r/OJSimpsonTrial

During the closing arguments of the trial (Sept. 28th, 1995), Barry Scheck made the following statement:

“But now we have a problem for the Prosecution, that when they do the fingernail scrapings, they come up on the EAP system with a B. That is not O.J. Simpson's type. That is not Nicole Brown Simpson's type. That is not Mr. Goldman's type. It is some other person.” On the Charlie Rose show in 1996 with Peter Neufeld, Scheck repeated the claim that there "was blood under her nails that was inconsistent with anybody else."  

This is false and I believe dishonest.  As has been explained in subsequent writings (Bugliosi addressed the issue succinctly in his book Outrage), the preliminary DNA report read that, “Nicole cannot be excluded as a source of the blood if the EAP enzyme type B observed on the items were degraded [by the elements] from enzyme type BA [Nicole’s EAP enzyme type] to [EAP enzyme] type B.”

Sure enough, when the more thorough and reliable PCR testing was done and presented on May 11th of 1995, Dr. Robin Cotton testified that the fingernail blood was consistent with Nicole.  And why not? She was lying in a pool of her own blood after her neck had just been cut, so she might have been grabbing at her neck.

So, did Scheck address that degradation issue in his closing arguments?  Yes, but poorly. I think Scheck was deliberately trying to confuse the jurors with a word salad of irrelevant information, but he does at least try to make an argument somewhere in there that a BA does not degrade to B.  He did so by claiming that Sims had never seen a four-banded BA degrade to a B.  “Never,” he emphasized.  Of course in the next sentence he downplays Matheson’s testimony who said that he did see BA to B degradation in the scientific literature.  Scheck finishes off by saying that Sims admitted that he couldn’t exclude the possibility, but that this wasn’t “a firm statement” and “doesn’t cut it in a criminal case.” Scheck rambled on but never once demonstrated that the degradation was not possible.

Now what’s interesting is that the blood on the gate was also a DNA match for OJ Simpson who also had this BA to B degradation.  Did the defense ever once say, “Hey, wait a minute! That’s not his!”  Of course not.  That blood being OJ’s and on the gate was central to their whole police-planting theory.  So when it suited their theory they had no apparent issue with such degradation! Addtionally, you might have also noticed that in the civil trial their defense never brought up Scheck's theory because by then they probably realized how farfetched it was.

TL;DR. The blood under Nicole's fingernail was most certainly her own.