Police sources say that they have forensic evidence, including blood samples from the murder scene that match Simpson’s blood type. One police source described Simpson’s alibi – that he was home at the time of the murder, waiting for a car to take him to the airport – as ““a waste of breath.''
Under California law, Simpson has been charged with double murder under special circumstances. The penalty for this crime is life imprisonment without parole, or the death penalty. A source close to the district attorney’s office believes the D.A. will not seek the death penalty because Simpson has no prior murder convictions and because it would be difficult to find a jury willing to sentence the popular Simpson to death.
““The likely defense is that he was crazy,’’ says Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz. ““He is involved in the self-destructive acts of an irrational person.’’ But after so many years in the role of ““Mr. Clean,’’ Simpson is going to have trouble convincing the jury that he is deranged. Simpson probably did not help his case by fleeing, since flight implies that he felt guilty and was thus rational enough to know the difference between right and wrong. On the other hand, a clever defense lawyer might try to turn his bizarre ride around the L.A. freeways into evidence that he was mentally unhinged. He apparently was not trying to escape detection, because there was nowhere he could have run for very long.
Simpson might try arguing that he momentarily lost control in the heat of an argument with his ex-wife, or because he saw her with another man. But ““temporary insanity is not a defense in California,’’ says Harland Braun, a respected defense lawyer who represented Theodore Briseno, one of the policemen accused of beating Rodney King. ““This is a very difficult case. The best way to try it would be to use the “sudden quarrel’ or “heat of passion’ defense that could reduce the charge to voluntary manslaughter.’’ If Simpson had shown up at his ex-wife’s house with a knife and gloves, of course, it would undercut the argument that he was suddenly swept away by emotion. A conviction of voluntary manslaughter would be a great victory for Simpson, though his sentence would be 24 years behind bars.
Many lawyers are amazed that Simpson’s first lawyer, Howard Weitzman, allowed his client to talk to police for two hours. Most defense lawyers instruct their clients to invoke their right to remain silent. In fact, Weitzman told Newsweek that he had counseled Simpson not to talk, but Simpson told Weitzman, ““I have nothing to hide,’’ and insisted on talking to the police.
Even if Simpson were a run-of-the-mill defendant, the D.A.’s office would be unlikely to offer lesser charges for a brutal double murder when it believed it had such a strong case. And since Simpson is the most famous celebrity ever charged with murder in American history, no one wants to be seen making a mistake. The authorities already stand accused of giving the sports superstar special treatment by not quickly taking him into custody after the murder and for overlooking charges that he abused his ex-wife. They are not likely to cut him any special deals.
Juries sometimes do go easy in celebrated cases. Charged with killing their parents, the Menendez brothers each had a hung jury, and the policemen accused of beating Rodney King walked free in the first trial. Simpson is ““very lucky that this happened in Los Angeles, the home of the weird juries and weird jury verdicts,’’ says Dershowitz. ““No defense lawyer ever gives up in California.’’ And, he may not be guilty.
