The People V. . . Where Are We?

Before we move into the last episode on Tuesday, April 5, we may want to look again at the time line of the murders and the actions of the LAPD.  We will need to review the evidence against OJ and any of the grounds for reasonable doubt, the standard of proof the jury must meet in order to not convict.

The drama depicted in the series has been wonderful TV but it is definitely not a documentary.

Let me do as simple a timeline as possible based on details offered by the series:

June 12, 1994

10 or 10:15 pm  OJ's Bronco was seen at the Rockingham gate.

10:15 pm  A "wailing dog" was heard near the Bundy murder site.

10:40 pm  Kato Kaelin heard three bumps coming from his back wall.

Between 10:20 and 10:54 pm, the limo driver saw no Bronco at Rockingham, but did see a black man approach the mansion door about 10:54, and when the driver called inside, someone finally answered.  OJ then left for a flight to Chicago.

11:55 pm  A barking dog led to the discovery of Nicole's body and the calling of the police.

June 13, 1994

Soon after midnight, police arrived on the scene of the murders.

Dets. Fuhrman, Vannatter, and Lange begin work on the crime.

Before sun-up, the detectives arrive at Rockingham to tell OJ his ex-wife is murdered and to get his children.  Fuhrman finds a drop of blood on the Bronco door and they decide to enter the estate over the wall, fearing someone may have been hurt here as well.  Kato Kaelin meets them saying OJ is out of state and tells of the three bumps in the night.  While the others contact OJ in Chicago, Fuhrman finds the bloody glove laid out on the ground on a pathway beside the mansion.  (At the trial, Fuhrman takes the Fifth when asked if he planted the glove at Rockingham.)  Vannatter sees blood drops running from the Bronco to the front door of the mansion.

OJ returns from Chicago, is invited to talk with Vannatter and Lange at the police center in downtown LA.  OJ does not know where the cut on his finger is from.  Nor does he have anyone who can vouch for where he was between 10 and 11 the night before.  Vannatter takes a blood sample from OJ.

Blood on socks that DNA tests show were from OJ, Nicole, and Ron are found at Rockingham that evening.  (At trial, Vannattter admits he does not turn in all of OJ's blood sample.  At trial, Lange admits he takes OJ's shoes home overnight.  At the trial, Criminalist Dennis Fung admits several errors were made during the investigation at both sites.)

Sometime  OJ does poorly on a lie detecter test.

Sometime  The Bronco is taken into custody.

Sometime  The funeral of Nicole is held.

Sometime  A warrant is signed to arrest OJ.  

June 17, 1994

In the morning, OJ is examined by his doctors and found to have no sign of bruises or injury.

When OJ is to be taken in for arrest, he and Al Cowling leave in Al's white Bronco and OJ threatens suicide when they are approached by police.  They return to Rockingham after a long slow chase on the LA freeways.  After spending a little time with his mother and family, he turns himself in.

At the trial, there is some question as to whether the motive of extension of spousal abuse is proved beyond a reasonable doubt.  The sloppiness of the investigation is shown by the detectives' responses to questions about their possible errors.  The weapon and bloody clothes are not found.  The bloody gloves that were found at Bundy and Rockingham do not fit OJ.  Fuhrman's racism is confirmed and may lay behind what was done by the LAPD in their handling of the case.  

OJ's "escape" in the Bronco is not brought up at trial.  Nor is his lie detector test.  The decision of the civil trial is still months off and no one on the mixed racial jury is aware the wrongful death suits are in the works nor are they aware of the efforts to keep OJ from custody of his children. 

Is that enough grounds to believe the jury wisely voted not guilty because of reasonable doubt?  Or were they influenced by their prejudice against the LAPD and Johnny Cochran's "effective use of the race card?"

We await closing arguments, the verdict, and how the series' writers dramatize them.

The People V. . . . Episode One

Rather than begin with the trial or even the crime scene, the first episode begins with scenes of conflict between the Los Angeles Police and Africa American young men.  Scenes from the riots surrounding the exoneration of the police in the beating of Rodney King show the depth of the racial tension at the time of the murders.  The conversations shown between Johnny Cochran, whose law practice was built on representing some of those young people, and Chris Darden, a young member of the prosecutor’s office in Los Angeles, showed the stress that was going on within the African American community.

The Toobin book on which the series is based does not start there.  Few of the other books about the Simpson case did.  They were all written to discuss the case without taking into account the social context of the case.  Each writer had other purposes.  Another social movement, however, was to take front and center, spousal abuse.  

For the crime itself, what we are shown is the dog getting attention of someone who then sees the blood and the bodies and calls the police.  

For the investigation, we see the police spotting blood drops from OJ's Bronco to the house in Brentwood, and Mark Fuhrman leading detectives Lange and Vannatter along the fence on OJ’s property and finding a glove.  OJ cooperates and talks to the detectives without a lawyer present.  They find a cut on his finger and OJ can’t explain it.  The acting DA, Marcia Clark, is shown interviewing two people, one of whom found the victims and the other who claims to have seen OJ driving away from the scene of the crime and nearly running into her car.  That scene was then dramatized with the actor portraying OJ, Cuba Gooding Jr., shouting at the witness.

The defense also is shown in the first episode to be investigating their client.  They have him physically examined.  The doctors find no sign of any physical nature, not even a bruise.  The sore finger is not mentioned in the scene.   OJ is shown to go through a lie detector test.  It shows that OJ tests out by that particular expert to have a bad score, showing the machine picked up physiological signs as he answered questions which were considered to be signs of being untruthful.

I am not sure how the series will handle any of these scenes when it comes to the trial.  I presume that in those later episodes, the evidence of some of these matters will be argued.  If not, I will try to shed light on each whenever I think it will help.

For now, let me touch on eight things I am sure are not going to be dealt with. 

One, when OJ was interviewed by the police, he allowed them to take a substantial blood sample, only part of which was turned in as possible evidence for the case by the police.

Two, while OJ was with the police, they also gave him a physical.  All they found was the injured finger.  No bruises, bumps, or scrapes.  

Three, the episode would have been more adequate if it had not shown the alleged scene where a witness said OJ nearly ran into her car with his Bronco the night of the crime.  That there was such a witness I do not deny but whether she actually saw OJ was not used by Marcia Clark.  Dramatizing that scene makes the viewer feel as though it must be true.  If I had artistic control, I would have added a couple other witnesses describing what they thought they saw or heard, demonstrating the conflicting nature of testimony with so many witnesses, and leaving in just the verbal statement of the woman driver.  I’m sure that a future episode will go into why that witness was never called.  Update: Episode Three shows the driver sold her story for $5,000 to a TV program so she immediately lost her credibility and was dropped by the DA’s office.  

Four, the lie detector test scene from the first episode will be understood according to the individual viewer’s prejudice about the case.  Lie detector tests are not admissible in a court of law for very good reasons.  One is that false scores occurred far too frequently.  There are several techniques used by various experts and differing results can occur depending on the technique.  The state of mind of the client and the approach of the tester can lead to very different results.  I am asking viewers to take that scene with a grain of salt in terms of helping solve the murders.

Five, the scene where Fuhrman took Vannatter and Lange back to find the glove was inaccurate.  It occurred after sunrise, not before.  Toobin took Fuhrman’s word that it occurred in the dark.  Fuhrman writes fiction since he left the LAPD.  But his police reports show signs he was already doing it before he left.  He included the time of day along with the dramatic moment in the dark in Brentwood when the glove was shown to the detectives, as he described it.  The national observatory sunrise time for that place occurred almost an hour before the time he gave.

Sixth, anyone who watches crime shows knows about the integrity of a crime scene.  According to Fuhrman, he found the glove earlier and led the detectives back to it.  How did the glove get there?  If OJ had come that way and accidentally dropped it, any foot impressions he’d have left were messed up by Fuhrman and, a little later, by the three officers.

Seventh, the glove shown in the scene was the actual glove.  It matched the other glove found at the murder scene on Bundy.  They look like oak leaves that have fallen from the tree, crinkled and mostly flat.  The picture was on a poster screen set up for showing evidence to the jury.  Imagine sitting for eight months staring at such things as the lawyers on both sides went over and over things, especially the DNA arguments.  I’ll leave that to your imagination for now.

Eighth, regarding the location of the white Bronco the night the driver came to pick up OJ (the night of the killings), as the camera panned away from the driver outside OJ’s mansion, there was no Bronco there.  That was the testimony of the driver.  However, other witnesses indicated the Bronco was near the other gate during the whole time and the driver somehow did not see it.  The series showed the Bronco was not there and that biases the telling of the story.

Before I conclude, let me clarify the situation a bit.  For at least two months, OJ was scheduled by one of his sponsors to attend a golf outing in Chicago on June 13.  He scheduled a limo to take him to the airport at 11 am on the 12th.  The murders took place sometime around then.  The prosecution felt that OJ had time between 10 pm and 11 pm to kill his wife and her friend, dispose of the weapon and bloody clothes, and still meet the limo.  The Chicago trip was not a last minute attempt to escape.  In fact, it set a limit on the time during which OJ could have done the crime and led the prosecution to have great difficulty establishing their own narrative of how OJ could have done it. 

It was hard to be accurate but the first episode gave it a good try.  But was it adequate?  Did it put critical things in proper perspective?  Did it misrepresent something of importance?  Did it leave out critical information?  I will try to keep sorting that out as we go along during the series.