A Los Angeles Homicide detective, Mark Fuhrman became one of the most controversial figures in the Simpson trial. Fuhrman arrived at the murder scene and was responsible for the significant discovery of the "bloody glove" on Simpson's property.

Most officers in the L.A. Police department responding to Brown-Simpson's domestic abuse calls would defer to Simpson and refuse to take him to jail. Fuhrman, however, took Simpson to jail, resulting in Simpson's plea of "no contest" to domestic abuse charges.

Fuhrman gave a taped interview in 1985 to Laura McKinney, an aspiring screenwriter working on a screenplay about female police officers. Fuhrman bragged about his membership in the secret organization within the LAPD known as MAW, or Men Against Women. In further interviews, Fuhrman bragged about beating and torturing gang members, "we had them begging that they'd never be gang members again, begging us." Fuhrman's negative attitude toward African-Americans was also evident in the taped interview. He said that he would tell blacks, "You do what you're told, understand, nigger?"

His perjurious denial of the use--in the ten years prior to the trial--of the term "nigger" brought immediate world-wide condemnation. Even the prosecution denounced Fuhrman in their closing arguments, calling him a "bad cop."

Following the trial Fuhrman apologized "from the bottom of [his] heart" that he had used racist terms and denied ever having been a racist. Fuhrman was uncomfortable with the attention the trial brought to him and wished things had been different. "I want my private life back and I'm never going to have it." Denying having ever planted evidence, Fuhrman stated, "there was never a shred, never a hint, never a possibility--not a remote, not a million--, not a billion-to-one possibility--I could have planted anything. Nor would I have a reason to."