LAPD criminalist and hair fiber expert Susan Brockbank testified on June 27, 1995, and FBI Special Agent and fiber expert Doug Deedrick testified on June 29, 1995, to the following findings:
From an original jury pool of 40 percent white, 28 percent black, 17 percent Hispanic, and 15 percent Asian, the final jury for the trial had ten women and two men, of whom nine were black, two white and one Hispanic. The jury was sequestered for 265 days, the most in American history.
The defense team's reasonable doubt theory was summarized as "compromised, contaminated, corrupted" in opening statements. They argued that the DNA evidence against Simpson was "compromised" by the mishandling of criminalists Dennis Fung and Andrea Mazzola during the collection phase of evidence gathering, and that 100% of the "real killer (s)" DNA had vanished from the evidence samples. The evidence was then "contaminated" in the LAPD crime lab by criminalist Collin Yamauchi, and Simpson's DNA from his reference vial was transferred to all but three exhibits. The remaining three exhibits were planted by the police and thus "corrupted" by police fraud. The defense also questioned the timeline, claiming the murders happened around 11:00pm that night.
The defense alleged that Simpson's blood on the back gate at the Bundy crime scene was planted by the police. The blood on the back gate was collected on July 3, 1995, rather than June 13, the day after the murders. The volume of DNA on that blood was significantly higher than the other blood evidence collected on June 13. The volume of DNA was so high that the defense conceded that it could not be explained by contamination in the lab, yet noted that it was unusual for that blood to have more DNA on it than the other samples collected at the crime scene, especially since it had been left exposed to the elements for several weeks and after the crime scene had supposedly been washed over. On March 20, 1995, Vannatter testified that he instructed Fung to collect the blood on the gate on June 13 and Fung admitted he had not done so. The defense suggested the reason why Fung did not collect the blood is because it was not there that day; Scheck showed a blown-up photograph taken of the back gate on June 13 and he admitted he could not see it in the photograph.
The pursuit and Simpson' s subsequent arrest were among the most widely publicized events in American history. Simpson was represented by a high-profile defense team, referred to as the " Dream Team ", which was initially led by Robert Shapiro and subsequently directed by Johnnie Cochran.
In November 2006, ReganBooks announced a book ghostwritten by Pablo Fenjves based on interviews with Simpson titled If I Did It, an account which the publisher said was a hypothetical confession. The book's release was planned to coincide with a Fox special featuring Simpson. "This is a historic case, and I consider this his confession," publisher Judith Regan told the Associated Press. On November 20, News Corporation, parent company of ReganBooks and Fox, canceled both the book and the TV interview due to a high level of public criticism. CEO Rupert Murdoch, speaking at a press conference, stated: "I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project."
In 1996, Cochran wrote and published a book about the trial. It was titled Journey to Justice, and described his involvement in the case. That same year, Shapiro also published a book about the trial called The Search for Justice. He criticized Bailey as a "loose cannon" and Cochran for bringing race into the trial. In contrast to Cochran 's book, Shapiro said that he does not believe that Simpson was framed by the LAPD, but considered the verdict correct due to reasonable doubt. In a subsequent interview with Barbara Walters, Shapiro, who is Jewish, claimed that he was particularly offended by Cochran for comparing Fuhrman's words to the Holocaust, and vowed that he would never again work with Bailey or Cochran, but would still maintain a working relationship with Scheck.
The "railroad" was the nickname for a secret route that enslaved Black people used to flee the South for anti-slavery states in the North and to Canada. During the Civil War, Tubman worked as a nurse, a scout, and a spy for Union forces.
Shirley Chisholm (Nov. 30, 1924–Jan. 1, 2005) Don Hogan Charles / Getty Images. Shirley Chisholm is best known for her 1972 bid to win the Democratic presidential nomination; she was the first Black woman to make this attempt in a major political party.
She joined the Montgomery, Alabama, chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1943 and was involved in much of the planning that went into the famous bus boycott that began the following decade. Parks is best known for her December 1, 1955, arrest for refusing to give up her bus seat to a White rider. That incident sparked the 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott, which eventually desegregated that city's public transit. Parks and her family moved to Detroit in 1957, and she remained active in civil rights until her death.
Augusta Savage displayed an artistic aptitude from her youngest days. Encouraged to develop her talent, she enrolled in New York City's Cooper Union to study art. She earned her first commission, a sculpture of civil rights leader W.E.B. Du Bois, from the New York library system in 1921, and several other commissions followed. Despite meager resources, she continued working through the Great Depression, making sculptures of several notable Black people, including Frederick Douglass and W. C. Handy. Her best-known work, "The Harp," was featured at the 1939 World's Fair in New York, but it was destroyed after the fair ended.
Contralto Marian Anderson is considered one of the most important singers of the 20th century. Known for her impressive three-octave vocal range, she performed widely in the U.S. and Europe, beginning in the 1920s. She was invited to perform at the White House for President Franklin Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in 1936, the first African American so honored. Three years later, after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow Anderson to sing at a Washington, D.C. gathering, the Roosevelts invited her to perform on the steps of the Lincon Memorial.
Mary McLeod Bethune was an African American educator and civil rights leader best known for her work co-founding the Bethune-Cookman University in Florida. Born into a sharecropping family in South Carolina, the young Bethune had a zest for learning from her earliest days. After stints teaching in Georgia, she and her husband moved to Florida and eventually settled in Jacksonville. There, she founded the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute in 1904 to provide education for Black girls. It merged with the Cookman Institute for Men in 1923, and Bethune served as president for the next two decades.
John Wheatley, the Boston man who enslaved her, was impressed by Phillis' intellect and interest in learning, and he and his wife taught her to read and write. The Wheatleys allowed Phillis time to pursue her studies, which led her to develop an interest in poetry writing. A poem she published in 1767 earned her much acclaim. Six years later, her first volume of poems was published in London, and she became known in both the U.S. and the United Kingdom. The Revolutionary War disrupted Wheatley's writing, however, and she was not widely published after it ended.