, the presiding judge ordered that Simpson be held without bail. The following day, a grand jury was called to determine whether to indict him for the two murders. Two days later, on June 23, the grand jury was dismissed as a result of excessive media coverage, which might influence the grand jury's neutrality. Jill Shively, a Brentwood resident who testified that she saw Simpson speeding away from the area of Nicole's house on the night of the murders, testified to the grand jury that the Bronco almost collided with a Nissan at the intersection of Bundy and San Vicente Boulevard. Another grand jury witness, Jose Camacho, was a knife salesman at Ross Cutlery who claimed to have sold Simpson a 15-inch (380 mm) German-made knife similar to the murder weapon three weeks before the murders. Shively and Camacho were not presented by the prosecution at the criminal trial after they sold their stories to the tabloid press. Shively had talked to the television show Hard Copy for $5,000, and Camacho sold his story to the National Enquirer for $12,500.

Rather than a grand jury hearing, a probable cause hearing was held to determine whether or not to bring Simpson to trial, which was a minor victory for Simpson's lawyers who would now have access to evidence as it is being presented by the prosecution in contrast to a grand jury hearing. After a week-long court hearing, California Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy-Powell ruled on July 7 that there was sufficient evidence to bring Simpson to trial for the murders. At his arraignment on July 29, when asked how he pled to the murders, Simpson, breaking a courtroom practice that says the accused may plead only simple words of "guilty" or "not guilty," firmly stated: "Absolutely, one hundred percent, not guilty."

Following the preliminary hearing, the case was moved from Santa Monica to the Criminal Courts Building in downtown Los Angeles. The decision, commonly attributed to the District Attorney, was actually the decision of the Los Angeles Superior Court, which cited damage to the Santa Monica Courthouse from the 1994 Northridge earthquake and security concerns for moving the trial downtown. The decision likely resulted in a jury pool with more Latinos, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and blue-collar workers than one would find from Santa Monica.

Leading the murder investigation was veteran LAPD detective Tom Lange. In 1995, the criminal trial of O.J. Simpson was televised for 134 days. The prosecution elected not to ask for the death penalty, and instead it sought a life sentence. The TV exposure made celebrities of many of the figures in the trial, including Judge Lance Ito.

Prosecutor Marcia Clark, a 40-year-old Deputy District Attorney, was designated as the lead prosecutor, which was to be her twenty-first murder trial during her 13 years with the D.A.'s office. Deputy District Attorney Christopher A. Darden, an African-American prosecutor widely experienced in murder trials, became Clark's co-counsel.

Since Simpson wanted a speedy trial, the defense and prosecuting attorneys worked around the clock for several months to prepare their cases. In October 1994, Judge Ito started interviewing 304 prospective jurors, each of whom had to fill out a 75-page questionnaire. On November 3, 12 jurors were seated with 12 alternates.

Televised by Court TV, and in part by other cable and network news outlets, the trial began on January 24, 1995. Los Angeles County prosecutor Christopher Darden argued that Simpson killed his ex-wife in a jealous rage. The prosecution opened its case by playing a 9-1-1 call that Nicole Brown Simpson had made on January 1, 1989. She expressed fear that Simpson would physically harm her, and he could be heard yelling at her in the background. The prosecution also presented dozens of expert witnesses, on subjects ranging from DNA fingerprinting to blood and shoeprint analysis, to place Simpson at the scene of the crime.

The prosecution spent the opening weeks of the trial presenting evidence that Simpson had a history of physically abusing Nicole. Simpson's lawyer Alan Dershowitz argued that only a tiny fraction of women who are abused by their mates are murdered. This claim is often cited in probability classes as an example of how Bayes' rule is counterintuitive since the implied probability that Simpson committed the murder is about two thousand times what Dershowitz suggested.

Within days after the start of the trial, lawyers and persons viewing the trial from a single closed-circuit TV camera in the courtroom saw an emerging pattern: Continual and countless interruptions with objections from both sides of the courtroom, as well as one "sidebar" conference after another with the judge beyond earshot of the unseen jury located just below and out of the camera's frame.