8 Days of O.J. - "THE RACE CARD GETS PLAYED: How April 1995 Made This About Everything Except Murder" - Day 4

0:03 Caalarogashark Media. This is Reed Carter, Monday, September twenty ninth, twenty twenty five, Day four of eight days of OJ. We're examining April nineteen ninety five, the month this case officially stopped being about Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman's murders and started being about everything else. Police racism, media bias, domestic violence, statistics, celebrity persecution, judicial conflicts of interest, jury nullification, everything except the simple question of whether O. J. Simpson killed two people on June twelfth, nineteen ninety four. April was when Johnny Cochrane's strategy reached its full potential. He'd spent January assembling his team, February attacking the evidence, and March destroying the investigators. Now it was time for the math masterpiece, making this case about race instead of murder, and it worked. By April thirtieth twelve, jurors were thinking about Rodney King instead of Ronald Goldman. They were thinking about decades of LAPD misconduct instead of OJ's history of domestic violence. They were thinking about sending a message to racist cops instead of delivering justice to murder victims. Thirty days of watching a double murder trial become a social justice referendum, thirty days of watching evidence become irrelevant while politics became everything. I'm read Carter, this is day four

1:37 of eight days of OJ. Welcome to the month we learned that in America, race matters more than murder, at least when the murderer is famous enough and rich enough to hire the right lawyers. April nineteen ninety five, thirty days that completed the transformation of OJ Simpson from defendant to victim, the lap from investigators to villains, and Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman from murder victims to footnotes in a story about police racism. By April, I think Johnny Cochran knew he'd won. The jury had been selected by the defense, the evidence had been attacked by the defense, and the investigators had been destroyed by the defense. Now it was time to seal the deal by making this case about something bigger than murder, making it about justice for all black Americans who'd been victimized by racist police.

2:31 It was brilliant, it was cynical, it was effective, and it was exactly what Nicole and Ron's families feared most that their loved one's murders would become props in someone else's political theater. The month began with the defense showing Ojay's home videos to the jury. Videos of OJ playing with his children, OJ laughing with friends, OJ being warm, charming, paternal, everything except violent. April third, the jury watches OJ coaching his daughter's soccer team, OJ at family barbecues, OJ being the loving father and devoted friend that his public persona had always projected. This is brilliant legal strategy, and I have to give Cochrane credit for understanding exactly what he was doing. The prosecution had shown evidence of OJ's guilt.

3:21 The defense was now showing evidence of his humanity. They were reminding the jury that they weren't just judging a case, they were judging a person they'd grown up admiring. But here's what those home videos didn't show. They didn't show Oja screaming at Nicole in restaurants. They didn't show him stalking her after their divorce. They didn't show him threatening to kill her if he ever caught her with another man. They didn't show the private OJ that Nicole's friends and family knew, controlling, jealous, and increasingly violent. The prosecution should have objected to these videos, should have argued that being a good father doesn't mean you can't be a murderer. Should have point out out that the most dangerous domestic abusers are often charming in public and violent in private. Instead, they let the defense humanize Ojay without showing the jury what kind of human he really was behind closed doors.

4:13 But April also brought the prosecution's attempt to present the domestic violence evidence that would show Ojay's true nature, and this is where Judge Edo made some of his worst decisions. April fifth, the prosecution wants to play the nineteen ninety three nine one one call where Nicole called police because oj was threatening her. You can hear the terror in Nicole's voice. You can hear Ojay screaming in the background. You can hear exactly what kind of man he was when he thought nobody was watching. Judge Eto allows the call, but he limits its impact by giving the jury instructions about how domestic violence evidence should be considered. He basically tells them not to let it influence their judgment too much, as if a pattern of escalating violence isn't directly relevant to a domestic murder case, call should have been devastating, Nicole's voice shaking with fear, Ojay's rage clearly audible. Police responding to domestic violence calls at the Simpson house a clear pattern of abuse that escalated to murder, But the defense had prepared for this. They argued that lots of couples argue that oj and Nicole had a passionate relationship, that domestic disputes don't automatically lead to murder. They minimized Nicole's terror and normalized Ojay's violence, and the jury seemed to accept this argument. They seemed more concerned about police racism than domestic violence, more worried about oj being persecuted than Nicole being terrorized. Then came the crisis that almost ended the trial. Judge Eto's wife, Captain Margaret Yorke, was

5:46 revealed to be mentioned in the Mark Furman tapes that were about to surface. Foreman had made racist comments about Edo's wife during his interviews with Laura Hart McKinney. April twelfth, Judge Edo breaks down crying in chambers when he hears what Foreman said about his wife. He's considering recusing himself from the case. The trial could collapse, months of testimony could be thrown out, everything could start over with a new judge. And here's what I think was really happening. Ito was more concerned about his personal reputation than judicial integrity. He was more worried about what people would think about his wife than what impact his decisions were having on justice for Nicole and Ron. The conflict of interest was real.

6:33 Itto should have recused himself the moment his wife became part of the case. Instead, he stayed compromised and emotional, making decisions based on personal feelings rather than legal standards. But the Edo crisis was nothing compared to the jury revolt that exposed the racial tensions destroying this case. April nineteenth, several jurors are dismissed, and their interviews reveal the dysfunction behind the scenes. The jury is along racial lines. White jurors think Oja is guilty. Black jurors think he's being framed. They're not deliberating evidence. They're fighting about police racism and celebrity persecution. One dismissed white juror, Francine Florio Bunten, gives an interview that should have been a wake up call for everyone involved. She says the black jurors had made up their minds before evidence was presented, that they saw this as payback for Rodney King, that they were more interested in sending a message than delivering a verdict. This should have been grounds for a mistrial. The jury was hopelessly compromised by racial bias and preconceived notions. They weren't judging oj Simpson's guilt or innocence, they were relitigating decades of LAPD misconduct. But Judge Edo let the trial continue with replacement jurors, pretending that jury selection could overcome the fundamental problem. This case had become about race instead of murder, and no amount of evidence was going to change that. Meanwhile, April brought something that still infuriates me thirty years later,

8:05 the media's obsession with Marcia Clark's appearance instead of her arguments. Clark was prosecuting the most important murder case in decades, and the media was criticizing her hair, her clothes, her makeup. They were more interested in her image makeover than her legal strategy. They treated her like a fashion model instead of a prosecutor. April fifteenth, Clark gets a new haircut, and the media covers it like breaking news. Her hair becomes more newsworthy than the evidence she's presenting. Her wardrobe choices get more analysis than her legal arguments. This was sexist and stupid and completely irrelevant to the case, but it was also emblematic of how this trial had become about everything except justice. The prosecutor's haircut mattered more than the defendant's guilt, style mattered more than substance, performance mattered more than proof, And while the media obsessed over Marcia Clark's appearance, they ignored the fact that she was building an overwhelming case against a double murderer who was being treated like a victim of persecution. But April's most important development was the beginning of the DNA evidence presentation, evidence that should have ended any reasonable doubt about Ojy's guilt and instead became another opportunity for the defense to confuse the jury with technical jargon and contamination theories. We'll be right back with how DNA evidence that proved OJ's guilt beyond any scientific doubt somehow became meaningless to a jury more interested in police racism than scientific proof. Welcome back

9:47 to day four of eight days. Of OJ. I'm read Carter, and we're examining how April nineteen ninety five completed this case's transformation from murder trial to racial referendum. Evidence that began in April should have been the final nail in OJ Simpson's coffin. The technology was new in nineteen ninety five, but the science was sound. DNA doesn't lie, DNA doesn't have racial bias. DNA doesn't care about celebrity status or police misconduct. DNA just tells you whose blood is whose, and the DNA evidence was devastating for OJ Simpson. April twenty fourth, the prosecution begins presenting DNA evidence that proves beyond any scientific doubt that OJ's blood was at the Bundye crime scene, not just similar blood, not blood that might be his. OJ Simpson's actual blood deposited the Knight, Nicole, and Ron were murdered. The odds of this blood belonging to someone else one in one hundred seventy million. In other words, impossible unless one hundred seventy million people broke into the crime scene and happened to bleed OJ Simpson's exact DNA profile. This blood came from OJA Simpson, but Barry Shek was ready. Instead of disputing the science, he disputed the scientists. Instead of challenging the DNA matches, he challenged the DNA collection. Instead of proving the evidence was wrong, he proved the evidence was questionable. Shek's strategy was brilliant and infuriating. He didn't need to prove the DNA testing

11:19 was incorrect. He only needed to prove it was potentially unreliable. He only needed to create enough doubt about contamination and mishandling to make the jury distrust the results, and with Dennis Fung's earlier fumbles providing the foundation, Sheck built a tower of doubt that reached all the way to reasonable doubt, even when the science showed unreasonable guilt. April twenty sixth Sheck suggests that OJ's blood was planted at the crime scene using blood from his reference sample. That someone at the LAPD took blood from Ojay's vial and sprinkled it around Bundy Drive to frame him for murders he didn't commit.

12:01 This theory required believing that LAPD officers were simultaneously competent enough to orchestrate a complex framing scheme and incompetent enough to make all the collection mistakes shecheck had highlighted, But logical consistency wasn't the point. Reasonable doubt was the point, And by April's end, I think the prosecution realized they were fighting a losing battle, not because their evidence was weak, their evidence was overwhelming, but because this jury wasn't interested in evidence. They were interested in justice, and their definition of justice didn't include convicting a black celebrity based on evidence collected by racist cops. April also brought more revelations about the dysfunctional jury. Dismissed jurors revealed that racial tensions were so bad that white and black jurors couldn't even agree on basic facts. They were watching the same testimony and reaching opposite conclusions based on their pre existing beliefs about police and celebrities. Dismissed Black juror Willie Craven gave an interview that revealed everything wrong with this case. He said he didn't trust any evidence collected by the LAPD.

13:09 He said he thought oj was being framed from the beginning. He said the DNA evidence didn't matter because the police couldn't be trusted to handle it. Properly. This wasn't jury deliberation. This was jury nullification, the decision to ignore evidence based on political beliefs rather than legal standards. And it was exactly what Cochrane had been counting on from the beginning. But here's what really gets me about April nineteen ninety five, While all this legal theater was playing out, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were disappearing from their own murder case. The jury heard hours about police procedures and almost nothing about the victim's last moments. They heard detailed testimony about DNA collection protocols and minimal testimony about OJ's threats to kill Nicole. They heard extensive arguments about evidence contamination and limited arguments about motive and opportunity. By April thirtieth, this wasn't a murder trial anymore. It was a referendum on the LAPD, and Nicole and ron were forgotten casualties in a war between the defense and the police department. Cochrane had successfully transformed this case from a question of Ojy's guilt to a question of police credibility, and with the LAPD's history of misconduct, particularly in communities of color, that was a fight the prosecution couldn't win. The defense wasn't arguing that OJ didn't kill Nicole and ron They were arguing that the LAPD couldn't be trusted to investigate anyone, especially a black celebrity, and with jurors who had experienced

14:41 police misconduct themselves, that argument resonated more than any scientific evidence. April nineteen ninety five was the month we learned that in celebrity justice, narrative matters more than evidence, that the story you tell about the case matters more than the facts of the case, that jury selection matters more than jury instruction. The prosecution told a story about a jealous ex husband who murdered his wife and an innocent bystander. The defense told a story about racist cops who framed a black hero to cover up their own incompetence. Guess which story this jury found more believable. By the end of April, O. J. Simpson had been completely transformed from defendant to victim, the lap D had been transformed from investigators to conspirators, and Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman had been transformed from murder victims to unfortunate excuses for police corruption. The evidence still showed that O. J. Simpson was a killer. The DNA still proved his guilt beyond scientific doubt. The timeline still put him at the scene during the murders. The motive still explained why he did it, but none of that mattered to a jury that had been selected by the defense, influenced by the defense, and convinced by the defense that police racism was a bigger problem than celebrity murder. April nineteen ninety five the month this case became about everything except the murders. The month justice became secondary to social justice. The month evidence became

16:15 less important than politics. The month Nicole Brown, Simpson and Ronald Goldman finally disappeared completely from their own murder case. That's day four of eight days of OJ April nineteen ninety five, the month this officially became a referendum on the LAPD instead of a trial for double murder. Tomorrow, Day five, May nineteen ninety five, The month of DNA evidence that no one understood. When Barry Shek's contamination theories turned scientific proof into reasonable doubt, When astronomical odds of innocence somehow became meaningless statistics, When the prosecution spent weeks explaining complex science to jurors who'd already decided the police couldn't be trusted with simple evidence collection. May nineteen ninety five was when we learned that science doesn't matter if you can't translate it into common sense, That being right doesn't matter if you can't be convincing, that proof doesn't matter if the jury doesn't want to believe it. But before we move to May, let me remind you what April really proved. It proved that domestic violence escalates to murder when abusers lose control. It proved that celebrity status doesn't prevent someone from being a killer. It proved that charming public personas often hide private violence. It also proved that none of those truths matter if you can convince a jury to focus on something else instead. April nineteen ninety five showed us Ojy's home videos of him being

17:47 a loving father. It didn't show us the nine to eleven tapes of Nicole begging for help from the same man. It showed us DNA evidence that proved his guilt beyond doubt. It convinced the jury that d evidence couldn't be trusted because racist cops had handled it. The prosecution presented overwhelming proof that OJ Simpson killed Nicole and Ron. The defense presented compelling arguments that the LAPD couldn't be trusted to investigate anyone, and the jury decided that police credibility was more important than murder evidence. By April thirtieth, the victims had been forgotten and the defendant had become the victim. The evidence had been explained away, and the investigators had become the suspects. The murder trial had become a social justice crusade, and Johnny Cochrane was already planning his victory speech.

18:38 Nicole Brown Simpson was thirty five years old when OJ murdered her. She was trying to build a life free from his control, his violence, his threats. She died because she finally had the courage to leave permanently, and OJ couldn't accept losing control. Ronald Goldman was twenty five years old. He was working as a waiter, trying to build a career, living his life. He died because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, trying to help someone he barely knew. They deserved justice, They deserved a jury that cared more about evidence than politics. They deserved a system that focused on their murders instead of everything else. Instead, they got the OJ Simpson trial, where being a victim mattered less than being a celebrity, where truth mattered less than narrative, where justice mattered less than sending a message Join me tomorrow for May nineteen ninety five, When science met skepticism and lost, when DNA evidence that should have guaranteed conviction became just another reason to doubt the system.

19:45 I'm Red Carter. The race card was played in April nineteen ninety five, and it trumped the murder evidence. Nicole and Ron were still dead, but their killer was now the victim of his own trial. The preceding episode is based on court records, news reports, and publicly available information from the OJ Simpson trial. While we strive for accuracy, some dramatic interpretation and creative license has been used for storytelling purposes