The Simpson Jury
ABC NEWS
January 30, 1997
SHOW: ABC GOOD MORNING AMERICA (7:00 am ET)
CHARLES GIBSON, Host: Well, hello, everyone, I’m Charles Gibson in New York, and you’ve signed on to Good Morning America. No busy signals here.
ELIZABETH VARGAS, Host: Good morning, Charlie. I’m Elizabeth Vargas in Los Angeles, sitting in for Joan Lunden. It is Thursday, January 30. And coming up, Charlie, as you know, I’m out here covering the OJ Simpson civil case, and the jury in that case has just completed its first full day of deliberations. It made two requests yesterday. We’re going to have the very latest in just a moment on what those requests might mean. We are also going to have a very interesting discussion this morning, we hope, with OJ Simpson’s former chief investigator. He has been with the OJ Simpson defense team since the criminal trial. He’s been an integral, intimate part of that team. We’re going to get his reaction to both trials, as well as your conversation yesterday, Charlie, with detectives Lange and Vannatter, or should we say former detectives Lange and Vannatter, with that new evidence they said was never introduced into either trial.
CHARLES GIBSON: It’s interesting the way this came about. We did have, as you mention, the former LAPD detectives who led the investigation on the Simpson and Goldman killings, detectives Lange and Vannatter, and they have written this book, and they defend themselves against charges, since they are very controversial, defend themselves against charges that they framed Simpson. And they do talk about new evidence they have. They defend themselves on the conversation they had, the interview they had, with Simpson after — a couple of days after the killings occurred. And we got a call from Bill Pavelic, the fellow you’re going to talk to, who was OJ Simpson’s lead investigator in all this, said he ought to have a chance to answer Lange and Vannatter, and we agreed with him. So he’ll be here in just a few moments.
Spencer Christian has a look at the weather this morning.
SPENCER CHRISTIAN: I’ve done a thorough investigation of the maps, and they have revealed strong winds blowing across the Rockies and the Southwest, very warm winds as well, some temperatures may climb to near record levels. But the winds, gusting up to about 70 miles an hour, could be dangerous at times, so we’ll take that further look at the weather in just a few minutes.
CHARLES GIBSON: Something that’s caught my eye, kind of an interesting situation. As you may have noticed, the ads for women’s razors and men’s razors on television, they’re — they give you a very different pitch …
SPENCER CHRISTIAN: Right.
CHARLES GIBSON: … for a men’s razor and women’s razor. And our consumer editor, Steve Filmer, sort of got interested, is there really any different? Who gets the better shave, men or women? We’ll tell you in just a few moments, give you the real deal on all of that. And as you probably all know, the “Star Wars” movies are coming back to theaters near you on the 20th anniversary of those movies, so we’ll have an interview with George Lucas today, exclusive interview with him on the reemergence of the “Star Wars” movies. Elizabeth?
ELIZABETH VARGAS: All right, thanks, Charlie. I’ll be watching that shaving segment with baited breath. At any rate, let’s get back to our lead story of the day, which is the OJ Simpson civil trial. As we said earlier, the jurors did spend their first full day of deliberations yesterday. Jeffrey Toobin joins me now.
Yesterday, jurors made two requests of Judge Fujisaki. They asked to see a loupe, a magnifying loupe like this, and they asked to see a picture of a test tube. What are — what does all this mean?
JEFFREY TOOBIN, ABC News Legal Analyst: Well, the bottom line is, Simpson’s lawyers are pleased by this request, because what it means is that they are taking seriously two of the most controversial claims by the defense in this case. First, this appears to be useful only to look at the famous photographs, and …
ELIZABETH VARGAS: Right, contact sheets, similar to …
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Contact sheets.
ELIZABETH VARGAS: … something like we’ve got here.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: And the — what the defense has claimed is that the photos on these contact sheets are phony, are fake, doctored. And this would appear that they mean they’re looking at it carefully and seeing if they can tell, based on their own observations, whether they are, in fact, phony pictures.
ELIZABETH VARGAS: And the other controversial claim is that, in fact, OJ Simpson, he donated his blood, gave this blood as a sample to the police, and that they may have taken that blood and planted it. Is that why they’re looking at this photograph of the test tube?
JEFFREY TOOBIN: The test tube has a purple top which contains a preservative called EDTA. There’s a lot of very complicated evidence in the trial about whether it was EDTA found in the blood on the murder — at the murder scene. What that means is, again, the jury is considering the issue, it appears — and we don’t know if it’s one juror or all 12 jurors — of whether the blood was planted.
ELIZABETH VARGAS: We should say the judge denied the request to see the photograph. They said — Judge Fujisaki said, “You’ve got a test tube, in fact, available to you to look at in person.” I know we’re asking you to read tea leaves in all of this, but what do you suppose this means? You said earlier you think they — looks like they’re settling in.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Right, well, the other sort of interesting thing we learned yesterday is, the jury has said, “From now on, we want to break at 4:15,” as op-posed to 4:30, when the trial had previously end. You wouldn’t think a jury that’s about to decide tomorrow is sort of making its schedule. You know, it’s important to remember that for all that the first jury room was out for only about two hours, the Oliver North jury, which was a trial of about the same length that this — as this case, was out for 16 days.
ELIZABETH VARGAS: Wow.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: So, you know, juries can, you know, take some time.
ELIZABETH VARGAS: Jeffrey Toobin, we could be in here for a long haul. Thank you so much for joining us this morning.