The Interview of O.J. Simpson That Jurors Never Heard
It was a failure as an interrogation, but it was not an interrogation
Interviewing is a crucial part of investigating, but one that many people have never actually studied. I learned by interviewing hundreds of people and turning those interviews into news articles (as a reporter) or evidence (as a lawyer).
If you want to get better at interviews, one way is to interview a relative and then describe your findings to someone else. This helps show what worked and where you missed things.
Another way is to look at examples of interviews and see what worked and what did not. We’ll do that here using real-life and fictional examples.
Here, we’ll begin with probably the most famous (and/or infamous) and hotly debated interview in a criminal case – the interview of O.J. Simpson.
Oh, you did not know that O.J. Simpson was interviewed by police hours after the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman?
Or that he lied during that interview?
The jurors in the Simpson murder trial did not know that either. And that’s because prosecutors decided not to use the interview as evidence, and they even fought to keep it entirely out of the trial. This was a controversial decision, one that is a huge spot of contention between the detectives who did the interview and the prosecutors who put on the case.
In his book, The Run of His Life, Jeffrey Toobin described the interview as a failure. He wrote that the police “treated [Simpson] with astonishing deference” and that police “failed to follow up” on Simpson’s “vague and even nonsensical answers.” Toobin wrote that prosecutors felt that police had “botched” the interview and referred to the interview as “the fiasco.”
Prosecutor Marcia Clark, in her book, Without a Doubt, wrote that the prosecution team spent hours “agonizing over what to do about it.” There were some good parts of the interview, but the interview was mostly a “disaster for us,” she wrote.
Police detectives Tom Lange and Philip Vannatter defended the interview in their book Evidence Dismissed: The Inside Story of the Police Investigation of O.J. Simpson. They explained that they were talking a “tightrope.” The interview was happening just hours into the investigation, before they had really built up their case, and Simpson could cut off the interview at any time by asking for his attorney.
The debate over the interview stems, I believe, from a failure to appreciate what the interview was and what it was not.
In my experience, there are three types of interviews that investigators conduct on a regular basis:
Investigative or fact-gathering interviews. This is the most common type. Investigators use this to develop the building blocks of their case, and journalists use this to get the basic facts for their stories.
Interrogations. This is the type of interview that investigators use when they’re trying to get a confession. This can work under the right circumstances, but this can be disastrous when used at the wrong time and with the wrong suspect.
Lock-ins. This interview is what you turn to when you know someone is lying to you and won’t back off their lie. Here, you’re not trying to get useful information, but you’re trying to get them to really commit to the lie. Many people can pull off a lie for a sentence or two, but it is much harder to pull off a lie for paragraphs. Get the details to lock them into a false story and then break that story apart later.
The interview of O.J. Simpson was a failure as an interrogation, but it was not an interrogation. In their book, detectives Lange and Vannatter explained that they can interrogate a suspect – being “confrontational” and “accusatory” – only when they have “hard evidence” “linking the suspect directly to the crime.” Without such hard evidence, they interview the suspect, attempting to “draw out inconsistencies and other conflicting statements that can move their case forward.”
The interview was a lock-in, and by that standard, the detectives did well enough.
Former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi wrote in his book Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away with Murder: “Give me a yellow pad and one hundred hours, and I would have convicted Simpson on that statement alone.”
I agree. If I were prosecuting this case now, I would have made that interview the centerpiece of the case. And if I were defending Simpson, I would strongly have advised him to politely decline the interview – why give the government a chance to develop more evidence before Simpson knew what was going on? (Simpson did have an attorney at the time - not anyone from the “Dream Team” - and agreed to do the interview without his attorney even being present)
Ultimately, the detectives got Simpson to commit to a story that could be shown to be false. Most significantly, some of Simpson’s statements were completely contradicted by a key government witness: Allan Park, the limo driver who took Simpson from his home to the airport shortly after the murder and who could not simply be dismissed as part of some police conspiracy.
Simpson lied about his whereabouts at the time of the murder, claiming to have returned home in his Bronco around 8:30 or 9 pm. Park testified that the Bronco was not at the home as of 10:40 pm and that he saw a man resembling Simpson going into the home around 10:52 pm.
Simpson lied about how blood got into his car, claiming that he cut his hand in his house, then went to the Bronco to get his phone, and bled there while doing so. Park testified about watching Simpson’s movements and described no such scene. Park also testified that he did not see Simpson bleeding or having any cuts, as might be expected if Simpson’s account were true.
Simpson lied about his demeanor during the limo ride. Simpson claimed that he talked with Park about “rushing to the airport, about how I live my life on airplanes, and hotels, that type of thing.” Park testified that Simpson talked repeatedly about being hot, despite the temperature being mild and despite the air conditioning.
Simpson’s lies - soon after the murder and before he really knew what evidence existed - were solid pieces of evidence that might have been easier for jurors to understand than DNA and Simpson’s past behavior. Unfortunately, jurors did not even know that those lies had even happened.
In future articles, I’ll discuss some realistic ways that the interview could have been even better as well as some strategic choices that go into a good interview. Hope you enjoyed!
I was a federal prosecutor for 11 years and also worked at big law firms for 10 years. I now am a solo practitioner focusing on white-collar criminal defense, health care fraud, and data analytics in litigation.