REASONABLE DOUBT

"NEVER ASSUME. ALWAYS VERIFY." Every detective, public defender, and investigative reporter should have those four words tattooed in black ink on their foreheads. Then every time they look at themselves in the mirror they would be reminded of the great responsibility they have to themselves and to the public to check their facts before jumping to conclusions. Lives are on the line — and not only those of the falsely accused.

It is with this in mind that I ask you to step back and reexamine the many assumptions that have been made regarding the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman on June 12, 1994. I want you to try to forget the many newspaper articles, books, and television shows you may have read or seen about this case; try not to think about the "mountain of evidence" presented to jurors in what has been termed the "trial of the century"; try to ignore the role that racial prejudice may have played in the trial; and try not to speculate on the alleged conspiracy of one or more officers of the LAPD to frame a national sports legend.

Most importantly, I want you to step back to the afternoon of June 17, 1994, the day when millions of people throughout the world jumped to the same conclusion that homicide detectives, prosecutors, and the press had already reached during the first critical hours of their four-day-old investigation. That was the afternoon when O.J. Simpson, Heisman Trophy-winning halfback, television spokesman, millionaire celebrity, and now a fugitive from justice, became the one and only suspect in the brutal double murders on Bundy Drive.

On that day, June 17, I happened to be in St. Louis, Missouri, where I had been invited to give a lecture at the National Conference of Investigative Reporters and Editors. The subject of the lecture was "How the Gumshoes Do It: Tips from Private Eyes." Given the fact that the Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman murders were front-page news, and that I was being billed at the conference as the modern-day Sherlock Holmes, it was no surprise that the press asked for my opinions.

Like most people who only knew about the murder case from what they read in the newspapers or watched on television, I too was tempted to convict O.J. based on the seemingly overwhelming circumstantial evidence against him. And so, on the morning of June 17, just hours before the historic car chase that would result in O. J.'s arrest, I candidly told reporters exactly what I believed to be true: "O. J.'s blood is at the Bundy Drive crime scene. Nicole's blood is at the house on Rockingham. And Ron Goldman's blood is in O. J.'s Ford Bronco. This looks exactly like what it is: O.J. is guilty."

I regretted what I said almost as soon as I said it. After all, I had no personal connection to the case and knew from firsthand experience that the press is not always an accurate purveyor of details regarding homicide investigations. In fact, I was already disturbed by the eagerness of the journalists covering this story to focus their attention on O.J. and not on the facts of the case. Later that same day, my worry became outright concern when I joined reporters in front of a wall of television monitors in a crowded hallway at the St. Louis Convention Center to watch the now historic "slow-speed" car chase.

In all my years of following the coverage of murder cases, I had never seen such a spectacle as the one I was witnessing on CBS, CNN, ABC and NBC. Fugitive O.J. Simpson and his devoted childhood friend, A. C. Cowlings, led a caravan of twenty-five or more police squad cars on the slow-speed, five- lane car chase through Orange County, just south of Los Angeles. Seated in the back seat of Cowlings's white Ford Bronco, O.J. was holding a Magnum pistol to his head. As Cowlings drove up the freeway, cameramen in helicopters provided a live television feed while commentators filled in the missing details. Television audiences were reminded of the circumstantial blood evidence linking O.J. to the Bundy Drive crime scene and were provided tantalizing details of his rocky marriage to Nicole and his presumed history of spousal abuse.

Then there was Robert Shapiro, O. J.'s attorney, describing his client as emotionally "frail" and "fragile." And Robert Kardashian, O. J.'s longtime friend from the University of Southern California, publicly pleading with police and the press to help save O. J.'s life. Kardashian read from what was described as a suicide letter Simpson had left behind. In O. J.'s letter, the sports star proclaimed his innocence. Yet, he ended by saying, "Don't feel sorry for me, I've had a great life, great friends. Please think of the real O.J. and not this lost person."

Listening to Kardashian read from the letter, I couldn't help but wonder who this "lost person" was, why he would kill the mother of his children, and what possible real connection he or Nicole might have had to Ron Goldman, a waiter in a Brentwood restaurant where Nicole and her family had dined earlier in the evening of the murders. Having spent the better part of my career psychologically profiling suspected murderers, I tried to...