30 years on: OJ Simpson's ‘trial of the century’ made DNA great

What is casually still called the “trial of the century” began 30 years ago today, and its legacy remains open to debate.

Long after the O.J. Simpson double-murder case went to trial in downtown Los Angeles in January 1995, such questions still resonate, if ever more faintly given the passing of time:

Was the case, the People of California versus O.J. Simpson, a revelation about racial division in the country? Was it reaffirmation that criminal justice can favor wealthy celebrity-defendants like Simpson, an African American football star turned movie actor and pitchman? Was the trial’s lasting contribution the introduction of forensic DNA evidence to mainstream America?

And in the end, did the Simpson case really qualify as the “trial of the century”?

The proceedings were televised and unspooled for months, driven by plot twists and signature moments before ending Oct. 3, 1995, in an extraordinary and impromptu national vigil. At the hour designated for reading the verdicts in court, Americans of all walks of life stopped what they were doing, waiting to learn whether Simpson would be convicted in the gruesome fatal stabbings of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, both of whom were white.

On both counts of murder, the verdict was not guilty, an outcome that seemed to reveal fissures in America along racial lines. Blacks largely cheered, many of them considering the verdicts a rebuke to police misconduct; whites mostly reacted with disgust and dismay, believing justice had been cheated.

Race and policing figured inescapably in the Simpson case, which unfolded amid still-fresh memories of deadly rioting in Los Angeles, sparked by the acquittal at trial of white police officers accused in the savage beating in 1991 of a motorist, Rodney King. One of the Simpson trial’s most dramatic moments came late in the proceedings when Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman was confronted with audiotape evidence of his uttering racist slurs — after having denied making such remarks. Fuhrman’s appearance was a stunning plot twist that surely helped seal Simpson’s acquittal.

Unlike most murder defendants, Simpson tapped his multimillion-dollar wealth to hire a high-powered defense team that regularly outwitted and outmaneuvered the prosecution. “If I didn’t have some money, I would have no chance at all,” Simpson acknowledged in a best-selling book prepared from his tape-recorded responses to letters he had received before the trial.

But the case — so anomalous in duration and in attracting sustained popular fascination — was not a precise metaphor about race relations in 1990s America. Simpson, who was 76 years old when he died last year of cancer, remained largely aloof from race-related causes and activism while pursuing lucrative careers in professional football and, later, in movies and TV advertising. He once told a New York Times sports writer, “My biggest accomplishment is that people look at me like a man first, not a black man.”

It is, moreover, challenging to reconcile arguments the Simpson case broadly exposed racial divisions in America with the surging popularity of Colin Powell, a black four-star Army general who was contemplating a run for the presidency in 1996 as a Republican. About the time Simpson’s trial was lurching to a close, Powell began a book tour, attracting admiring audiences as he touted his best-selling memoir. A columnist for the Washington Post described Powell in October 1995 as the “most popular American of any color.”

For a time, “Powell mania” was afoot in America. The general had been chairman of the joint chiefs of staff during the U.S.-led Gulf War of 1990-91 and was widely regarded an American hero. His prospective candidacy, moreover, posed a clear challenge to President Bill Clinton’s reelection. In the end, Powell decided against running for office and Clinton easily won reelection.

Simpson’s acquittal probably was inevitable, not only because of Furman’s perjured testimony. Simpson’s lawyers effectively impugned the prosecution’s best evidence — blood evidence collected at the murder scene in west Los Angeles, on Simpson’s car door, on his socks and elsewhere that pointed to his culpability. In a case without a murder weapon, known witnesses or a confession, DNA evidence represented the prosecution’s best path to a conviction.

Forensic DNA was still novel and not well recognized by Americans in 1995. It would be a few years before DNA typing became the centerpiece of television programming such as the CSI franchise. Indeed, Simpson’s trial anticipated and perhaps accelerated DNA’s emergence as a fixture of popular culture.

Simpson’s legal team took the crucial decision not to dispute the value and science of DNA typing, which even then was a subject of debate among scientists. Instead, Simpson’s lawyers focused on how ineptly blood evidence was collected, handled and processed by authorities. Crucial blood samples, they showed, had been kept in a police van without air conditioning or placed in plastic bags where they were subject to contamination.

“We had a 21st century technology and 19th century evidence-collection methods,” one of Simpson’s lawyers, Barry Scheck, said years after Simpson’s acquittal. “After watching this trial,” he added, “people understood that we had this technology in forensic matters. People did pay attention. Prosecutors and law enforcement took it very seriously.” Improvements in crime-scene procedures followed. DNA evidence-collection became more routinized and sophisticated.

In important ways, then, a principal contribution of Simpson’s trial was to introduce the potential power of forensic DNA to mainstream audiences. The case offered high-profile affirmation of the relevance of such evidence in criminal proceedings. And it gave Americans a measure of familiarity with DNA evidence that only deepened in the years that followed.

But was the Simpson case really the “trial of the century”? Taking a longer view of the trial, the answer is: probably not. Even in 1995, reservations were raised whether the metaphor was all that exceptional or appropriate.

Gerald F. Uelmen, another of Simpson’s lawyers, reported finding reference to no fewer than 34 cases in the 20th century that at one time had been called the “trial of the century” or “crime of the century.” It was a lengthy list, dating to the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901 and including the Lindbergh baby-kidnapping trial in 1935.

While no murder case since 1995 has commanded the sustained attention as Simpson’s televised spectacle, the proceedings are best understood as “the most sensational trial of the 1990s.” Or, alternately, as the first high-profile criminal trial in the U.S. in which DNA evidence figured significantly.

W. Joseph Campbell, Ph.D., is a professor emeritus at American University. He has written seven solo-authored books including "1995: The Year the Future Began."

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