You know, usually when we start one of these
deep dives, I like to ease this in gently. I
like to set the scene, maybe offer a little bit
of obscure background context to, you know, warm
everyone up. Put a little appetizer. Exactly.
But for this topic, I feel like that is totally
unnecessary. In fact, I feel like everyone listening
right now. already has a scene playing in their
head the second they saw the title. Oh, absolutely.
Maybe it's a white Ford Bronco crawling down
a freeway in Los Angeles, surrounded by this
just phalanx of police cars. Maybe it's a leather
glove that just refuses to go onto a hand. Or
maybe it's just the sheer visceral shock of a
verdict that seemed to slice the entire country
right down the middle. arguably the most famous
criminal case in American history. I don't think
that's an exaggeration at all. And I don't think
that is hyperbole. It has everything. Celebrity,
tragedy, race, class, science, media. It's the
trial of the century. It really is. And because
it is so famous, because it has become this massive
cultural touchstone that has been parodied and
dramatized for 30 years, it is actually very
easy to forget the specifics. That's so true.
We remember the catchphrases. If it doesn't fit,
you must acquit. But we often lose sight of the
actual legal mechanics and the forensic details
that drove the outcome. Exactly. We are talking,
of course, about the people of the state of California
v. Orenthal James Simpson. And our mission today
is to do something a little different. We aren't
here to rehash the tabloid gossip or the made
-for -TV movie drama. We want to strip away the
celebrity spectacle as much as humanly possible
anyway. And look at the machinery of this trial.
Yeah, get into the weeds. We want to understand
the strategies, the specific forensic science,
and the massive societal pressures that created
a perfect storm in that Los Angeles courtroom.
And we have a massive stack of sources today.
We are looking at court transcripts, contemporary
reporting from 1994 and 1995, deep dive analyses
of the legal teams, books written by the participants,
and even statistical breakdowns of the DNA evidence
that are frankly mind boggling. I can't wait
to get to the DNA. We are going to explore how
a prosecution team armed with what they called
a mountain of evidence went up against a dream
team of defense attorneys and how that collision
resulted in an acquittal. So let's start with
the event itself. We need to ground ourselves
in the timeline. It's June 12th, 1994. June 12th.
It is Sunday. We're in the Brentwood area of
Los Angeles, specifically at 875 South Bundy
Drive. Nicole Brown Simpson's condo. This is
the condominium of Nicole Brown Simpson, O .J.
Simpson's ex -wife. It's an affluent, quiet neighborhood.
But late that evening, the scene is just horrific.
Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman,
who was just there doing a favor, returning a
pair of glasses Nicole's mother had left at a
restaurant, are found stabbed to death outside
her condo. And we should be clear about the brutality
here. This wasn't a robbery gone wrong where
someone panicked. This was personal. This was
rage. It was extremely personal. The violence
was excessive. And almost immediately, the focus
turns to O .J. Simpson. Now, we have to contextualize
who O .J. Simpson was in 1994 because it's easy
to forget. Absolutely. He wasn't just a former
athlete. He was a cultural icon. He was the juice.
He was a Heisman Trophy winner, an NFL record
smasher who ran for 2 ,000 yards in a season.
He was a movie star in the Naked Gun films. He
was the friendly face of Hertz rental cars running
through airports. He was one of the most beloved
and recognizable figures in America. Which makes
the events of the next few days so incredibly
surreal. because he becomes the prime suspect.
And before we even get to the courtroom arguments,
we have to talk about the arrest. Or rather,
the non -arrest. Right. June 17, 1994. Simpson
has been charged with two counts of first -degree
murder with special circumstances. His lawyers
have arranged for him to turn himself in to the
LAPD at 11 .00 a .m. And everyone's waiting.
The police are waiting. The media is waiting.
And he just doesn't show up. And instead, we
get the Bronco chase. The low -speed pursuit
that stopped the world. Simpson is in the back
of a white Ford Bronco driven by his friend Al
Cowlings. D .C. D .C. Simpson reportedly has
a gun to his head, threatening suicide. They
are driving down the freeway at 35 miles per
hour, escorted by this massive fleet of police
cars. I looked up the stats on this, and it is
staggering. 95 million people watched that chase
live. 95 million. It interrupted the NBA finals.
Yeah. nbc actually cut away from a game between
the knicks and the rockets to show a car driving
down a freeway it was a singular moment Domino's
Pizza reported record sales because nobody was
cooking dinner. They were glued to the TV. Wow.
Water usage dropped because people were holding
it rather than going to the bathroom. No way.
But more importantly for our deep dive, it set
the tone for the legal battle. It established
the central spectacle. This wasn't just a murder
trial. It was a national event. You had Camp
OJ springing up outside the courthouse. The trial
was televised for 134 days. So let's get into
the courtroom. Because if you were looking at
this case on paper, If you were a prosecutor
looking at the file in that first week, you would
think you had the easiest win in history. Oh,
for sure. They called it a mountain of evidence.
That was the phrase lead prosecutor Marsha Clark
and her co -counsel Christopher Darden used.
They, along with William Hodgman, believed the
case was overwhelming. Their strategy was to
prove two things. motive and opportunity backed
by irrefutable science. They wanted to show that
Simpson had a reason to do it, the window to
do it, and that he left his signature all over
the crime scene in the form of DNA. So let's
unpack the motive first. The prosecution argued
this was a classic, albeit tragic, case of domestic
violence escalating to murder. Correct. And this
was a strategic choice. They argued that the
murder wasn't a random act of violence, but the
final act of control. Final act of control. That's
powerful. They painted a picture of a long, volatile
history of abuse. They wanted the jury to see
the murder as the inevitable conclusion to a
cycle of battering. And they had the evidence
to back that up. I mean, it wasn't just hearsay.
No, they had hard documentation. There was the
1989 New Year's Eve incident where Simpson actually
pleaded no contest to spousal abuse. They had
pictures from that, right? Yes. The prosecution
showed the jury photos of a beaten, bruised Nicole
from that time. They were hard to look at. look
at and the audio The 911 calls. Those tapes are
haunting. They played them for the jury. You
can hear the sheer terror in Nicole Brown Simpson's
voice. In one call from 1993, she's crying, saying,
he's back, he's going to kill me. And you can
hear him in the background. You can hear Simpson
screaming in the background. It's visceral. The
prosecution also called witnesses, like Nicole's
sister, Denise Brown. She testified to seeing
Simpson physically abuse Nicole, picking her
up and throwing her out of their house. So it
seems like a very strong foundation for a motive.
It establishes a clear pattern. It does. But
here is where the legal strategy takes a weird
turn. The prosecution actually dropped the domestic
violence portion of their case mid trial. They
spent weeks building it and then just abandoned
it. Right. This is a perfect example of how jury
selection and psychology played a massive role
in this trial. It essentially came down to the
reaction of the jury and specifically a dismissed
juror named Jeanette Harris. Jeanette Harris.
She was dismissed in April 1995. Yes. She was
dismissed for failing to disclose an incident
of domestic abuse in her own past during the
jury selection process. That was the official
reason. OK. But after she was dismissed, she
gave an interview to the press that absolutely
terrified the prosecution team. What did she
say? She essentially said that the domestic violence
evidence was a waste of time. A waste of time.
That was her phrase. She said that just because
Simpson might have slapped or hit his wife in
the past, it didn't mean he was a murderer. She
separated the abuse from the killing entirely.
That must have been a bucket of cold water for
Marsha Clark. It was a panic moment. They realized
that the jury, which included several women,
might not be interpreting the abuse evidence
the way the prosecution intended. They worried
it was actually alienating the jury, making them
feel like the prosecution was just trying to
dirty Simpson's name because they didn't have
enough proof of the murder itself. They pivoted.
Marsha Clark stated publicly that they were dropping
the rest of the domestic violence witnesses because
the DNA evidence was insurmountable. But Christopher
Darden later confirmed it was really because
they felt the domestic violence angle wasn't
landing. OK, so they pivot to the hard science,
the DNA. And when you look at the list of DNA
matches, insurmountable feels like the right
word. It is staggering. We are talking about
108 exhibits of DNA evidence. And remember, in
1995, DNA profiling was the gold standard. It
was math. It wasn't opinion. Let's run through
the blood trail. I want to visualize this because
it is crucial to understanding why the prosecution
felt so confident. Okay, let's walk through it.
First, you have the crime scene at Bundy. There
were blood drops found to the left of the bloody
shoe prints leading away from the bodies. A trail
leading away. A trail leading away. The prosecution's
experts testified that the DNA in those drops
matched O .J. Simpson. And the error rate on
that match, what are we talking about? One in
9 .7 billion. Okay, one in 9 .7 billion. That
is basically a statistical certainty. There aren't
9 .7 billion people on Earth. Exactly. Then let's
move to the vehicle. Inside Simpson's Ford Bronco,
they found traces of blood on the console and
the door. They tested it and found a mixture.
A mixture of DNA. It contained DNA from Simpson,
Nicole Brown, and Ron Goldman. All three. The
probability of error for that mixture, 1 in 21
billion. 21 billion. It's hard to even wrap your
head around that number. And it continues. There's
blood on the back gate at Nicole's condo matching
Simpson. That was a 1 in 200 probability, which
is lower due to degradation, but still significant.
Still pretty damning. Then you go to Simpson's
estate on Rockingham. They find blood drops in
his driveway leading from where the Bronco was
parked to the front door. Those match Simpson.
And the socks. This is a big one. The bloody
sock. The bloody socks found in Simpson's bedroom
at the foot of his bed. They had Nicole Brown
Simpson's DNA on them. The probability. One in
6 .8 billion. So you have his blood at the murder
scene, the victim's blood in his car, and the
victim's blood in his bedroom. Yeah. It wasn't
just blood, though. They had hair and fibers,
right? Right. They found a blue knit cap at the
crime scene. The cap, yes. It contained hair
as consistent with Simpson and fibers from the
carpet of the Ford Bronco. So linking him, the
car, and the scene. Precisely. They found a glove
at the crime scene, the left -hand glove, and
a matching right -hand glove at Simpson's estate.
The infamous gloves. Both gloves had fibers consistent
with the victim's clothing, Simpson's clothing,
and even fur from Nicole's Akita dog. And the
shoes. We have to talk about the shoes because
this became such a huge point of contention.
The Bruno Magli shoes, size 12. These were rare,
expensive Italian shoes sold at Bloomingdale's.
And Simpson denied owning them. He was very clear
on that. He was adamant. In a deposition, he
called them ugly -ass shoes and said he would
never wear them. But the prosecution had an FBI
expert, William Bodziak, who is a master of footprint
analysis. Okay. He testified that the bloody
prints at the scene were absolutely made by size
12 Bruno Magli Lorenzo model shoes. The sole
pattern was unique. So it was a specific model.
A very specific rare model. And while they couldn't
produce the actual physical shoes or a receipt
at the criminal trial, a Bloomingdale's clerk
remembered showing them to Simpson. So you have
motive. You have the forensic evidence. Now let's
quickly look at opportunity. The timeline. The
timeline was incredibly tight. The coroner estimated
the time of death between 10 .30 p .m. and 10
.30 p .m. Simpson was last seen by his house
guest, Cato Kaelin, at roughly 9 .36 p .m. when
they went to get McDonald's. He reappears at
10 .54 p .m. to meet his limo driver, Alan Park,
to go to the airport for a flight to Chicago.
So there is a gap, a window. A 78 -minute gap.
The prosecution argued that 78 minutes was exactly
enough time for him to drive to Bundy, commit
the murders, drive back, clean up and get in
the limo. Simpson had no alibi for that specific
window. So if you are a listener sitting here
hearing one in 21 billion and 78 minute gap,
you are probably thinking, how on earth do you
defend against that? Well, that brings us to
the dream team. The defense team. This wasn't
just a lawyer. It was a battalion. You had Robert
Shapiro, the initial lead. Right. Johnny Cochran,
the charismatic trial lawyer who took over. F.
Lee Bailey, the legendary cross -examiner. Alan
Dershowitz, the appellate genius. Barry Sheck
and Peter Neufeld, the DNA experts. And Robert
Kardashian. Estimates say the defense cost Simpson
between $3 and $6 million, and their strategy
was brilliant in its simplicity and its total
destruction of the prosecution's narrative. They
didn't just argue innocence? No. They didn't
just try to argue Simpson was innocent. They
put the LAPD on trial. They had a mantra for
the evidence, didn't they? A three -word phrase.
Contaminated, compromised, and ultimately corrupted.
Let's break that down, because those three words
are the key to the acquittal. Right. They attacked
on three fronts. First... incompetence that's
the contaminated and compromised part they argued
the evidence was mishandled so badly that the
dna results were meaningless okay incompetence
second conspiracy that's the corrupted part they
argued evidence was planted and third they attacked
the timeline and physical capability let's look
at the incompetence argument first This is where
Barry Sheck really shines. Barry Sheck and Peter
Neufeld were crucial. In 1995, most lawyers didn't
understand DNA. It was new. But Cech did. His
cross -examination of the criminalist Dennis
Fung is legendary in legal circles. That went
on for days, didn't it? It lasted eight days.
What did he find? Because usually cross -examination
is about poking small holes. This seemed like
he blew up the foundation. He got Fung to admit
to a series of errors that made the mountain
of evidence look like a pile of garbage. For
example, he got Fung to admit that he and his
assistant, Andrea Mazzola, didn't change gloves
between handling different pieces of evidence.
So cross -contamination, that's forensics 101.
Exactly. If you touch a blood drop that is definitely
Simpson's and then you touch the gate without
changing gloves, you could transfer the DNA.
But it got more technical. They admitted to packaging
blood -soaked evidence swatches in plastic bags
instead of paper bags. Now, for the non -scientists
listening, why does the bag matter? That sounds
like a small detail. It's a huge deal in forensics.
Paper breathes, plastic traps, moisture. If you
put wet blood in a plastic bag, especially on
a hot day, it creates a greenhouse effect. Moisture
promotes bacterial growth, bacteria degrades
DNA. Sheck argued that by putting the swatches
in plastic, they allowed bacteria to eat the
DNA, rendering the test results unreliable. And
didn't they leave the evidence in a van? I seem
to remember this. Yes. They admitted to leaving
the evidence in an unrefrigerated police can
for seven hours on a hot June day in Los Angeles.
So the argument is you cooked the DNA. Exactly.
Sheck argued that this degradation made the samples
unreliable. He wasn't necessarily saying. It's
not his blood. He was saying, you messed up the
test protocol so badly that we can't trust the
result. He created reasonable doubt about the
science itself. But the defense went darker than
just, oops, the police are sloppy. Much darker.
They went to, the police did this on purpose.
The conspiracy theory. This is the corrupted
part. They argued that officers, specifically
detectives, Philip Van Adder and Mark Furman,
planted blood to frame Simpson. This brings us
to the EDTA controversy. This was a huge technical
point in the trial that I think confused a lot
of people at the time. Can you break it down
simply for us? Sure. The defense ran their own
tests and found that two of the blood samples
The one on the back gate and the one on the socks
contained EDTA. Now, EDTA is a chemical preservative
and anticoagulant. It is not found naturally
in the human body in high concentrations, but
it is found in the purple top test tubes police
use to store reference blood samples drawn from
suspects. So if the blood at the scene has a
preservative in it... The implication is devastating.
It suggests that the blood on the gate came from
a test tube. not from a bleeding human body.
It suggests someone took blood from Simpson's
reference file and smeared it on the gate to
frame him. That is a bombshell accusation. How
did the prosecution respond to that? They fought
back hard. They called an FBI agent, Roger Martz,
to testify. He argued that the levels of EDTA
found were tiny consistent with trace amounts
you might find in a human body due to food preservatives
or environmental factors and not the high concentration
you'd find in the test tube. So they're saying
the defense's test was just picking up background
noise. Essentially. I remember hearing something
about a typo in this part of the trial. Yes.
The defense expert, Dr. Frederick Reuters, had
relied on an EPA article to establish what normal
levels of EDTA were. The prosecution pointed
out that he misread the article. It was a typo
or a misinterpretation of the data on his part.
And didn't the prosecution mention Big Macs?
They did. It sounds funny, but it was a serious
point. They got the defense expert to admit that
the ingredients in a Big Mac and fries, which
Simpson had eaten that night, could introduce
chemicals into the bloodstream that might mimic
those trace results in the test. But even with
the rebuttal, the seed of doubt was planted.
If there's even a chance the blood came from
a tube, you have to acquit. Right. And the defense
also pointed out opportunities for planting evidence.
It wasn't just, you know, a vague theory. Right.
This is where Detective Van Adder comes in. He
had Simpson's blood reference vial, the one with
the EDTA. The vial itself. The vial itself. Protocol
says you book that into evidence at the station
immediately. Instead, Van Adder put it in his
pocket, drove 25 miles back to the Simpson estate
in Brenwood, and carried it around for hours
before handing it to the criminalist. Which does
sound odd. Why carry a vial of blood to a crime
scene? It's a massive breach of chain of custody
protocol. Van Etter said he was just trying to
get to the criminalist who was at the scene to
save time. But the defense argued it gave him
a window of time, an opportunity to sprinkle
that blood on the socks or the gate. They called
him the man who carried the blood. OK, so we
have the forensic attack, but they also had a
simple alibi defense based on. Ice cream. This
is my favorite detail of the trial. The ice cream
alibi. This is one of those details that gets
lost in the noise of the DNA wars. The police
found a cup of Ben and Jerry's ice cream at Nicole's
house sitting on a banister around 1230 a .m.
It was melting, but it wasn't soup. It was still
viscous. So the logic is about the melt rate.
It's almost like a little science experiment.
Exactly. The defense argued. If the murders happened
at 10 .15 p .m., as the prosecution claimed,
that ice cream would have been sitting out for
over two hours in June. It should have been completely
liquid. Right, just soup. The fact that it wasn't
suggested that Nicole or someone had taken it
out of the freezer much later, perhaps around
11 p .m. And if the murder happened at 11 .00
p .m. Simpson was in a limo heading to the airport.
He has an ironclad alibi. It introduces doubt
about the timeline. It's fascinating how they
threw everything at the wall. Incompetence, conspiracy,
melting rates. But really, the trial turned on
two major moments. Two things that everyone remembers.
Mark Furman and the glove. Let's start with Furman.
He was the LAPD detective who found the bloody
glove at Simpson's estate. And he became the
villain of the defense's narrative. The defense
strategy was explicitly to paint Furman as a
racist who wanted to frame a black celebrity.
If they could prove he was racist, they could
argue he was capable of planting the glove to
ensure a conviction. And Furman walked right
into it. He did. Under oath, F. Lee Bailey asked
Furman if he had used the N -word in the last
10 years. A very specific question. A very specific
question. Furman sat there looking calm and said
categorically, no. And that was a lie. A verifiable
lie. The defense got a hold of tapes, the Furman
tapes, recorded by a screenwriter named Laura
Hart McKinney. She had been interviewing Furman
for a screenplay about police work. And on these
tapes. In these tapes, Furman uses the slur 41
times. 41 times. And it wasn't just the word.
He boasts about police brutality. He talks about
the code of silence. He talks about manufacturing
evidence to get guys they know are guilty. He
basically described doing exactly what the defense
was accusing him of doing. It's basically a defense
attorney's dream and a prosecutor's nightmare
wrapped into one. It destroyed his credibility
completely, but it got worse. The defense called
Okay. They asked him point blank. Did you plant
or manufacture any evidence in this case? And
he pleaded the Fifth. He invoked his Fifth Amendment
right against self -incrimination. Now, the jury
didn't hear him plead the Fifth. That's a legal
protection. You can't show that to a jury to
imply guilt. But the damage was done to the case
in the eyes of the public and the court. It validated
the entire conspiracy theory. The logic is simple.
If he lied about the racism, why wouldn't he
lie about the glove? Exactly. Speaking of the
glove, June 15th, 1995. The day prosecutor Christopher
Darden made a fateful decision, he asked Simpson
to try on the gloves in front of the jury. I've
seen the footage. It's painful to watch. Simpson
is struggling. He's pulling. He's grimacing.
He's holding his hands up to the jury with his
fingers splayed, mouthing, it's too small. He
was a visual disaster for the prosecution. Marsha
Clark reportedly begged Darden not to do it.
She knew the risks. But there were logical reasons
why they didn't fit, right? I mean, it wasn't
magic. Of course. The prosecution argued that
the gloves had shrunk, they had been soaked in
blood, then they were frozen, then thawed, then
frozen again for testing. Leather shrinks. Leather
shrinks when it gets wet and dries. Plus, Simpson
was wearing latex gloves underneath to preserve
the evidence, which adds friction and bulk. It
makes sense. And there's even a suggestion by
the prosecution that Simpson had stopped taking
his arthritis medication, sulfasalazine, which
would cause his hands to swell up. But in the
courtroom, detailed explanations don't always
beat powerful visuals. No. You can't explain
away a visual like that in a complex way. The
jury saw the struggle, and Johnny Cochran knew
it. He coined the most famous rhyme in legal
history during closing arguments. If it doesn't
fit, you must acquit. And that was it. It was
the perfect capstone to their argument. If the
physical evidence doesn't fit, if the timeline
doesn't fit, if the police conduct doesn't fit.
You have to let him go. And we have to talk about
the context in which this argument landed, because
you cannot understand this verdict without understanding
the racial climate of Los Angeles in 1995. The
shadow of Rodney King. A huge shadow. The Rodney
King beating had happened in 1991. The acquittal
of the officers who beat him, despite the video
evidence, happened in 1992, which set the city
on fire with riots. The distrust of the LAPD
and the African -American community was at a
boiling point. So the defense argues that the
LAPD is racist and corrupt. The jury. which consisted
of nine black jurors, two white jurors and one
Hispanic juror, was primed to believe it. They
had lived it. They knew the LAPD had a history
of racism. The defense didn't have to invent
a narrative of police misconduct. They just had
to tap into an existing reality. Johnny Cochran
explicitly told the jury to send a message to
the police. And some jurors even admitted later
that the verdict was a form of payback. One juror,
Carrie Bess, gave an interview in the documentary
O .J. Made in America. She explicitly said she
believed 90 percent of the jury decided to quit
as payback for Rodney King. Wow. She was asked,
do you think that's right? And she said, I think
it was right. So we get to the verdict, October
3, 1995. The deliberation. was shockingly short.
Four hours. For a trial that lasted eight months
with mountains of evidence, hundreds of witnesses,
and thousands of pages of transcripts, four hours
is essentially a statement that they didn't need
to debate. Not guilty on both counts. And the
reaction was immediate and polarized. We call
it the racial gap. You can see it in the footage
of crowds watching the verdict on giant screens.
The majority of Black Americans cheered, feeling
that the system had finally worked for them,
or at least failed to frame one of them. The
majority of white Americans were stunned, horrified,
and believed a murderer had walked free. I remember
reading about the juror who gave the Black Power
salute to Simpson after the verdict. Lionel Cryer,
yes. As the jury was dismissed, he raised his
fist. It symbolized that for many, this wasn't
just about a murder. It was a civil rights victory
against a corrupt police force. And the country
basically stopped. Economic productivity dropped
by an estimated $480 million because everyone
was watching TV. Long -distance call volume dropped
58%. Trading on the New York Stock Exchange dropped
41%. It was a singular moment of national attention
that we might never see again. So Simpson walks
free. He goes home to Rockingham. But the story
doesn't end there. Not even close. Two years
later, he's back in court. The civil trial. And
this time, the result is completely different.
In 1997, the families of Nicole Brown and Ron
Goldman sued him for wrongful death. A civil
jury finds him liable, and he's ordered to pay
$33 .5 million. This is the part that confuses
people. Why does he lose this one if he won the
first one? Was the evidence different? It was
a combination of things. First, the standard
of proof. In a criminal trial, you need proof.
Beyond a reasonable doubt. That's a very high
bar. Let's say 99 % certainty. Okay, near certainty.
In a civil trial, it's preponderance of the evidence,
basically. Is it more likely than not? 51%. So
the bar was much lower. Okay, that makes sense.
A much easier hurdle to clear. Second, Simpson
testified. In the criminal trial, he exercised
his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. Right.
In the civil trial, he had to take the stand
because it's a civil matter. He was grilled by
the plaintiff's lawyer, Daniel Petruccelli, and
he didn't perform well. He was evasive. And there
was new evidence. Yeah. Crucial new evidence.
Crucial new evidence regarding those shoes. Remember
the Bruner Magli shoes he denied owning? The
ugly -ass shoes. In the civil trial, the plaintiffs
produced 31 photos of Simpson wearing those exact
shoes. shoes. 31. One of them was from a football
game months before the murder. It proved he lied
about the shoes. And if he lied about the shoes,
the jury inferred he lied about everything else.
In Nicole's diary. That was admitted too. It
detailed the abuse and her state of mind, which
helped establish the motive that the criminal
prosecution had abandoned. So he's found liable.
He basically goes bankrupt, paying the judgment
or avoiding paying it. And then years later,
We get the bizarre saga of the book. Oh, the
book. If I did it. This is one of the strangest
chapters in publishing history. In 2006, a book
was announced where Simpson would describe, hypothetically,
how he would have committed the murder. Hypothetically?
Yes. But the public outrage was massive. The
project was canceled by the original publisher,
but then the Goldman family went to court. And
what was their argument? They argued that the
rights to the book should be considered an asset
to pay off the civil judgment Simpson owed them.
And they won the rights. They did. They took
the manuscript and released it. But they changed
the title to If I Did It, Confessions of the
Killer. That's incredible. And they designed
the cover in a very specific way. The word if
is printed in tiny text inside the letter I.
So if you look at the book from a distance, it
just reads, I did it. Confessions of the Killer.
Talk about seizing the narrative. It was a way
for the family to get some semblance of justice.
In the book, the hypothetical account switches
to first person. He writes things like, I remember
I had the knife. It reads, to almost anyone,
like a confession. Before we wrap up, I want
to go back to the math for a second. You mentioned
a statistical fallacy earlier regarding domestic
violence. This seems like a really important
takeaway for our listeners who love logic. It's
known as the Bayesian error or the prosecutor's
fallacy, though in this case it was the defense
using it. During the trial, Alan Dershowitz argued
for the defense that the domestic violence add
-in should be excluded. Okay. His argument was...
We know that thousands of men abuse their wives,
but only a tiny fraction, like more 1 % of men
who abuse their wives, go on to kill them. Which
sounds convincing. It makes the murder seem like
a total anomaly, unconnected to the abuse. Right.
It frames the probability as, given that he beat
her, what are the odds he killed her? That number
is low. But it's the wrong question. It's the
wrong statistic. We are looking at a woman who
has already been murdered and asking who did
it. Ah. I see. The condition has changed. Exactly.
The relevant statistic is of all abused women
who are murdered, how many were killed by their
abuser? And that number is huge, around 80 percent
to 90 percent. So the abuse is actually highly
relevant predictive evidence. That is a massive
difference in perspective. It completely flips
the argument. It does. And it shows how statistics
can be manipulated in a courtroom if you don't
know exactly what question you are asking. So
looking back, what is the legacy of this trial?
30 years out now. Legally, it changed how we
handle domestic violence. It spurred the passage
of the Violence Against Women Act in 1994. It
made the issue public in a way it never had been
before. Right. Calls to abuse hotlines spiked
because women saw Nicole and realized it could
happen to anyone. And scientifically, the CSI
effect. It introduced the world to DNA. Before
this, DNA was niche. Now, because of the CSI
effect, juries expect DNA in every case. If you
don't have it, they wonder why. The Simpson trial
educated the public on what DNA is. It really
was a turning point. It was the perfect storm.
You had a celebrity defendant, a racially charged
environment, police misconduct, and a new forensic
technology all colliding at once. So here's the
question I want to leave everyone with. If this
trial happened today, with our modern understanding
of DNA, with body cameras on police, with social
media, would the Dream Team strategy still work?
Or was the OJ Simpson trial a unique moment in
time that can never be repeated? That is the
ultimate question. I think the answer is that
it was a singular moment. The specific combination
of 1995 Los Angeles, the lack of body cams, and
the novelty of DNA allowed for doubts that might
not exist today. But the power of celebrity,
that hasn't changed. Thanks for diving deep with
us. This was a heavy one, but an important one.
Until next time.