OJ Simpson booking photo (AP)

Baden has seen it all.  He and criminalist Henry C. Lee were with O.J. Simpson just before he took off in his Bronco on his famous getaway chase on the LA freeway.  He was expected to come into the police department and give himself up for a crime that would mesmerize the world.  Instead, he just drove off.  Nevertheless, he was arrested and tried and eventually acquitted, and for the first time, the way a crime scene is handled was publicly scrutinized.

On June 12, 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were attacked and killed outside Simpson's home.  O. J. Simpson became a suspect, and his lawyer, Robert Shapiro, called Michael Baden and asked him to come.  He and Lee arrived at Simpson's home five days after the murder to examine him.  They were interrupted by a call from the police, and before they knew it, OJ was gone.

Once he was involved, Baden learned about the crime scene investigation and saw how many mistakes had been made.  Protective gear was neglected by the cops, and the bodies were handled in such a way that crucial evidence was lost.  As surprising as this might be in such a high-profile case, Baden had already learned the reason from an investigator in another famous case among the celebrities of California.

In 1990, Marlon Brando's son, Christian, shot and killed Dag Drollet, his half-sister's boyfriend.  He claimed it was an accident when they wrestled for control over the gun, but the position of the body on the couch indicated otherwise to the police.  Christian was arrested for murder.  However, despite the fact that it appeared that Christian had shot Drollet from above and that the bullet had exited the body, no bullet was recovered from his clothing or from the couch.  Brando wanted the opinion of a forensic pathologist, so Baden was hired.  He insisted on looking at the scene, and like the officers, failed to find the bullet in the couch.  Then he noticed that the room has a shag rug.  He got down on his hands and knees and eventually found the bullet under the rug.  That tended to support how Christian had described things.

"It's very hard to see an entry hole in a shag rug," Baden explains.  "But what impressed me most in that case was when we found the bullet and we called the police.  A sergeant came and I asked why the officers at the crime scene hadn't done a better job looking for the bullet.  I'll never forget what he said.  'Look, doc.  If you do a lousy job all the time, just because an important case comes up doesn't mean you can now do a good job.  You don't know how to do it any better.'  That will live with me forever.  Unless you do the best job you can with every crime scene and every autopsy, you won't do it right when more important ones come in.  To us, every case is equally important.  When it comes to death, we're all equal."

Part of the problem, he believes, is the way death investigation has been practiced in the U.S.  "When you look back on the history of murder investigations in this country," states Baden, "in most places we still use the same system we used in colonial days.  The people who do the investigations are elected and they often have no medical expertise.  We get upset about the handling of Nicole Brown Simpson and JonBenet Ramsey because we think these cases weren't investigated according to the community's standards.  Sadly, they were in fact handled according to the community standards, which are pretty poor.  We have around fifty murders a day in the U.S., and most are investigated at the crime scene by people not competent to do it.  Autopsies, too, are often done by physicians not trained to do them."  He feels that this practice has to change.

One way to accomplish this is through more and better education.  The first hour at a crime scene is the most crucial, but it's generally the most inexperienced officers who find the evidence.  They have to be trained better to know how protect it, because even experienced officers who know better will get curious and go in and trample evidence. 

"The OJ Simpson case raised the alarm about the crime scene," Baden points out. "As a result of the awakening of public consciousness during that case, there is now increased education and awareness in police departments and medical examiner's offices.  They know they have to do a better job.  Yet it's hard to teach it to old-timers, because they never did it that way.  On the Simpson and Goldman murders, Detective Vannatter said they didn't wear a hairnet and booties to a crime scene because a manly cop doesn't do that.  So what sense is there for the crime lab people to do it right when the people who initially found the evidence didn't do their job right?"

Yet even with better training, it's not always easy to tell when a crime scene has been staged.  That requires an experienced person, and when a homicide isn't called to the scene, which is what happened in the following case, sometimes it's the ME who has to pick up the ball.