OJ or Casey Anthony: Who was “more” guilty?

Recently, I heard Marcia Clark – the lead prosecutor in the unsuccessful prosecution of OJ Simpson for a 1994 double murder – comment that she felt the “not guilty” verdicts in the Casey Anthony jury trial were more shocking than the “not guilty” verdicts in the OJ Simpson trial.  Ms. Clark is a biased source, of course, but it does raise an interesting question:  to an objective outsider, which of these verdicts was more surprising, and which case had stronger evidence of guilt?

THE PROSECUTION’S CASE AGAINST OJ:  For those of you who may not have been old enough to remember the OJ Simpson case (involving the superstar NFL running back and TV/movie actor), it literally transfixed the nation from the moment it happened and the police began a “low-speed chase” of OJ in his white Ford Bronco down a Los Angeles freeway, carried live on TV.  OJ ultimately was charged with a double murder for killing his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman.  The murder was a gruesome one, involving both victims being “butchered” to death with a knife by the murderer as they were walking home.

The case against OJ was extremely strong, although there were no eyewitnesses.  In addition to having a motive – OJ was extremely jealous of his ex-wife and had beaten her on prior occasions – there was an extraordinary amount of DNA evidence connecting OJ to the murders.  There also were some pieces of circumstantial evidence that fit logically with the notion that OJ committed the murders.  But the strength of the prosecution’s case was the DNA evidence which, if believed, made OJ’s guilt seem a virtual certainty.

A 9-month jury trial took place in LA Superior Court, and OJ had his so-called “Dream Team” of lawyers, including Johnny Cochran, Robert Shapiro, Alan Dershowitz, and Barry Scheck (the DNA guru lawyer).  The “not guilty” verdicts sent shockwaves across the country and left people saying the same thing about the jury that many said about the recent Casey Anthony jury:  “how could they acquit?”

As I mentioned in my prior July 17, 2011 post on the Casey Anthony verdict, the jury often gets a different perspective of a case than the public who did not sit in on the trial.  It is sometimes unfair to evaluate another person’s decision when one has not been presented the same information as they have.  That being said, here were some of the key problems with the OJ prosecution:

• The DNA lab:  the crime lab that performed the DNA work fell short in a lot of ways when their protocols and testing procedures got called into question by OJ’s DNA expert defense lawyers.  The prosecution’s DNA witnesses came across looking very bad.

• The “racist”:  one of the white police officers, Mark Fuhrmann, was caught on tape using the “n word,” and making a lot of other comments that OJ’s lawyers used to paint him out as a racist.  Combining that with the shoddy DNA work done on the case allowed the defense to propose a possible “planting of DNA evidence” theory by white police officers against OJ, a black defendant.

• The “glove”:  The prosecution made a questionable decision during the jury trial to force OJ to try on a glove that was found at the scene and that DNA evidence clearly appeared to connect to the murderer.  OJ tried the glove on in front of the jury, and the glove was too small for OJ’s hand and famously did not fit.  Subsequent testimony by prosecution witnesses about how such a glove would shrink over time did not do much to minimize the harmful visual impact – a visual that ultimately provided the theme of Johnny Cochran’s closing argument: “If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”

• “I did not, could not, and would not commit these murders”:  OJ was allowed to speak these words from his counsel table, without testifying as a witness, without being placed under oath, and without being subject to cross-examination.  In fairness, the prosecution cannot be blamed for allowing that entirely improper event to occur – the responsibility for that one falls squarely on the judge.  It’s hard to say what impact hearing OJ deny the murders had on the jury, but it was a shocking occurrence during the trial.

THE PROSECUTION’S CASE AGAINST CASEY ANTHONY:  For more details on the Casey Anthony jury trial, and some of the prosecution’s strategic decisions, please see my July 17, 2011 post.  Basically, the evidence against Casey Anthony consisted largely of her behavior that would make little sense if she were innocent, including failing to report her daughter missing for a full month and repeatedly lying to the police.  Like OJ, there were no witnesses.  Unlike OJ, there was no DNA evidence directly connecting Casey Anthony to the crime.

So, which verdict was more surprising?  Or, asked another way, if you believe both OJ and Casey Anthony are guilty of murder, who was “more” guilty?  Which case was stronger – the one against OJ, or the one against Casey Anthony?

Again, I did not see the vast majority of either trial.  With that disclaimer, I must admit being much more shocked by the OJ verdict.  In order to find him “not guilty,” one had to believe there was a massive county-wide conspiracy with regard to the DNA evidence.  Despite the problems with Mark Fuhrmann’s racist-sounding comments, the imperfections of the DNA crime lab, and the embarrassing “glove that does not fit” incident, the evidence against OJ seemed overwhelming.

By comparison, the evidence against Casey Anthony strikes me as more problematic.  In particular, the words of one juror after the trial stuck with me:  the juror commented that “I still don’t know how that little girl died.”  That’s a problem.  The victims in the OJ case clearly were grotesquely slashed to death with a knife.  Casey Anthony’s daughter, in contrast, was found dead without any clear explanation of exactly how she died.  In other words, the only issue in OJ was identification – i.e., who killed the victims.  There was no doubt that the victims in the OJ trial were murdered.  In the Casey Anthony trial, one had to determine if the victim was murdered and if Casey Anthony was the one who killed her.

Also, DNA is very, very hard to explain away.  The “planting of evidence” theory strikes me as pretty absurd under the circumstances.  By comparison, Casey Anthony’s lies, her conduct after the murder, and some of the other pieces of circumstantial evidence are highly problematic issues for the defense.  However, they don’t necessarily rise to the same level of potency as the DNA evidence that existed against OJ.

Two very interesting cases and horrible tragedies that riveted the nation.  The fact that the OJ case fascinated the country was not at all surprising, considering the prominence of the defendant.  It is a little less clear why Casey Anthony intrigued the public as much as she did.

The system ultimately caught up with OJ – he was found “liable” in a civil court for the “wrongful death” of both victims, and then convicted of unrelated crimes and sentenced to prison.  It will be interesting to see the fate that befalls Casey Anthony now that she is a free woman.