I watched a lot of that trial, and the prosecution’s defeat had little or nothing to do with the mistakes that you cite. Not to say that everything was done perfectly by the prosecution or that they made no mistakes, but ultimately it didn’t matter. The case was lost the minute that the jury was seated. With 9 black jurors out of 12, even a full-color video of OJ slashing the victims’ throats wouldn’t have made a damned bit of difference. It was a jury that walked in ready to acquit the man hell or high water. I remember some of the court room observers like Dominic Dunne recounting during the trial that the jurors would sit on their hands when the prosecution presented its case but feverishly take notes when the defense would cross-examine or rebut. One of them even flashed a black power fist salute at The Juice.
So, the case was over before it started. How did the prosecution fail so badly at jury selection and end up with a 75% black jury form a ~30% black jury pool? Johnny Cochran successfully played the race card. My understanding is that every single time the prosecution challenged a prospective black juror, Cochran approached the bench and cried racism. The result was the prosecution was cowed into not objecting to black jurors. With the defense objecting to every non-black juror, it didn’t take long to swing 9 black jurors with this method. And the rest was history.
7 of the 9 Black jurors were women, who were more than happy to see the white bitch in the grave.
Now there’s someone I miss,Dominic Dunne.
See my post #55
While in hindsight this may seem true, if there had been one stalwart hold out, there would have been a mistrial.
What has always bugged me about the prosecution is that glove thing. I'm so old, my classmates and I used to wear white gloves to church and to school proms. Every pair made of fine leather had to be washed by hand, at which time the leather would shrink up about half its size and turn brown. You had to carefully stretch it out bit by bit to make the glove white again and big enough to fit your hand again.
So if someone dropped a blood-soaked glove, and it was already brown leather, it would have been hard to tell that it had shriveled in size. Unless someone knew that wet glove leather shrinks, that glove should never have been the key to an "acquit" verdict, no matter how telegenically it rhymed with "fit."
If that glove shrunk, the verdict stunk.