On June 27, 1995, the prosecution in People v. O.J. Simpson was pressing forward with its final category of physical evidence. The Los Angeles Times reported on proceedings that day in which prosecutors presented hair and fiber samples they contended tied Simpson to the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. LAPD criminalist Collin Yamauchi had acknowledged under questioning that some aspects of the evidence handling in the case had not followed optimal protocols. Defense attorney Barry Scheck was making sure the jury understood exactly why that admission mattered.
The case had begun with a double murder the previous summer. Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, a friend of hers, were found stabbed to death outside Nicole's townhouse at 875 South Bundy Drive on June 12, 1994. Nicole was O.J. Simpson's ex-wife. Simpson, a former NFL star, was charged with both murders. Judge Lance A. Ito presided over the trial in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, which opened on January 24, 1995. Over the following months it would run 167 days and generate a trial record of extraordinary scope — one of the most thoroughly documented criminal proceedings in American history.
The prosecution's physical case rested heavily on two leather gloves. The left-hand glove was recovered from the crime scene at Bundy Drive. The right-hand glove turned up at Simpson's Rockingham estate. Prosecutors argued both had been worn by the killer, and that DNA extracted from the right-hand glove contained a mixture of profiles consistent with Simpson, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ron Goldman. The gloves matched a style sold exclusively at Bloomingdale's in Beverly Hills — the same style, prosecutors said, that Simpson had purchased.