I read a couple of books by pro trial writers after the OJ trial was over. The prosecution team was so idiotically incompetent, along with the media seeking judge’s antics, that his acquittal was pretty much assured.
It started with the “genius”, Marcia Clark, deciding exactly how to prosecute the case within hours of the murder and before any real evidence had been gathered. Then you have the other “genius” who had OJ Simpson try to put on a leather glove that had been soaked in blood. Wet leather shrinks as anyone but an LA City ADA would know.
Never mind that the LA Dist Attorney, Gil Garcetti, kept only the worst ADAs in the main downtown office and sent the competent ones to out lying offices so he wouldn’t get upstaged by far better attorneys than him. Standard bureaucracy at it’s very best.
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.
The biggest mistake was in moving the trial to downtown L.A. That pretty much guaranteed that Simpson would walk.
The prosecution never wanted to win. They knew that if OJ was convicted, that LA would burn.
Also add in that Vince Bugliosi offered to assist, pro bono. They turned him down. Like him or hate him, Bugliosi was one of the best criminal prosecutors of his day.
however the evidence was there...motive,opportunity,circumstantial evidence.....the jury wouldn't convict one of their own....