The murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, in June 1994, and the subsequent investigation involving DNA blood evidence collected from the crime scene and the vehicle of O.J. Simpson, represented a turning point in the public understanding and legal deployment of DNA evidence. The investigation gathered what was then considered overwhelming DNA evidence — but its handling by the LAPD was subsequently attacked as contaminated and potentially manipulated — bringing forensic laboratory procedure into unprecedented public scrutiny.

Though overlapping with the Simpson trial event above, the initial investigation represents a distinct episode: the gathering rather than the adjudication of DNA evidence. The crime scene in Brentwood became a literary locus of American anxiety about race, gender violence, celebrity, and institutional evidence practices. Writers including Toni Morrison and bell hooks used the case's evidence controversies to illuminate the racial dynamics of credibility and scientific authority in American culture.