The presentation of the DNA evidence has ended, at least for now, and not a moment too soon. Everyone has had enough. Like everything else in this trial, it went on too long, especially the cross-examinations...
The fact is, although DNA testing may be as fool-proof as fingerprinting, it doesn't cause excitement. It's difficult to respond to. It's like advanced math, brilliant but boring, astonishing but passionless. It made everybody eager to move on to the next phrase of the trial, which consisted of the autopsy pictures of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, the victims of this appalling crime, whose names are so rarely mentioned.
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In most murder trials, the prosecution and defense fight over the admissibility of autopsy photographs. The defense doesn't want the jury to see them. The prosecution does.
Leslie Abramson, Erik Menendez's lawyer, once called autopsy pictures "a cheap prosecutorial trick." Pamela Bozanich, the prosecutor in the first Menendez trial, gave the perfect response: "Those who have committed crimes like these, it ill behooves them to complain of the carnage they leave."
Probably because of the presence of the Goldman family, seated only a few feet away in the courtroom, the autopsy pictures of Ron Goldman elicited a more emotional reaction from the jury than the equally gruesome pictures of Nicole Brown Simpson...
As someone who has seen the photographs of the mutilated bodies close up, I can tell you that they are appalling to behold...
I found myself thinking, only a monster could have done this to a beautiful young mother of two, with the kids upstairs asleep...
Letter from Los Angeles
Dominick Dunne
Vanity Fair
August 1995