Read Online Outrage by Vincent Bugliosi - Free Book Online Page A

knowledgeable. There was no question in my mind he had won the debate on both substantive and stylistic grounds. Immediately after the debate the networks interviewed the staffs of both Carter and Reagan. Carter’s people were ebullient, and although they tried to hide it, Reagan’s were clearly morose. But about half an hour or so later, the results of television surveys started coming in from the folks back home in Des Moines, Omaha, Amarillo, Tampa, and elsewhere around the country. Reagan had won the debate hands down, according to the American public. And the survey respondents didn’t say it was because they simply liked Reagan more than Carter. No, they thought he performed better, knew what he was talking about more than Carter. What these people saw, of course, was not the actual debate. They saw what they expected to see. In their eyes, at least for debate purposes, they saw a peanut farmer from a one-stoplight town in rural Georgia against a famous Hollywood movie star. Obviously, the movie star is going to know how to perform and talk better than his opponent. That only stands to reason. I remember reading William Safire’s account of the debate a day or two later in the
New York Times
and I was happy to learn that he, too, was aware of Reagan’s dismal and embarrassing performance.
    How could this tendency to see what we expect to see contribute to the verdict in the Simpson case? It is likely that the Simpson jury perceived the courtroom performances of the defense attorneys as being more effective than they were because they saw what they expected to see. And what they expected to see was the defense lawyers scoring a lot of points in their questioning of witnesses (whether they were doing so or not)
because
they were the Dream Team. If they were the Dream Team, they must be scoring a lot of points, and this all helps add up to reasonable doubt.
    I saw the potential pernicious influence of the above phenomenon early on in the Simpson case, and it’s one of the reasons why, in the
Playboy
interview, I pointed out the absurdity of the media’s announcing that Simpson’s attorneys were the best that money could buy. As of the moment of writing this book, I have yet to read or hear any other commentator on the case scoffing at the idea that Simpson’s lawyers were the Dream Team and pointing out, instead, just how ordinary they really were. In fact, as I write these very words on my kitchen table, this is from today’s (December 31, 1995) editorial in the
Los Angeles Daily News
: “Simpson’s considerable personal wealth allowed him to hire
the best defense attorneys in the country
.”
    There perhaps is no better example of the phenomenon of people seeing what they expect to see working to the prosecution’s very definite disadvantage than the situation with one of the defense’s expert witnesses, Dr. Henry Lee. Lee, director of the Connecticut State Forensic Science Laboratory, is reputed to be the preeminent dean of American forensic scientists, the “top forensic sleuth,” as it were. But I think we all know by now how suspect reputations can be, and if Lee’s testimony in the Simpson case is any indication at all of his abilities, he is nothing short of incompetent. At best, he’s an example of how Mark Twain once described an expert: “Just some guy from out of town.” The problem is that the jury couldn’t see through the bloated reputation of Dr. Lee, and the prosecution, in its summation, never exposed Lee so the jurors could see the emperor without his clothing on.
    There were two particular areas in which Lee’s testimony, if believed by the jury, was very damaging to the prosecution. One, he testified that he found four small bloodstains on a paper bindle enclosing seven cotton swatches containing blood collected from one of the blood drops (Item 47) to the left of a bloody shoe print leaving the Bundy murder scene (later identified as Simpson’s blood by DNA testing). Lee