If it fits, you must STILL acquit!
The incompetence of the cops, beyond Mark Fuhrman's perjury to cover up his racist views, was way overblown but tailor made for Johnny Cochrane's whole defense strategy. If Mark Fuhrman had been sick, it would have been the "racist Van Natter" or the "racist lab tech". Any warm body, or cold one, to serve up to a jury ready to acquit anyway. Conviction was never a possibility. The best the prosecution could have gotten was 9:3 to convict.
The true incompetence was to be found on the prosecution team. Cochrane got the jury to obsess on the bloody glove, using an effective bait-and-switch tactic that managed to distract the jury from the bloody socks. The bloody socks that were collected while Mark Fuhrman was still in bed asleep. And the prosecution never called the "Dream Team" on it.
The idea that Fuhrman was part of the original investigation team is a myth.
My favorite part? OJ is in his London hotel room with a nasty gash between his index finger and thumb. That wound needs an alibi. So he calls up the front desk, gets chatty, and suddenly exclaims to the person at the front desk that he'd just broken a glass on the porcelain in the bathroom, and cut his hand. He described it as a nasty cut, but not bleeding to much.
The prosecution missed this, but the defense did not. This "alibi" was a timebomb threatening to cripple their case if the prosecution ever realized what had really happened. The phone in the hotel was an intercom, not a regular telephone. You could only use it to call the front desk. It was not in the bathroom. It was an attached wallphone, by the bed, with no way to use it (reach it) while in the bathroom. Gotcha! (Still 9:3, tho)
OJ was a jock. He had just slaughtered two people. What was it John Grisham said? On average, when you commit a murder, you make 30 mistakes. If you're lucky, in 24 hours you'll remember 7 of them. This guy got rid of his shoes, clothes, knife, and tried to alibi his hand wound. 4 out of 30?
To have OJ convicted? He would have had to commit the crimes in Fargo, ND. In LA? ASB.