Nonetheless, Simpson, who could face life in prison if convicted, is facing a tough trial. Prosecutors are expected to portray him as an obsessively jealous husband with a history of stalking and beating his wife. When Nicole Simpson finally asserted her independence, they will argue, Simpson killed her. With the aid of sophisticated computer animation, prosecutors are expected to take jurors step by step through the night of the murders, showing that Simpson, in the span of 75 minutes, had enough time to drive 2 miles to his ex-wife's condo and brutally kill her and Goldman before catching a late-night flight to Chicago. They will horrify jurors with crime-scene photos showing Nicole's head almost severed and Goldman's body riddled with stab wounds. Then they will produce DNA evidence placing Simpson at the scene of the crime and tying him to the bloody gloves found at the murder scene and on his own property. They will document a trail of Simpson's blood leading from the bodies, through a back alley where a car can be parked, to the door of Simpson's Bronco, to his own front door. They will argue that Simpson's freeway ride in Al Cowlings's Bronco, stocked with thousands of dollars in cash and a disguise, was an attempt by a guilty man to flee. They may even call porn star Jennifer Peace to testify, as she reportedly did to a grand jury, that Cowlings told her Simpson committed the crimes, that Cowlings helped Simpson dispose of the murder weapon and that he was taking Simpson to Mexico the day of the low-speed chase.
Still, all that Simpson's defense team needs to do is to convince one juror that reasonable doubt exists. Rather than as a homicidal maniac carrying out premeditated murder, they will portray Simpson as the victim of a tragedy of blunders committed by a police department that botched the evidence-gathering process at every opportunity and never looked beyond Simpson for other suspects. They will remind the jury that there are no eyewitnesses, no murder weapon and no bloody clothes from a very bloody crime. They will argue that Simpson is not the only DNA "match" for the blood in question and that the lab conducting the tests has a history of mistakes. They will point out that Los Angeles Deputy Medical Examiner Irwin Golden accidentally threw out the contents of Nicole Simpson's stomach and so couldn't place the time of death beyond a three-hour window, didn't check her for evidence of sexual assault, and testified that the victims may have been killed with two different knives.
The most important player in Simpson's defense may be Simpson himself. Even though Shapiro is said to be against it, the man that everyone has been waiting to hear from is expected to take the stand. Shapiro fears that Simpson may wind up converting whatever skeptics remain on the jury to the prosecution's side, dashing his chances for acquittal or a hung jury. But Cochran hopes that Simpson will plant the seed in the mind of at least one juror that although he and Nicole had a stormy relationship, the personable football great who graced television sets across the nation was incapable of committing such a crime. And despite being in a realm of cold facts and hard choices, that juror's intangible, uneasy sense of lingering doubt is all it takes to set a man free.
I must agree with the writer on his findings.