27 proceeding appearances across 2 trials • First appearance: June 22, 1995
💬 From the record:
Dr. Bruce Weir served as the prosecution's population geneticist, presenting statistical calculations for the frequency of mixed DNA stains found at the crime scene and in the Bronco. His testimony spanned three days in June 1995 and became a battleground over DNA statistics, with defense attorney Peter Neufeld conducting a extended cross-examination that exposed computational errors in Weir's mixture calculations — including omitted genotype pairs that created statistical bias against Simpson — and challenged his deviation from National Research Council guidelines. The defense's attack on Weir's methodology proved significant enough that months later, when defense expert Dr. Terence Speed took the stand, prosecutors emphasized that Weir's frequency estimates remained the only DNA statistics before the jury.
Bruce Spencer Weir is a New Zealand biostatistician and statistical geneticist. He is Professor of Biostatistics and Professor of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington. He was previously the William Neal Reynolds Professor of statistics and genetics and director of the Bioinformatics Research Center at North Carolina State University. He is known within academia for his research in statistical and forensic genetics, and outside academia for testifying in the O.J. Simpson murder trial in 1995.