Thanks. Your knowledge and experience are invaluable in helping counter the kind of nonsense spouted by folks who think like Tall Texan. He or she is certainly not alone in mindlessly repeating serious factual errors as though they were gospel, but it sickens me more than usual as regards the Simpson trial and verdict.
There are numerous stories (unfortunately most are L.A. Times so they cannot be reprinted here) about widespread police corruption in the L.A.P.D that included evidence tampering to win convictions. Here is one such article:
http://www.streetgangs.com/topics/rampart/041800overt.html
These are not directly about O.J. Simpson but do you really believe that one division of the L.A.P.D. was dirty and everyone else was clean? I don't.
So it has been established that L.A. police DO tamper evidence to gain convictions. What seemed like a reach in 1995 by the O.J. defense team turned out to be true in other L.A.P.D.-handled cases just a short time later.
Again, "beyond a reasonable doubt" enters into the question. The prosecution had no answer to Dr. Lee's claims that O.J.'s blood at the Bundy gate had preservatives in it. If they had wanted to say that "all blood has preservatives", then why didn't they bring forth witnesses to present this argument into evidence?
The defense not only introduced the possibility that the blood evidence was tampered, they got Vanatter to admit he went back to the crime scene with O.J.'s blood sample before he took it to the lab. If Vanatter had a clear chain of evidence that went straight from Simpson's home to the lab, the defense has a big problem. This is what I mean by the cops were caught red-handed putting themselves in position to tamper evidence whether it is true or not, violating standard police procedures in the process.
It may be entirely true that the jury was a)racist b)bamboozled or c)starstruck and would not have convicted regardless of the evidence. In my opinion, the defense presented "reasonable doubt" and the prosecution did not counter it. The window was opened for acquittal wide enough that a rational person could say (and many have) that there was not evidence presented beyond a reasonable doubt.
We know for a fact that L.A. police have tampered evidence in the 1990s. How big a leap is it to guess whether it was also done in the O.J. case?