O.J. Simpson and the Trial of the Century

The trial of the century, as the O.J. Simpson case came to be known brought the world to a standstill. The publicity before, during and after the trial proceedings was the astonishing. Pretrial publicity brought upon issues that required the application of relevant cases and the amendments of the constitution. With such a famous person as the main suspect in a murder trial the media wanted to provide as much information to the public as they possibly could. The 1st Amendment of the United States gives the media a right to gather and report information to the public. (Sager, 1994-1995) The 6th Amendment allows all persons to have a fair trial; this is a concern to the defendants, if the media is providing information to the public that could later be used at trial. For example, the media wanted to have access to the 911 audio tape of the 1989 call that Nicole Brown Simpson made to the police. (Burleigh, 1994) In this tape, O.J. Simpson can be heard in the background angry and yelling obscenities towards Nicole. You can also hear Nicole trying to calm him down. These audio tapes were to be a large part of the trial, but whether they would be admissible or excluded had yet to be determined. If the public obtained these tapes, they would be played all throughout the TV and transcribed into the newspapers and tabloid magazines. Releasing this information could potentially contaminate the jury pool and cause an unfair biased towards the defense. Eventually, with the California Public Records Act the audio tapes were released to the public before they were approved for trial. (Burleigh, 1994)

Further complicating issues, all the pretrial publicity and need to obtain information for the public brought up concerns with access to pretrial...

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...jury. DNA is a very complicated subject and using statistics and numbers can be confusing and misleading to the jury. By accepting the defense’s suggestion to use the NRC report, the judge gave the defense a push in their direction.

Works Cited

Burleigh, N. (1994). Preliminary Judgments. ABA Journal, 55-61.

Linsky, L. (1995-1996). Use of Domestic Violence History Evidence in the Criminal Prosecution: A Common Sense Approach. Pace Law Review, 73-95.

Park, R. (1996). Character Evidence Issues in the O.J. Simpson Case - Or, Rationales of the Character Evidence Ban, With Illustrations from the Simpson Case. University of Colorado Law Review, 747-776.

Sager, K. L. (1994-1995). First Amendment Issues in the O.J. Simpson Trial. Communications Lawyer, 3-7.

Thompson, W. C. (1996). DNA Evidence in the O.J. Simpson Trial. University of Colorado Law Review, 827-857.