Book SummaryThe New York Times bestseller Reasonable Doubt: The Criminal Justice System and the OJ Simpson Case examines OJ's criminal trial Simpson from the mid-1990s. The author, Alan M. Dershowitz, relates the Simpson case to the general functions and perspectives of the American criminal justice system as a whole. A professor at Harvard Law School at the time and one of the country's most renowned legal scholars, Dershowitz served as one of twelve defense attorneys for OJ Simpson during the trial. Dershowitz uses the Simpson case to illustrate how the current criminal justice system works and relates it to public misperceptions. Many onlookers outside the case strongly believed that Simpson committed the crimes for which he was accused. Therefore, much of the public was simply stunned when Simpson was acquitted. Dershowitz attempts to explain why the jury acquitted Simpson by examining the entire American criminal justice system. On June 13, 1994, Nicole Brown, ex-wife of OJ Simpson, was found murdered alongside Ronald Goldman (Dershowitz 19). The first chapter of Reasonable Doubts describes how many people hastily concluded that OJ committed the murders. Incriminating evidence emerged that more than underlined Simpson's guilt (Dershowitz 21). Soon, media reports claimed that Simpson would be charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Simpson's reluctance to be arrested peacefully was illustrated by his famous chase on the Los Angeles freeway that ended with his surrender (Dershowitz 23). Dershowitz chose to join the defense team when offered the opportunity, saying the case could greatly educate people, particularly his Harvard law students, about...... middle paper......the prosecution had dozens of federal, state, and local officials at their disposal, including the FBI and the Los Angeles Police Department. The defense succeeded in sowing reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors. A major difference between the defense and the prosecution, as Dershowitz stated, was that the defense relied on factual evidence and scientific experts while the prosecution used witnesses who cast a shadow of doubt on the entire jury (Dershowitz 97). Dershowitz claimed that the prosecution knew they had falsehoods in their case, but kept them in order to win the case (Dershowitz 96). Overall, although many people viewed Simpson as a guilty man, the allegations of police perjury and investigative errors allowed the defense to exploit and capitalize on the prosecution's misconduct and, ultimately, to plant reasonable doubts in the minds of the jurors..