| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017269)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017269" |
| ocrPages: 1 |
| ocrChars: 3741 |
| ocrElapsed: 0.0 |
| parseTier: "external-legacy" |
| engine: "engine undisclosed (ep-nov-12.greg.technology mirror)" |
| externalSource: "greg-ep-nov-12" |
| externalLicense: "not granted" |
| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| 4.2.12 |
| WC: 191694 |
| OJ Simpson and Claus Von Bulow |
| My two most famous-infamous?— cases involved homicide: the OJ Simpson double murder |
| prosecution; and the Claus Von Bulow assault with intent to kill (or attempted murder) |
| prosecution. I have written books about both the Von Bulow and Simpson case, detailing how |
| science was used to challenge the prosecution's case. I will not repeat what I wrote in those |
| books, except to highlight how important it is for lawyers, especially those involved in complex |
| homicide cases, to master the science, to be able to question the other side's scientific |
| conclusions, and to accept nothing on face value. |
| I agreed to join the OJ Simpson defense team, despite my earlier public statements that the |
| evidence pointed to him as the killer. Among the reasons I took the case was that Simpson was |
| facing the death penalty, and I have a policy of generally accepting capital cases. |
| Eventually the District Attorney decided not to seek the death penalty. This was surprising, |
| because if Simpson did, in fact, murder his wife and the man she was with, the death penalty |
| would seem appropriate under the usual criteria for imposing it. The killings seemed to be in cold |
| blood, especially brutal and there were two victims. The fact that the District Attorney opted |
| against it, demonstrated, once again, the entirely arbitrary nature of decision-making as it relates |
| to who is and who is not subjected to capital punishment. ®6 |
| In any event, having agreed to join the team, I couldn't abandon my client even though the death |
| penalty was now off the table. Simpson still faced two sentences of life imprisonment without the |
| possibility of parole for some a fate worse than death. |
| My special role in the case would be to prepare and argue complex legal motions and to help |
| formulate the scientific, or forensic, defense. I would also argue the appeal in the event of a |
| conviction. I recommended that Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, who were experts in the |
| relatively new science of DNA, be added to the team. |
| After extensive investigation, we were able to demonstrate, by means of sophisticated scientific |
| evidence, that the police had planted O.J. Simpson's blood, along with the blood of his alleged |
| victims, on a sock found in Simpson's bedroom after the crime. The blood on the sock had high |
| levels of a chemical that are not found in human blood, but that are added to vials of blood to |
| prevent it from coagulating. The bloodstains on the sock also proved that the blood had been |
| dripped on it while it was lying flat, rather than splattered on it while it was being worn. There |
| 65 Reversal of Fortune and Reasonable Doubts. |
| 6 Sometimes the prosecutor seeks the death penalty simply to gain a tactical advantage at the guilt or innocence |
| phase of the trial. This advantage derives from the fact that in death penalty cases, the prosecutor is entitled to a |
| "death qualified" jury consisting of 12 people who have no conscientious objection to capital punishment and |
| would be willing to sentence someone to death. Such jurors, according to jury experts, tend to be pro-prosecution |
| in general and more likely to vote guilty at the trial. Prosecutors know this and ask for the death penalty even in |
| cases not warranting it, simply to improve the chances of securing a conviction. Once they get their pro- |
| prosecution jury, they sometimes decline to seek the death penalty. Early in my career, I was retained by F. Lee |
| Bailey to prepare a petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court challenging this practice in the case of Miller v. |
| California. The Supreme Court granted my petition for review, but then after oral argument by Bailey, the justices |
| denied the review over a strong dissent. |
| 182 |
| HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017269 |
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|
