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The Run of His Life_ The People v. O. J. S - Jeffrey Toobin

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Domestic Violence in the OJ Simpson trial

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Domestic Violence in the OJ Simpson trial

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http://www.corasupport.org/blog/2015/08/5-things-we-learned-about-domestic-violence-from-the-o-j-simpson-trial/

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In the premiere episode of Ryan Murphy's new series The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, Nicole Brown Simpson's body has just been discovered and her ex-husband quickly becomes a suspect in her murder, though he was later acquitted of the crime. Although the series doesn't depict Brown Simpson's life, one thing is made very clear in the premiere - prosecutor Marcia Clark's determination to successfully prosecute Simpson was largely driven by her belief that, aside from one arrest, O.J. Simpson's history of domestic abuse allegations had not been adequately investigated by police officers. In the premiere, Clark (played by Sarah Paulson) angrily says: "You know what pisses me off? This went on for years. All that battering, before he was even arrested. He got away with beating her."

Though during his civil trial, Simpson denied beating his ex-wife, there is much evidence to the contrary. As reported by the New York Times, Simpson beat his wife so badly on Jan. 1, 1989 that she required hospitalization. According to police records, she repeatedly shouted "He's going to kill me!" when they arrived at the scene and she also told police that they'd been called to the residence eight times before the 1989 incident. Simpson echoed the number eight in his own confrontation with police that same evening. According to the Los Angeles Times, Simpson told responding officers: "The police have been out here eight times before, and now you're going to arrest me for this? This is a family matter. Why do you want to make a big deal out of it when we can handle it?" In the same article, the outlet notes that Brown Simpson told officers: "You never do anything about him. You talk to him and then leave."

On this occasion, Simpson was arrested and eventually pleaded no contest to charges of spousal abuse, as reported in the same New York Times article. According to the prosecutor in this case, he recommended that Simpson spend 30 days in jail and complete a year-long program for men who batter their wives. Neither of these things happened and Simpson entered counseling with a psychiatrist of his choice. Although specific dates pertaining to 911 calls prior to the Jan. 1 incident are not available, Brown Simpson's journals, photos, and statements to friends can help piece together additional allegations of abuse.

POOL/AFP/Getty Images

In December 1994, prosecutors broke into a safe-deposit box and discovered what the Chicago Tribune described as "a trail leading to the dark and violent side of [Brown Simpson's] marriage." It contained her will, letters of apology from Simpson, and photographs of her apparent bruised and swollen face. In January 1995, Philly.com recapped information released by prosecutors, mainly taken from Brown Simpson's journals. The journal entries recounted incidents of Simpson allegedly beating his wife during sex, throwing her out of a moving car, and threatening to decapitate her ex-boyfriends. The entries also claim there were instances of verbal abuse, such as Simpson allegedly calling her "fat" during her pregnancy and ordering her to get an abortion.

Philly.com also cited the statements of others who claim to have witnessed or suspected abuse. A physician stated that in 1986, Brown Simpson sought treatment for an injury on her neck which she claimed was the result of a bike accident - but he concluded the injury was inconsistent with falling off a bike. A limousine driver alleged that he witnessed Simpson hit his wife while he was driving them home from a charity event in either 1988 or 1989 and then supposedly "lunge" at her when she entered the house. And, a friend of Simpson's claimed that in March 1994 Simpson took him on a drive to Brown Simpson's condo and told him: "This is the back way ... Sometimes she doesn't even know I'm here."

Simpson and Brown Simpson divorced in 1992, but two other phone calls are significant - one to the police and the other to a battered women's shelter.

Brown-Simpson Called The Police Again On Oct. 25, 1993

At this point, the couple had divorced and were living apart. According to the Chicago Tribune, Brown Simpson made two 911 calls on the night of Oct. 25, 1993 after Simpson broke down the door of her condo. In her first call, she requested dispatchers and told the operator: "My ex-husband has just broken into my house, and he's ranting and raving outside in the front yard." In the second call, which was placed 10 minutes later, she once again said that Simpson was going "nuts" and requested that officers be sent to her property.

The June 7, 1994 "Nicole Call"

Nancy N. Ney, a worker at a battered women's shelter, testified during Simpson's civil suit, but she was not permitted to testify at the criminal trial. According to Ney, a woman who identified herself as only "Nicole" called Sojourn House just five days before Brown Simpson's murder. According to a New York Times article about the testimony, the caller told Ney that her ex-husband was stalking her and had allegedly threatened to kill her. A key detail led her to believe the caller was indeed Brown Simpson - she described her ex-husband as "high-profile" and stated that Ney would recognize his name. This testimony was inadmissible in the criminal case because Judge Ito determined it to be hearsay that lacked sufficient records to back up the claims.

Simpson was found not guilty of the murders of Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, and though we may never know the truth of what exactly happened the night she was killed, it's tragic that so many aspects of her short life appear to be marked by such violence and fear.

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Shedding Light On O.J. Simpson's Abuse Allegations

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In the premiere episode of Ryan Murphy's new series The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, Nicole Brown Simpson's body has just been discovered and her ex-husband quickly becomes a suspect in her murder, though he was later acquitted of th...

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http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/12/us/prosecution-says-simpson-abused-wife-for-17-years.html

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The OJ Simpson Verdict's Impact on Society and Justice

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The OJ Simpson Verdict's Impact on Society and Justice

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http://articles.courant.com/1995-10-14/news/9510140057_1_simpson-s-blood-sample-nicole-brown-simpson-reasonable-doubt

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Monday marks the 10th anniversary of the not guilty verdict in the O.J. Simpson double murder trial. The trial lasted just under 10 months. However, the jury returned the verdict after only three hours of deliberation.

"That's one of those moments I think everyone remembers where they were," Associated Press special correspondent Linda Deutsch told Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen. "I was sitting right behind O.J. Simpson. It was dramatic and powerful. You had so many emotions coming together from the families of the victims, families of O.J. His son was weeping. The emotions were just palpable. And it was dramatic."

But you didn't have to be in the courtroom to feel the intensity of the trial. It was among the first to be televised to the entire nation.

"I think the O.J. Simpson case is the ultimate reality TV show," said Todd Boyd, professor of critical studies at the University of Southern California. "I think it really changed the way we think and talk about race and celebrity; the way trials work now. Whenever there's a big case now, you can guarantee that it's going to be on television somewhere because of O.J."

But Deutsch disagrees.

"I think that it made it very difficult for us to ever get cameras in the courtroom again," she said. "The media was under extreme scrutiny. And because the verdict was one that a lot of people didn't agree with, they felt maybe if we didn't have cameras there, it would have been different. But I don't think that's so. I think juries look at the evidence. They don't look at what's on camera."

When the verdicts were announced the reaction was split along racial lines.
For example, one white man and one black woman may have summed up the way most of the country's whites and blacks felt.

"I told my wife they should change it from the trial of the century to the shame of the century," the white man said.

But the black woman was satisfied with the jurors' decision. "Justice has prevailed," she said. "Now they can find the real killer."

It was called the "trial of the century" because of it high profile and, until that point, much beloved defendant.

"It's a case that had everything," Boyd said. "There's multiple murders, there's a famous former football player who had become an actor, there are drugs, there's sex, there's violence, there's interracial marriage."

From the murder scene to the slow police pursuit of O.J.'s white Bronco, every moment played out in front of a national television audience.

On the 10-year anniversary of the murders, lead detective Phillip Vannatter tells national correspondent Hattie Kauffman, "I have seen worse crime scenes, but I have never seen a case that turned into the soap opera that this turned into."

Vannatter was on the scene when the bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were found. Brown Simpson's neck was so badly slashed, she was nearly decapitated.

"Looking at the scene," Vannatter said, "you really couldn't tell what the injuries were other than it was mass trauma of some sort because of the amount of blood."

And the evidence showed blood spots leading away from the crime. "A blood trail that ultimately led right into the master bedroom of Mr. Simpson's home," Vannatter said.

Prosecutor Marcia Clark presented jurors with forensic evidence saying, "I've never seen so much evidence even on the first day, as I did in that case."

She was overshadowed by the charismatic Johnny Cochran, who made a show and tell of the trial. "If the glove doesn't fit, you have to acquit," he said to the jurors.

"Judge Ito set the whole complexion for this case and I really believe that he was in awe of the TV cameras, and he was in awe of Johnny Cochran," Vannatter said.

The cameras launched the media careers of Clark, fellow prosecutor Christopher Darden, O.J. Simpson's houseguest Kaeto Kaelin, and former detective Mark Furhman, whose use of the "n-word" took the focus off the murder.

Though acquitted, Simpson was shunned in Los Angeles. He later lost a civil case brought by the Goldman and Brown families. >This weekend he was reduced to signing autographs at a horror film convention.

"It was very strange. I was there. I talked with him," Deutsch said. "He insisted he really didn't know what the venue was when he came. That he had been hired by these promoters, and he came thinking it was a sports memorabilia thing, like everything else. For him, it was. He wasn't doing anything with the horror movies, but it was an odd location for him."

Simpson told Deutsch that he doesn't keep the dates in his head and that he didn't realize it was the anniversary.

"The only date he keeps is Nicole's birthday that he and the children celebrate with a cake," Deutsch said.

Deutsch said O.J. Simpson lives in Florida and spends time with all of his children. "He spends a lot of his time playing golf. He has friends. He travels. He does these autograph shows. He goes around the country giving out his autograph at sports memorabilia places. He still likes being a celebrity."

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Monday marks the 10th anniversary of the not guilty verdict in the O.J. Simpson double murder trial. The trial lasted just under 10 months. However, the jury returned the verdict after only three hours of deliberation. "That's one of those moments I think everyone remembers where they were," Associated Press special correspondent Linda Deutsch told Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen.

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http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/oj/themes/impact.html

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Detective Mark Fuhrman testified under oath during the 1995 OJ Simpson case that he had never used the n-word in the previous 10 years

A few months later the defense obtained 13 hours of taped interviews Furhman gave to screenwriter Laura McKinny about the LAPD

In those tapes Fuhrman uses the n-word 41 times and describes instances of officers engaging in racially-motivated attacks

He also speaks ill of former female superior on the force, who he says got ahead with sexual favors, and who happened to be Judge Lance Ito's wife

That part of the tapes almost caused a mistrial with Marcia Clark and prosecution initially calling for Fuhrman to step down

In the end jurors heard tape of Fuhrman use the n-word twice, and after the trial ended he pleaded no contest to perjury and retired from the LAPD

That portion of the trial is reenacted on this week's American Crime Story

Veteran LAPD Detective Mark Fuhrman was the most important witness for the prosecution in the OJ Simpson trial as he discovered a bloody glove on the football player's property that matched the one found at the scene where his ex-wife Nicole was murdered alongside Ronald Goldman.

He also discovered blood on the Bronco outside Simpson's home the night of the murder.

As a result, the defense team worked hard to discredit him at the trial, with lawyer F. Lee Bailey hinting through his questions during cross examination that Fuhrman might be a racist who planted the glove at Simpson's home.

To drive this home, Bailey at one point asked Fuhrman if he had ever used a racial slur, specifically the n-word, at any point in the past 10 years.

The LAPD detective answered Bailey, under oath, saying he had not used the word in the past 10 years as of that date, March 15, 1995.

On September 5, 1995, jurors in the case heard a recording of Fuhrman briefly saying the n-word twice, including when he spoke about his hometown by saying; 'We have no n****** where I grew up.'

They did not however hear what came before that line of the tapes, which was; 'People there don't want n****** in their town. People there don't want Mexicans in their town.

'They don't want anybody but good people in their town, and anyway you can do to get them out of there that's fine with them. We have no n****** where I grew up.'

They also did not hear the 39 other times Fuhrman used the n-word tapes obtained by the defense.

That brief recording heard by the jury was taken from 13 hours of interviews between Fuhrman and screenwriter Laura McKinny recorded between 1985 and 1994, with the last tape being made a month after Simpson was charged in his wife's murder.

Fuhrman first uses the racial slur while complaining about changes in the LAPD, saying; 'That we've got females ...and dumb n******, and all your Mexicans that can't even write the name of the car they drive.'

He also uses it when discussing his issues with his fellow Americans donating money to other countries, saying; 'You know these people here, we got all this money going to Ethiopia for what. To feed a bunch of dumb n***** that their own government won't even feed.'

More than once though he is describing a violent incident, like when he tells a story about beating up a suspect in his custody.

'We basically get impatient with him being so f****** stupid. Which I thought he was. So I just handcuffed him and went the scenic route to the station.

'We searched him again and found the gun. Went over to the baseball diamond and talked to him. When I left, Dana goes, "No blood Mark."

'"No problem, not even any marks, Dana." Just body shots.

'Did you ever try to find a bruise on a n*****. It is pretty tough, huh?'

Another time he is complaining about members of the force no longer being allowed to use certain methods of force on suspects.

'We stopped the choke because a bunch of n****** have a bunch of these organizations in the south end, and because all n****** are choked out and killed - twelve in ten years.

'Really is extraordinary, isn't it?'

Fuhrman also uses the slur while explaining his reasons for possibly pulling over a motorist, saying; 'N***** drivin' a Porsche that doesn't look like he's got a $300 suit on, you always stop him.'

In his final recording, Fuhrman talks about the Simpson case and having discovered the glove, telling McKinny; 'I'm the key witness in the biggest case of the century. And, if I go down, they lose the case. The glove is everything. Without the glove - bye, bye.'

He later says; 'Well, the funny thing about it is just like the attorney said, `For the rest of your life, this is you: you're bloody glove Fuhrman, that's it.

'He says you might as well make it pay off, if you don't make it pay off, all you're doing is going through all this heartache for nothing. Go for Shapiro, he's an a******.'

Fuhrman also angrily refers to Simpson's lawyer Robert Shapiro as a 'Jew' and says that he looks forward to filing a libel lawsuit against him after comments he made about the detective in a New Yorker story.

In addition to his repeated usage of the n-word, Fuhrman also describes a number of racially-motivated attacks which were allegedly committed by members of the LAPD and at one point even talks about using an innocent woman as a human shield - mand then throwing her down the stairs.

'I had 66 allegations of brutality: AEW, under color of authority, assault and battery under color authority. Torture, all kinds of stuff,' says Fuhrman.

'Two guys, well, there was four guys. Two of my buddies were shot and ambushed, policemen. Both alive and I was first unit on the scene.

'Four suspects ran into a 2nd story in a apartment projects - apartment. We kicked the door done. We grabbed a girl that lived there, one of their girlfriends.

'Grabbed her by the hair and stuck a gun to her head, and used her as a barricade. Walked up and told them: "I've got this girl, I'll blow her f****** brains out, if you come out with a gun."

'Held her like this - threw the b**** down the stairs - deadbolted the door - Let's play, boys.'

Fuhrman later describes the aftermath of the brawl, saying; 'We broke 'em. Numerous bones in each one of them. their faces were just mush.

'They had pictures on the walls, there was blood all the way to the ceiling with finger marks like they were trying to crawl out of the room.'

Then he and the other officers went out back according to Fuhrman and washed off the blood with a hose before returning to work.

In another story Fuhrman admits that he will appear at trials and provide information under oath to support officers even if he does not know the information to be true claiming that unlike his fellow officers he knows how to testify.

At one point he also makes disparaging comments about the looks and work ethic of a female superior, Captain Margaret York, implying she advanced in the ranks through sexual favors.

The transcript and audio of that portion of the tapes was never released.

Captain York was the highest ranking woman in the history of the force at that time and in 1985 had been in charge of Fuhrman.

She was also the wife of Judge Lance Ito.

That fact almost derailed the entire Simpson case for both sides and came dangerously close to causing a mistrial.

Fuhrman, who in addition to the glove also found the blood on and in Simpson's Ford Bronco, was listed as a police witness by the prosecution in a form submitted to Judge Ito before the start of the trial.

He had been the first to arrive at Simpson's home the night of the murders because he was familiar with the property, having been there in 1985 while responding to a report of domestic abuse made by Nicole against her then husband.

Witnesses who were members of the police force were listed on a spousal conflict form and Captain York was required to review the list and sign off on the fact that she did not have a relationship with any members of the LAPD who would appear at trial.

Questions then arose how she could not remember Fuhrman given the fact that he spoke so angrily about her on the tapes.

The prosecution called for Judge Ito to recuse himself believing he could not be fair given this new development, while the defense argued against that.

That request was later withdrawn by the prosecution, and Judge Ito decided to stay on the case after he asked another judge to make a ruling on whether or not he believed his wife was now a relevant witness given statements made by Fuhrman in the tapes.

Superior Court Judge John Reid said York was not relevant to the case after listening to the tapes, and the trial resumed soon after.

The day after the tapes were played for the jury, Fuhrman once again took the witness stand and said to every question asked by the defense; 'I wish to assert my 5th Amendment privilege.'

He even gave that response to the last question asked by the defense as to whether or not he planted evidence at Simpson's home.

The jury was not present for Fuhrman's testimony.

McKinny also testified in the Simpson case without the jury present to determine if the tapes she recorded would be used at trial.

It was revealed around this time that she had completed her screenplay based on her interviews with Fuhrman, for a film she had decided to call Men Against Women.

Fuhrman's actions and behavior were a key part of Johnnie Cochran's closing argument, where the lawyer suggested that the detective planted the glove at Simpson's home and described him as a 'lying, perjuring, genocidal racist.'

He even compared Fuhrman's actions to those of Hitler at one point in his speech.

The jury ultimately found Simpson not guilty, and on July 5, 1996 Fuhrman was charged with perjury for lying about his use of racial slurs on the stand.

He pleaded no contest to the charges in October of that year and received three-years probation, making him the only person involved in the Simpson case to be convicted on any charges.

Fuhrman retired from the LAPD soon after the tapes emerged, and after accepting his plea on perjury charges sat down for his first interview with Diane Sawyer, who brought up everything from his racist comments to his collection of Nazi World War II memorabilia.

He said in that interview that he had not told a 'willful lie' on the stand, claiming; 'I never remembered those tapes. I was trying to do a screenplay. It was a misplaced effort and I did it the wrong way. I'm sorry for that.'

He also defended his collection of German war artifacts from World Wart II by saying they were 'not swastikas.'

And when it came to his use of the n-word he told Sawyer; 'It shouldn't be used. And I'm sorry to be the one to bring it to the forefront in such a grossly insensitive way.

'I'm doing the one thing that I can - I can do. You know, I'm apologizing from the bottom of my heart for creating pain where pain wasn't necessary.

'I don't know what else to do. If it's not believed, I can't make somebody believe me. That's all I can do.'

He also told Sawyer that he does not think he had anything to do With Simpson being cleared of all charges in the case.

'I was a lamb. I was an excuse. I was a reason the jury latched on to so they could feel good about themselves. They sat down knowing they were never going to convict that man,' said Fuhrman.

He now writes true crime books, publishing his first in 1997 - Murder in Brentwood.

In that book he apologized for using racial slurs, said that he believed Simpson should have been arrested earlier by LAPD and accuses the prosecution of having abandoned him at trial after the release of the tapes.

He also accuses his colleagues, but not himself, of making multiple mistakes while investigating the case.

Fuhrman, who is now 64, is also a frequent guest on Fox News.

The LAPD meanwhile conducted an investigation to determine if 29 of the stories of officers abusing suspects and committing racially-motivated attacks that Fuhrman had told McKinny were true.

In the end no proof could be found that 17 of the incidents ever even occurred, and investigations into the other 12 did not find any concrete proof of misconduct.

THE 41 TIMES MARK FUHRMAN USES RACIAL SLUR ON TAPES

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Mark Fuhrman Tapes: Full transcript of racial slurs used by detective

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Detective Mark Fuhrman testified under oath during the 1995 OJ Simpson case that he had never used the n-word in the previous 10 years A few months later the defense obtained 13 hours of taped interviews Furhman gave to screenwriter Laura McKinny about the LAPD In those tapes Fuhrman uses

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When the court clerk announced the verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial in 1995, the issue of race was already one of the focal points of the case. "We the jury in the involved entitled action find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty of the crime of murder in violation of Penal Code section 187(a)," the verdict was .

By then, 66% of blacks believed Simpson to be innocent of the murder charges that he killed his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, in 1994, according to a 1995 CNN- Time magazine . Most whites believed the former football star was guilty, effectively splitting the nation down the middle.

The poll also found that whites and blacks both held racial biases that shaped their answers: 58% of blacks believed that whites who found Simpson guilty only believed so because he was a black man, while 60% of whites that were surveyed believed that blacks only believed Simpson was innocent because of his race.

"Most people still believe that the black football legend killed his white ex-wife and her friend, polls show," Jesse Washington wrote in 2014 for the Associated Press. "But for many African-Americans, his likely guilt remains overwhelmed by a potent mix: the racism of the lead detective and the history of black mistreatment by the justice system."

The issue of race exploded in a Jan. 13, 1995 hearing, when defense lawyers sought to prove that lead Det. Mark Fuhrman was a racist, and planted the infamous glove on Simpson. The hearing led to a standoff between then-deputy district attorney Christopher Darden, and Simpson's lawyer, Johnnie Cochran.

"If you allow Mr. Cochran to use this word and play the race card," Darden said, referring to the word "nigger," according to the New York Times, "the direction and focus of the case changes: It is a race case now."

Darden then went on to say Cochran was trying to frame the case around the issue of race, which would have, in his opinion, "upset the black jurors."

"It's demeaning to our jury to say that African-Americans who've lived under oppression for 200-plus years in this country cannot work in the mainstream," Cochran said in response, the New York Times reported. "African-Americans live with offensive words, offensive looks, offensive treatment every day of their lives. And yet they still believe in this country."

Many black Americans felt vindicated when the verdict came back not guilty. Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson, who called the case "extraordinarily important for race relations in America," told ' Frontline in 2005.

"I think it was a racial earthquake, so to speak; a race quake. It didn't create racial tension; rather, it revealed the fault lines of bigotry and bias that trace beneath our common lives together," Dyson told Frontline. "But it did reveal to white and black America that, first of all, we see things enormously differently.

"There is contrasting and almost contradictory viewpoints that animate black people and white people around the issue of race, and O.J. revealed that in the sharpest of terms."

Two decades later from the landmark verdict, black Americans appear to have changed their perspectives regarding the case: 53% of blacks believe that the murder charges against Simpson were true, according to the most recent CNN-ORC International survey from 2014.

However, the polling statistics hasn't changed the minds of every black American.

"That pride that I felt, I don't take it back. I don't feel I was hoodwinked," Carlos Carter, who believed Simpson was innocent at the time, told the Associated Press in 2014. "I was just living in the moment, and it was a victory for my people.

"I didn't think of it then, but that's what it was for me. A victory. I could have cared less about O.J., but when I saw him, I saw myself."

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How Race Framed the Conversations Around the OJ Simpson Trial

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When the court clerk announced the verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial in 1995, the issue of race was already one of the focal points of the case. "We the jury in the involved entitled action find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty of the crime of murder in violation of Penal Code section 187(a)," the verdict was .

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The O.J. Simpson trial is a powerful generational marker. As my colleague Hank Stuever writes in his review of the first installment of FX's new "American Crime Story" anthology series, which follows on the success of showrunner Ryan Murphy's "American Horror Story," "The People v. O.J. Simpson," assumes "that anyone under 30 is only vaguely aware that, once upon a time in the dial-up modem days, a retired professional football star was arrested and charged with murdering his ex-wife and a restaurant employee with whom she was casually acquainted."

For anyone unfamiliar with the murders and trial, "The People v. O.J. Simpson" draws plenty of parallels between that moment in American history and our own, 20 years hence. The series begins with the video of the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles Police Department officers, an event that set off riots in 1992, and continues on to trace the rise of cable news and tabloid press and even to foreshadow the rise of the Kardashian reality television empire. (Robert Kardashian, played here by David Schwimmer, showing new depths, was one of Simpson's best friends.)

And if you were old enough to remember the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman; the clash between prosecutors Marcia Clark (Sarah Paulson) and Christopher Darden (Sterling K. Brown), and the lawyer Johnnie Cochran (Courtney B. Vance), who ultimately took the lead in Simpson's (Cuba Gooding Jr., the weak link in the production) courtroom defense; the way Detective Mark Fuhrman's (Steven Pasquale) racism made him an ugly symbol of law enforcement; and Simpson's acquittal in the slayings, the Simpson case has retained a particular hold on the imagination. "The People v. O.J. Simpson" is a portrait of a squandered moment in American history, a time when we might have planted a very different kind of fruit from the bitter harvests we're reaping now, if only we were capable of it.

In " Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man," a long piece Henry Louis Gates Jr. published in October 1995 after both Simpson's acquittal and the Million Man March, Gates wrote that "As blacks exulted at Simpson's acquittal, horrified whites had a fleeting sense that this race thing was knottier than they'd ever supposed-that, when all the pieties were cleared away, blacks really were strangers in their midst. (The unspoken sentiment: And I thought I knew these people.) There was the faintest tincture of the Southern slaveowner's disquiet in the aftermath of the bloody slave revolt led by Nat Turner-when the gentleman farmer was left to wonder which of his smiling, servile retainers would have slit his throat if the rebellion had spread as was intended, like fire on parched thatch."

I've come back to that passage again and again as I've read books and articles about the trial, and as I've watched and rewatched the first six episodes of "The People v. O.J. Simpson." And that idea of a flash of light that rearranges the way we see the world, but that casts as many shadows as it dispels, seems to me to be the perfect way to explain why we can't let go of the Simpson case. During 1994 and 1995, police brutality and racism, domestic violence, the worst impulses in the media, and bitter divisions on the basis of race and gender were all on stark display. But we didn't manage to resolve any of the questions outlined by that flash of light.

Instead, the number of African Americans who said in 1994 and 1995 that they believed that O.J. Simpson was innocent became a talisman of some sort of mass racial derangement in a way that deflected the need to address - and to address urgently - the very real problems with policing in America that have come back to the center of the news cycle. It was a way for white Americans to recognize the divide between themselves and their black friends, neighbors, colleagues and employees, but to dismiss it as irrational.

"To accept the racial reduction . . . is to miss the fact that the black community itself is riven, and in ways invisible to most whites," Gates wrote in 1995. A Frontline examination of the Simpson verdict pulled out some of those tensions.

"I don't think we should make the mistake of believing that black people who celebrated a) thought O.J. was innocent, or b) were even concerned most about O.J. as opposed to their Uncle Charlie or Bubba or their sister Shanaynay or their Aunt Jackie, who had been screwed by a system that never paid attention to them," Michael Eric Dyson, then at the University of Pennsylvania, told Frontline. "'O.J.' was a term that represented every black person that got beat up by the criminal justice system, and now we have found some vindication, and guess what, white America? It was with a black man that you loved." And Shawn Holley, then a managing partner in Cochran's practice, suggested "It really had to do with Johnnie Cochran: Johnnie Cochran commanding that courtroom, being brilliant, beating the system."

This grim roster rolls on. Marcia Clark, who was savaged for her hair, her clothes and her focus on her career in the midst of a bitter divorce, as well as for her courtroom strategy, is a painful example of how women can be put on trial for their own likability. And more specifically, she's also a discomfiting example of the rifts that can divide white and African American women. As both Jeffrey Toobin's " The Run of His Life " and "The People v. O.J. Simpson," which adapts Toobin's book, make clear, Clark went into the Simpson trial convinced that she would triumph because of her rapport with black female jurors. Clark believed that the case was a straightforward domestic violence murder and that everyone would see it the same way.

"After trials, Clark would often speak to jurors, and the ones who always gave her the warmest greetings were the African-American women," Toobin wrote. "She even had a fan club of sorts, a group of former jurors, all black women, who wrote her letters and kept in touch well after their trials had ended. Clark felt that these women- her women-would respond to the story she would tell of Nicole Brown Simpson's death."

Of course, as both Toobin's book and the miniseries explore, they didn't. In research prior to jury selection, it became clear that African American women hated Marcia Clark, and they had less sympathy for Nicole Brown Simpson than for O.J. Simpson himself. And Clark's arguments about domestic violence didn't resonate with them the way she anticipated. Clark, like plenty of other white feminists in years to come, gambled on the idea that African American women would prioritize gender over race despite indications to the contrary before jury selection. She lost.

In a similar way, one of the major clashes of the trial - whether the specific, racist language Mark Fuhrman had used in conversations with other officers and with an aspiring screenwriter, who had taped their conversations, could be spoken in the courtroom - has implications for the trigger warnings and language debates that have become so prominent today. The alignment of issues may not have been exactly the same as they are today. The prosecution, which was trying to minimize the role that the LAPD's racism might have played in the Simpson investigation, argued for the suppression of racist language, while the defense, which was making police racism a centerpiece of its strategy, was arguing for Fuhrman's slurs to be spoken aloud in court. But the arguments on both sides are eerily similar to the debates taking place today.

Prosecutor Christopher Darden, in an attempt to keep that evidence out, argued that "it is an extremely derogatory and denigrating term, because it is so prejudicial and so extremely inflammatory that to use that word in any situation will evoke some type of emotional response from any African American within earshot of that word." Defense attorney Johnnie Cochran countered with an argument that in contemporary debates is associated with a more conservative position on inflammatory or even merely upsetting speech. "It is demeaning to our jurors to say that African Americans who have lived under oppression for 200-plus years in this country cannot work within the mainstream, cannot hear these offensive words," he argued. Cochran carried the day.

This is not to say that America is the exact same place it was in 1995.

The most recent discussions of the sexual assault allegations against Bill Cosby - sparked by a black, male comedian, Hannibal Buress - have aimed squarely at the idea that no matter how much Cosby had done for African Americans over the course of his career and private philanthropy, there was no pass he could purchase that would allow him to abuse women. The rise of Black Lives Matter has prompted expressions of solidarity ( however awkward some of them might be) from white observers, instead of merely the sort of horror that Gates described, and that Dominick Dunne captured in his Vanity Fair coverage and novel about the trial, " Another City, Not My Own." The trigger warning debate may continue, but I'd argue that it's happening in more sophisticated terms, and with more attention paid to the actual function of trauma.

But it's impossible to watch "The People v. O.J. Simpson" and not wonder what might have happened differently. What could have been if police departments across the country had looked at the Simpson case and decided that antagonism between their officers and African American communities were a national disaster that might prevent them from securing big convictions? Even if law enforcement agencies had acted only in self-interest, we might have fewer young black men and women on the rolls of the dead, and fewer cities scarred by riots.

What might it have been like if we had proved more capable of holding multiple ideas in our heads simultaneously? What if it might have been possible for Mark Fuhrman to be a racist and a bad cop who didn't plant evidence? What if white Americans had been able to recognize polls where African Americans voiced their support for Simpson's innocence as a vote against policing nationwide? The idea of a national conversation about race (much less a national conversation about domestic violence) has always been a fantasy that would allow us to avoid a material reckoning with the legacy of white supremacy. And I suppose the Simpson trial is a useful measurement of the limits of our capacity to even engage in that limited dialogue with each other instead of retreating to safe ground and staring at our opponents in horror.

"American Crime Story" may be a separate franchise from Ryan Murphy's "American Horror Story," rooted in truth rather than the fantastical and supernatural. But "The People v. O.J. Simpson" is a horror story, too. It's haunted by the violence with which Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were killed, and by all the violence and pain we might have prevented in the years since. Simpson, acquitted in a criminal trial and the loser in a civil case, might or might not be the author of the atrocity that began it all. But responsibility for the latter lies with the rest of us, especially those who heard a national cry of agony and found a way to absorb the sound, but not the substance.

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Opinion | Why America is still haunted by the O.J. Simpson trial

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The O.J. Simpson trial is a powerful generational marker. As my colleague Hank Stuever writes in his review of the first installment of FX's new "American Crime Story" anthology series, which follows on the success of showrunner Ryan Murphy's "American Horror Story," "The People v. O.J.

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The 1995 OJ Simpson murder trial was one of the most sensational moments in recent US history. The world watched as the fault-lines of American race relations were laid bare in a Los Angeles courtroom, and the blanket media coverage brought to life a phenomenon later known as reality TV.

Now, more than 20 years later, the details of the case are being dredged up once more thanks to its onscreen dramatisation in the FX series American Crime Story: The People vs OJ Simpson. And today it was revealed that police may have uncovered a new piece of long-buried evidence.

The LAPD has confirmed it is carrying out DNA tests on a knife said to have been excavated at Simpson's property, three years after he was acquitted of the June 1994 murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, 25-year-old Ron Goldman.

OJ Simpson: Police DNA testing knife 'found in back yard' of home

According to TMZ, a construction worker found a folding buck knife buried on the edge of the Rockingham estate as the house was being demolished by its new owners in 1998. The man turned his discovery over to an off-duty police officer, who was doing security work on a film shoot nearby.

The officer retired shortly thereafter and is alleged to have kept the knife as a souvenir ever since. In January this year, he mentioned the weapon to a friend in the LAPD's robbery-homicide division, whose superiors subsequently seized it for further investigation.

Simpson had bought his 6,200-sq-ft Brentwood mansion in 1977; the Rockingham estate, and the bloody glove found there, two miles from the murder scene, became key elements at the trial. In 1997 the property was sold to investment banker Kenneth Abdalla, who ordered its demolition.

Khloe Kardashian On The People v. O. J. Simpson

Today, at a hastily arranged press conference, LAPD spokesman Captain Andrew Neiman confirmed that the knife had been submitted to the lab for testing, but said it remained unclear whether it was "a piece of evidence, or just ... a made-up story".

He added that he was "really surprised" by the unnamed ex-cop's failure to turn in the weapon sooner. "An LAPD officer should know that anytime you come into contact with evidence, you should submit that to investigators," he said.

Simpson, a former American football player and film actor, was found not guilty of the murders in October 1995. His eight-month trial took place just three years since riots had rocked LA, following the acquittal of four white LAPD officers filmed viciously beating black motorist Rodney King.

Public opinion of the Simpson case was sharply divided along racial lines: many African-Americans believed the Naked Gun star had been framed for the killings by a racist police force. The murder weapon, to the frustration of investigators and prosecutors, was never found.

In a subsequent civil trial instigated by the Brown and Goldman families, Simpson was found liable for the wrongful deaths of both victims, and ordered to pay $33.5m (£23.5) in damages, a debt he has so far failed to honour.

In 2008, he was convicted of kidnapping and robbery after he was involved in stealing sports memorabilia at gunpoint from the occupants of a Las Vegas hotel room. Simpson, now 68, was sentenced to 33 years in prison in Nevada, where he is incarcerated today.

Under double jeopardy rules, he cannot be tried again for the murders, but, said Captain Neiman, "Unless there is an actual arrest or conviction to prove we have actually closed the case, the cases remain open. That is where we are with the OJ Simpson case... I shouldn't say 'the OJ Simpson case'; this is the Nicole Brown case. This is a double homicide that is still open."

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OJ Simpson trial laid bare America's race problems - and invented Reality TV

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The 1995 OJ Simpson murder trial was one of the most sensational moments in recent US history. The world watched as the fault-lines of American race relations were laid bare in a Los Angeles courtroom, and the blanket media coverage brought to life a phenomenon later known as reality TV.

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Now, some 20 years later, I finally understand that day - October 3rd, 1995 - thanks to the power of documentary filmmaking.

Yesterday I finished watching the excellent five-part documentary series O.J.: Made in America. It's riveting stuff, told with enough context to make the "Trial of the Century" culturally relatable to anyone: old or young, born in the USA or not. It's especially relevant to understanding the American condition, both then and now.

In the US, you are entitled to a trial by a jury of your peers. The Simpson jury was mostly black, selected from the area of downtown Los Angeles where the trial was based, not the wealthier (and whiter) judicial district of Santa Monica where the murders took place. Downtown LA is home to Watts, the black neighborhood notorious for the 1965 riots sparked by police racism. Downtown LA gave us gangsta rap in the mid 80s, including NWA's single "Fuck tha Police" which railed against police brutality and racial profiling. Downtown LA is the place where people again rioted in 1992 after a mostly white jury from the suburbs acquitted four LA police officers caught on videotape beating Rodney King. No, the jurors who acquitted Simpson in 1995 were nothing like me. Growing up black in downtown Los Angeles was nothing like being white in an Ohio suburb. The jurors experience with the police and institutional racism was something I had never known. I had only been in the back of a police car once, and for good reason - not because of the color of my skin. The jurors had every reason to doubt the LA police and the evidence they presented against a wealthy, and universally loved black superstar.

I now see the verdict for what it was

I now see the verdict for what it was. A referendum on race in America, not a search for truth. I'd heard that line before, of course, but always discarded it under some vague notion of neglected civic duty. Only now do I understand it thanks to Ezra Edelman's exceptional documentary. I had to see the story laid out end-to-end, from the 1940s to present day, to fully appreciate the issues and to evolve beyond sympathy to comprehension. Like many white Americans, I needed a window into a black America that my own life experience and education didn't provide.

Activist and actor, Susan Sarandon, recently had this to say about the influence a documentary film can have on society:

"As both activist and actor I understand the profound power of a story well told. Storytelling is what makes us human, it is our common currency and as such can be a powerful tool for positive change. Compelling narratives have the ability to bring us together, to galvanize us into action. Documentary makers commit years of their lives in an effort to bring us these vital and often complex stories and in doing so they make the issues we face as a society both more tangible and increasingly urgent."

It's clear to me now that the Black Lives Matter protests we see today in cities like Sanford, Ferguson, Baltimore, and New York City share a common lineage with the "not guilty" protests in the Simpson trial way back then. It took 21 years and 7.5 hours for me to figure it out, but thanks to a documentary, I finally understand it. Hopefully my peers will, too.

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The OJ Simpson documentary made me rethink racism

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Now, some 20 years later, I finally understand that day - October 3rd, 1995 - thanks to the power of documentary filmmaking. Yesterday I finished watching the excellent five-part documentary series O.J.: Made in America . It's riveting stuff, told with enough context to make the "Trial of the Century" culturally relatable to anyone: old or young, born in the USA or not.

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http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/14/us/issue-of-racism-erupts-in-simpson-trial.html

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LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman cast a long shadow of reasonable doubt during the O.J. Simpson trial when recorded conversations between himself and aspiring screenwriter Laura Hart McKinny surfaced. The Fuhrman tapes, as they would come to be known, were a flagrant contradiction of the sworn testimony that Fuhrman had given earlier under cross-examination during the trial: That he had not, to his recollection, used the N-word in the past ten years. In those tapes, Fuhrman not only used it, but described committing various acts of police brutality (an L.A. public defender's investigation later determined that he was exaggerating on the latter point).

The ninth and penultimate episode of FX's The People v. O.J. Simpson is devoted to the tapes, which Johnnie Cochran and his defense team would use to say that Fuhrman was not only a racist, but a racist who could have planted evidence to frame O.J. Simpson. Cochran called Fuhrman a "lying, perjuring genocidal racist." Even prosecutor Marcia Clark closed her argument asking, "Is he a racist? Yes. Is he the worst LAPD has to offer? Yes." So how is the man who emerged as the most controversial figure of the trial - second perhaps only to O.J. Simpson himself - doing? Pretty well, actually.

, published by Regnery in 1997, shot up to the top of the New York What happened to Mark Fuhrman after the trial?
Right afterward, Fuhrman was charged with perjury, to which he pleaded no contest, three years' probation, and paid a $200 fine. (It was then expunged from his record.) He retired during the trial, and like many of the major figures involved, wrote a book about his experiences. Murder in Brentwood Times best-seller list, and positions Fuhrman as a victim of America's racial inequities. In the preface, the publisher Alfred S. Regnery writes, "It became apparent that somebody would have to be sacrificed ... and the way he would be sacrificed would be to exploit racial conflict."

Did he perjure himself?
In the exchange between defense attorney F. Lee Bailey and Fuhrman, Bailey had asked if he had used the N-word in the past ten years, to which Furhman replied, "Not that I recall, no." In his book, he explains that he was referring to "the habitual use in the course of a lifetime" rather than particular instances. Whether this is perjury depends somewhat on whether you consider this issue materially relevant to the case. Perjury isn't simply telling an untruth on the witness stand. (Lying about your age isn't perjury unless the case were about retirement benefits, for instance.) Therefore the perjury depends on whether you see Fuhrman's use of the word as materially relevant to the murder trial.

What does he think of Johnnie Cochran?Obviously, he isn't a fan of the man who dragged him throughout the trial. "Johnnie Cochran has been playing the race card for much of his professional life," writes Fuhrman in Murder in Brentwood. "Was Johnnie Cochran really concerned with racism, or just money?" In fact, he thinks that Cochran is a hypocrite for going after him for using a racial slur when he apparently uses it. "Johnnie Cochran deems the 'N' word as a term of affection," he writes.

What's Fuhrman doing now?
After the success of Murder in Brentwood, Fuhrman would embark on a true-crime spree, writing Murder in Greenwich, Murder in Spokane, and a number of others (his last book was 2009's The Murder Business). He then became a TV and radio personality with his own talk-radio show, "It's All About Crime With Mark Fuhrman," and then "The Mark Fuhrman Show." He is now a forensic and crime-scene expert for Fox News.

What kind of commenting does he do?
Well, for one, he came on as an expert for the Michael Brown murder, saying that Darren Wilson "almost lost consciousness" in a struggle that ended when he shot Brown six times. In that video, Fuhrman also suggests that a cut Brown has on his finger could be the result of Brown trying to take Wilson's gun. "I am wondering if that could have possibly been caused by grabbing the weapon," he tells Megyn Kelly. "It's a possibility."

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

t is sad that this movie will be the historical word on this infamous trial," Fuhrman Is Mark Fuhrman watching FX's The People v. O.J. Simpson?
His agent told Vulture that he isn't watching the show and consequently isn't commenting on it. That doesn't mean he doesn't have opinions! "I told the New York Post. " This miniseries will most probably define not the historical record of the murder of two people, but the almost pathological desire to elevate a narcissistic, violent man to victim status just because he was a black athlete."

Is this the first time someone has played Mark Fuhrman on television?
Nope! USA aired a TV movie adaptation of Murder in Greenwich, where none other than Christopher Meloni played Fuhrman.

What happened to Laura Hart McKinny (the woman who made the Fuhrman tapes as part of a larger project interviewing LAPD officers for a screenplay she was developing)?
McKinny is now a professor of screenwriting in the film department of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. She eventually wrote a novel called using the material from her tapes. "I didn't set out to interview a racist," McKinny recently THR.

So how does he explain the tapes?
Fuhrman apologized a number of times for the tapes, including during an interview with Diane Sawyer, another with Oprah Winfrey, and in Murder in Brentwood . He offers up a number of explanations in his book, which hinge on the fact that he claims he wasn't speaking as himself, but as a character creating "fictional situations, sometimes based loosely on true incidents." He writes:

When I was making up dialogue, I spoke in the first person. But these weren't my own words, my own experiences, or my own sentiments," writes Fuhrman. "They were the words of fictional characters I had created based on my imagination and experience. I knew I had to exaggerate things to make the screenplay dramatic and commercially appealing ... And since Laura and I sometimes drank wine while we had our recorded conversations, occasionally I got a little carried away.

Come on. Is that true?
According to the defense, there was only one identifiable instance where Fuhrman seemed to be speaking as a "fictional character." Testifying during the trial, McKinny said she had outlined the point of the interviews to him: " I told him that I wanted to write a fictional piece based on fact, so it was very important to me that I had a really clear idea of what some police officers would say in a given situation, so that the instances that he would give me would be as factual and realistic as possible."

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What Happened to Mark Fuhrman After the O.J. Simpson Trial?

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LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman cast a long shadow of reasonable doubt during the O.J. Simpson trial when recorded conversations between himself and aspiring screenwriter Laura Hart McKinny surfaced. The Fuhrman tapes, as they would come to be known, were a flagrant contradiction of the sworn testimony that Fuhrman had given earlier under cross-examination during the trial: That he had not, to his recollection, used the N-word in the past ten years.

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american crime story the people v o.j. simspon

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A White Bronco? Too-Tight Gloves? A Guide to the O.J. Simpson Murder Trial for Those Who Missed the '90s

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It's been more than 20 years since a verdict was reached in the O.J. Simpson murder trial, but the controversial...

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People v. Simpson

Court
Superior Court of California for and in the County of Los Angeles

Full case name
The People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson

Decided

October 3, 1995; 27 years ago

Verdict

Not Guilty in violation of Penal Code Section 187(a), a felony upon Nicole Brown Simpson, a human being. Not Guilty in violation of Penal Code Section 187(a), a felony upon Ronald Lyle Goldman, a human being.

Subsequent action(s)

Civil lawsuit filed by the Brown and Goldman families; Simpson was found responsible by a preponderance of the evidence for both deaths on February 4, 1997.

Judge(s) sitting

Kathleen Kennedy-Powell (Preliminary Hearing)

Lance Ito (Trial)

The People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson was a criminal trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court starting in 1994, in which O. J. Simpson, a former National Football League (NFL) player, broadcaster and actor, was tried and acquitted for the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. The pair were stabbed to death outside Brown's condominium in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles on the night of June 12, 1994. The trial spanned eleven months, from November 9, 1994.

Opening statements were made on January 24, 1995. Simpson was acquitted of both counts of murder on October 3 of the same year, despite overwhelming forensic evidence against him, including the relatively new use of DNA evidence. The trial took place shortly after the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Commentators agree that the defense capitalized on anger among the city's African-American community toward the LAPD, which had a history of racial bias, to convince the majority-Black jury to acquit Simpson. The trial is often characterized as the trial of the century because of its international publicity, and has been described as the "most publicized" criminal trial in human history.

Following perfunctory questioning by police detectives, Simpson was formally charged with the murders on June 17 after investigators found a blood-stained glove on his property. After he did not turn himself in at the agreed time, he became the object of a low-speed pursuit in a white 1993 Ford Bronco SUV owned and driven by his friend Al Cowlings. TV stations interrupted coverage of the 1994 NBA Finals to broadcast live coverage of the pursuit, which was watched by an estimated 95 million people. The pursuit and Simpson's arrest later on the same day were among the most widely publicized events in American history.

Simpson was represented by a high-profile defense team, referred to as the " Dream Team", which was initially led by Robert Shapiro and subsequently directed by Johnnie Cochran. The team also included F. Lee Bailey, Alan Dershowitz, Robert Kardashian, Shawn Holley, Carl E. Douglas, and Gerald Uelmen. Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld were two additional attorneys who specialized in DNA evidence. While Deputy District Attorneys Marcia Clark, William Hodgman, and Christopher Darden believed they had a strong case against Simpson, Cochran persuaded the jury that there was reasonable doubt concerning the DNA evidence in this case. He suggested that the blood sample had allegedly been mishandled by lab scientists and technicians, and questionable circumstances were related to other court exhibits. Cochran and the defense team also alleged misconduct by the LAPD related to racism and incompetence, in particular noting actions and comments of Detective Mark Fuhrman.

The trial was considered historically significant for the wide division in reaction to the verdict by the public. Observers' opinions of the verdict were related to their ethnicity, and the media dubbed this the "racial gap". A poll of Los Angeles County residents showed that most African-Americans thought that the "not guilty" verdict was justified, while the majority of Whites thought it was a racially motivated jury nullification by the mostly African-American jury. More recent polling shows this "gap" has narrowed since the trial. In 2013 more than half of polled black respondents said that they believed Simpson was guilty.

After the trial, Goldman's father filed a civil suit against Simpson. On February 4, 1997, the jury unanimously found Simpson responsible for the deaths of both Goldman and Brown. The Goldman family was awarded compensatory and punitive damages totaling $33.5 million ($56.5 million in 2021 dollars), but have received only a small portion of that figure. In 2000, Simpson left California for Florida, one of the few states where personal assets such as homes and pensions cannot be seized to cover liabilities that were incurred in other states.

Simpson-Brown marriage

Nicole Brown met O.J. Simpson in 1977 when she was 18 and working as a waitress at the Daisy (a Beverly Hills private club). They began dating although Simpson was already married. Simpson filed for divorce from his first wife in March 1979.

He and Brown married on February 2, 1985. Brown and Simpson had two children together, daughter Sydney (b. 1985) and son Justin (b. 1988). According to Dr. Lenore Walker, the Simpson-Brown marriage was a "textbook example of domestic abuse". Brown signed a prenuptial agreement and was prohibited from working while married. She wrote that she felt conflicted about notifying the police of the abuse because she was financially dependent on Simpson. Brown described an incident in which Simpson broke her arm during a fight; in order to prevent him from being arrested, she had told emergency room staff that she had fallen off her bike. She wrote about him beating her in public, during sex and even in front of family and friends. Of the 62 incidents of abuse, the police were notified eight times and Simpson was arrested once. On February 25, 1992, Brown filed for divorce, citing " irreconcilable differences".

Brown said that Simpson stalked and harassed her after they divorced - an intimidation tactic meant to force the victim to return to the abuser. She documented an incident in which he spied on her having sex with her new boyfriend. Afterwards, Brown said she felt her life was in danger because Simpson had threatened to kill her if he ever found her with another man. She drafted a will. Brown telephoned Sojourn, a women's shelter, on June 8, 1994. She was considering staying at the shelter because she was afraid of what Simpson might do to her, as she was refusing his pleas to reconcile their marriage. She had reported a set of keys missing from her house a few weeks earlier. The keys were later found on Simpson when he was arrested for the murders of Brown and Ron Goldman.

A few months before the murders, Simpson completed a film pilot for , an adventure series similar to . Simpson played the lead role of "Bullfrog" Burke, who led a group of former U.S. Navy SEALs. He received "a fair amount of" military training - including use of a knife - for Frogmen, and holds a knife to the throat of a woman (playing the role of his daughter) in one scene. A 25-minute tape of the pilot, which did not include the knife scene, was found by investigators and watched on Simpson's television as they searched his house. The defense tried to block its use on these grounds, but Judge Ito allowed the tape to be shown. However, the prosecution never introduced it as evidence during the trial. It was reported that among the skills of the character of "Bullfrog Burke" was night killings and the "silent kill" technique of slashing the throat, and that SEALs regularly wear knit "watch caps" like the one found at the scene.

On the evening of June 12, 1994, Brown and Simpson both attended their daughter Sydney's dance recital at Paul Revere Middle School. Afterwards, Brown and her family went to eat at Mezzaluna restaurant; they did not invite Simpson to join them. One of the waiters at the restaurant was Ron Goldman, who had become close friends with Brown in recent weeks, but was not assigned to the Brown family's table. Brown and her children then went to Ben & Jerry's before returning to Brown's condominium in Bundy Drive, Brentwood. The manager of Mezzaluna recounted that Brown's mother telephoned the restaurant at 9:37 pm about a pair of lost eyeglasses. The manager found the glasses and put them in a white envelope, which Goldman took with him as he left the restaurant at the end of his shift at 9:50 pm, intending to drop it off at Brown's place. Meanwhile, Simpson ate takeout food from McDonald's with Kato Kaelin, a bit-part actor and family friend who had been given the use of a guest house on Simpson's estate. Rumors circulated that Simpson had been on drugs at the time of the murder, and the New York Post's Cindy Adams reported that the pair had actually gone to a local Burger King, where a prominent drug dealer known only as "J. R." had admitted to selling them crystal meth.

Brown's neighbors testified that they heard profuse barking coming from outside throughout the night, beginning around 10:15 pm. Around 10:55 pm., a dogwalker who lived a few blocks away from Brown came across Brown's Akita dog barking in the street outside her home. The Akita, whose legs were covered in blood, followed the man home; he tried to walk the dog back to where he found it, but the dog resisted. Later on, he left the Akita with a neighboring couple who offered to keep the dog overnight; as the dog was agitated, the couple decided to walk it back to where it had been found. Around midnight, as they reached the area where the Akita had been found, the dog stopped outside Brown's home and the couple saw Brown's body lying outside the house. Police were called to the scene and found Goldman's body near Brown's.

The front door to Brown's condominium was open when the bodies were found, but there were no signs that anyone had entered the building, by breaking in or otherwise. Brown's body was lying face down and barefoot at the bottom of the stairs leading to the door. The walkway leading to the stairs was covered in blood, but the soles of Brown's feet were clean; based on this evidence, investigators concluded that she was the first person to be killed and the intended target. She had been stabbed multiple times in the head and neck, but there were few defensive wounds on her hands, implying a short struggle to investigators. The final wound inflicted ran deep into her neck, severing her carotid artery. A large bruise in the center of her upper back with a corresponding foot print on her clothing indicated to investigators that, after killing Goldman, the assailant returned to Brown's body, stood on her back, pulled her head back by the hair and slit her throat. Her larynx could be seen through the gaping wound in her neck, and vertebra C3 was incised; Brown's head barely remained attached to her body.

Goldman's body lay nearby, close to a tree and the fence. He had been stabbed multiple times in the body and neck, but there were relatively few defensive wounds on his hands, signifying a short struggle to investigators. Forensic evidence from the Los Angeles County coroner alleged that the assailant stabbed Goldman with one hand while holding him in a chokehold. Near Goldman's body were a blue knit cap; a left-hand, extra-large Aris Isotoner light leather glove; and the envelope containing the glasses that he was returning. Detectives determined that Goldman came to Nicole's house during her killing and that the killer killed him to silence Goldman and remove any witnesses. A trail of the assailant's bloody shoe prints ran through the back gate. To the left of some of the prints were drops of blood from the assailant, who was apparently bleeding from the left hand. Measuring the distance between the prints indicated that the assailant walked - rather than ran - away from the scene.

On the night of June 12, Simpson was scheduled to board a red-eye flight from Los Angeles International Airport to Chicago, where he was due to play golf the following day at a convention with representatives of Hertz rental car Corporation, for whom he was a spokesman. The flight was due to leave at 11:45 pm, and a limousine arrived early at Simpson's Rockingham estate to pick him up at around 10:25 pm. The limousine driver drove around the estate to make sure he could navigate the area with the stretch limousine properly and to see which driveway would have the best access for the limousine. He began to buzz the intercom at 10:40, getting no response. He noted the house was dark and nobody appeared to be home as he smoked a cigarette and made several calls to his boss to get Simpson's home phone number. He testified that at one point he saw a figure the same size as Simpson enter the house through the front door from where the driveway starts, before the lights came on. He did not see what direction the figure came from. He testified that he saw Simpson's house number on the curb outside the estate, but no car was parked outside. The prosecution presented exhibits showing the position next to the house number on the curb in which Simpson's Ford Bronco was found the next morning, implying that the limousine driver would surely have noticed the Bronco if it had been there when he arrived to pick Simpson up.

The limousine driver noted that on the way to the airport, Simpson complained about how hot it was, and was sweating and rolled down the window, despite it not being a warm night. The driver also testified that he loaded four luggage bags into the car that night, one of them being a knapsack that Simpson would not let him touch, insisting he load it himself. A porter at the airport testified that Simpson checked only three bags that night, and the police determined that the missing luggage was the same knapsack the limousine driver had mentioned earlier. Another witness not heard at the trial claimed he saw Simpson at the airport discarding items from a bag into a trash can. Detectives Tom Lange and Philip Vannatter believe this is how the murder weapon, shoes and clothes that Simpson wore during the murder were disposed.

Simpson was running late but caught his flight. A passenger on the plane and the pilot testified to not noticing any cuts or wounds on Simpson's hands. A broken glass, a note with a telephone number on it, and bedsheets with blood on them were all recovered from Simpson's room at the O'Hare Plaza Hotel. The manager of the hotel recalled Simpson asking for a Band-Aid for his finger at the front desk, because he had "cut it on pieces of note paper".

After learning that Brown was the female victim, LAPD commander Keith Bushey ordered detectives Tom Lange, Philip Vannatter, Ron Phillips, and Mark Fuhrman to notify Simpson of her death and to escort him to the police station to pick up the former couple's children, who were asleep in Brown's condominium at the time of the murders. The detectives buzzed the intercom at Simpson's estate for over 30 minutes but received no response. They noted that Simpson's car was parked at an awkward angle, with its back end out more than the front, and that there was blood on the door, which they feared meant someone inside might be hurt. Vannatter instructed Fuhrman to scale the wall and unlock the gate to allow the other three detectives to enter. The detectives would argue they entered without a search warrant because of exigent circumstances - specifically out of fear that someone inside might be injured. Fuhrman briefly interviewed Kaelin, who told the detective that the car belonged to Simpson and that earlier that night he had heard thumps on his wall. In a walk around the premises to inspect what may have caused the thumps, Fuhrman discovered a blood-stained right-hand glove, which was determined to be the mate of the left-hand glove found next to the body of Goldman. This evidence was determined to be probable cause to issue an arrest warrant for Simpson.[citation needed ]

Phillips testified that when he called Simpson in Chicago to tell him of Brown's murder, Simpson sounded "very upset" but was oddly unconcerned about the circumstances of her death. Phillips noted that Simpson only asked if the children had seen the murder or Brown's body, but was not concerned about whether the assailant(s) had harmed the children either. The police contacted Simpson at his home on June 13 and took him to Parker Center for questioning. Lange noticed that Simpson had a cut on a finger on his left hand that was consistent with where the killer was bleeding from, and asked Simpson how he got the cut. At first, Simpson claimed he cut his finger accidentally while in Chicago after learning of Brown's death. Lange then informed Simpson that blood was found inside his car; at this point, Simpson admitted that he had cut his finger on June 12, but said he did not remember how. He voluntarily gave some of his own blood for comparison with evidence collected at the crime scene and was released. On June 14, Simpson hired lawyer Robert Shapiro, who began assembling Simpson's team of lawyers (referred to as the "Dream Team"). Shapiro noted that an increasingly distraught Simpson had begun treatment for depression. The following days, preliminary results from DNA testing came back with matches to Simpson but the District Attorney delayed filing charges until all the results had come back. Simpson spent the night between June 16 and 17 at the San Fernando Valley home of friend Robert Kardashian; Shapiro asked several doctors to attend to Simpson's purported fragile mental state.[citation needed ]

On June 17, detectives recommended that Simpson be charged with two counts of first-degree murder with special circumstance of multiple killings after the final DNA results came back. The LAPD notified Shapiro at 8:30 am that Simpson would have to turn himself in that day. At 9:30 am, Shapiro went to Kardashian's home to tell Simpson that he would have to turn himself in by 11 am, an hour after the murder charges were filed. Simpson told Shapiro that he wanted to turn himself in, to which the police agreed, believing that someone as famous as Simpson would not attempt to flee. The police agreed to delay Simpson's surrender until noon to allow him to be seen by a mental health specialist, as he was showing signs of suicidal depression - he had updated his will, called his mother and children, and written three sealed letters: one to his children, one to his mother, and one to the public. More than 1,000 reporters waited for Simpson's perp walk at the police station, but he did not arrive as stipulated. The LAPD then notified Shapiro that Simpson would be arrested at Kardashian's home. Kardashian and Shapiro told Simpson this but when the police arrived an hour later, Simpson and Al Cowlings had disappeared. The three sealed letters Simpson had written were left behind. At 1:50 pm, Commander Dave Gascon, LAPD's chief spokesman, publicly declared Simpson a fugitive; the police issued an all-points bulletin for him and an arrest warrant for Cowlings.

"Suicide-note"

At 5 pm, Kardashian and one of his defense lawyers read Simpson's public letter. In the letter, Simpson sent greetings to 24 friends and wrote, "First everyone understand I had nothing to do with Nicole's murder". He described the fights with Brown and their decision not to reconcile their relationship, and asked the media "as a last wish" not to bother his children. He wrote to his then-girlfriend Paula Barbieri, "I'm sorry... we're not going to have, our chance... As I leave, you'll be in my thoughts". It also included "I can't go on" and an apology to the Goldman family. The letter concluded, "Don't feel sorry for me. I have had a great life, great friends. Please think of the real O. J. and not this lost person". Most interpreted this as a suicide note; Simpson's mother collapsed after hearing it, and reporters joined the search for Simpson. At Kardashian's press conference, Shapiro said that he and Simpson's psychiatrists agreed with the suicide note interpretation. Through television, Shapiro appealed to Simpson to surrender.

News helicopters searched the Los Angeles highway system for Cowlings's white Ford Bronco. At 5:51 pm, Simpson reportedly called 9-1-1; the call was traced to the Santa Ana Freeway, near Lake Forest. At around 6:20 pm, a motorist in Orange County notified California Highway Patrol after seeing someone believed to be Simpson riding in a Bronco on the I-5 freeway heading north. The police tracked calls placed by Simpson on his cell phone. At 6:45 pm, police officer Ruth Dixon saw the Bronco heading north on Interstate 405; when she caught up to it, Cowlings yelled out that Simpson was in the back seat of the vehicle and was pointing a gun at his own head. The officer backed off, but followed the vehicle at 35 miles per hour (56 km/h), with up to 20 police cars following her in the chase. Zoey Tur of KCBS-TV was the first to find Simpson from a news helicopter, after colleagues heard that the FBI's mobile phone tracking had located Simpson at the El Toro Y. More than nine news helicopters eventually joined the pursuit; Tur compared the fleet to Apocalypse Now, and the high degree of media participation caused camera signals to appear on incorrect television channels. The chase was so long that one helicopter ran out of fuel, forcing its station to ask another for a camera feed.

Knowing that Cowlings was listening to KNX-AM, sports announcer Pete Arbogast called Simpson's former USC football coach John McKay and connected him to Simpson. As both men wept, Simpson told McKay, "OK, Coach, I won't do anything stupid. I promise" off the air. "There is no doubt in my mind that McKay stopped O.J. from killing himself in the back of that Bronco", Arbogast said. McKay reiterated on radio his pleas to Simpson to turn himself in instead of committing suicide: "My God, we love you, Juice. Just pull over and I'll come out and stand by you all the rest of my life". Walter Payton, Vince Evans, and others from around the country also pleaded with Simpson over radio to surrender. At Parker Center, officials discussed how to persuade Simpson to surrender peacefully. Lange, who had interviewed Simpson about the murders on June 13, realized that he had Simpson's cell phone number and called him repeatedly. A colleague hooked a tape recorder up to Lange's phone and captured a conversation between Lange and Simpson in which Lange repeatedly pleaded with Simpson to "throw the gun out [of] the window" for the sake of his mother and children. Simpson apologized for not turning himself in earlier that day and responded that he was "the only one who deserved to get hurt" and was "just gonna go with Nicole". Simpson asked Lange to "just let me get to the house" and said "I need [the gun] for me". Cowlings's voice is overheard in the recording (after the Bronco had arrived at Simpson's home surrounded by police) pleading with Simpson to surrender and end the chase peacefully.

Los Angeles streets emptied and drink orders stopped at bars as people watched on television. Every television showed the chase; ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and local news outlets interrupted regularly scheduled programming to cover the incident, watched by an estimated 95 million viewers nationwide; only 90 million had watched that year's Super Bowl. While NBC continued coverage of Game 5 of the NBA Finals between the New York Knicks and the Houston Rockets at Madison Square Garden, the game appeared in a small box in the corner while Tom Brokaw covered the chase. The chase was covered live by ABC anchors Peter Jennings and Barbara Walters on behalf of the network's five news magazines, which achieved some of their highest-ever ratings that week. The chase was also broadcast internationally, with Gascon's relatives in France and China seeing him on television. Thousands of spectators and onlookers packed overpasses along the route of the chase, waiting for the white Bronco. In a festival-like atmosphere, many had signs urging Simpson to flee. Spectators shouting "Go, O.J., go" - the famous slogan from Simpson's Hertz commercials - and encouraging the actions of a possibly suicidal murder suspect outraged Jim Hill, among those broadcasting pleas to their friend to surrender. Jack Ferreira and Mike Smith were among those watching the chase not knowing why; they felt part of a "common emotional experience", one author wrote, as they "wonder[ed] if O.J. Simpson would commit suicide, escape, be arrested, or engage in some kind of violent confrontation. Whatever might ensue, the shared adventure gave millions of viewers a vested interest, a sense of participation, a feeling of being on the inside of a national drama in the making".

Simpson reportedly demanded that he be allowed to speak to his mother before he would surrender. The chase ended at 8:00 pm at his Brentwood estate, 50 miles (80 km) further, where his son, Jason, ran out of the house, "gesturing wildly", and 27 SWAT officers awaited. After remaining in the Bronco for about 45 minutes, Simpson exited at 8:50 pm with a framed family photo and went inside for about an hour; a police spokesman stated that he spoke to his mother and drank a glass of orange juice, causing reporters to laugh. Shapiro arrived, and Simpson surrendered to authorities a few minutes later. In the Bronco, police found "$8,000 in cash, a change of clothing, a loaded .357 Magnum, a United States passport, family pictures, and a disguise kit with a fake goatee and mustache". Simpson was booked at Parker Center and taken to Men's Central Jail; Cowlings was booked on suspicion of harboring a fugitive and held on $250,000 bail.

The Bronco chase, the suicide note, and the items found in the Bronco were not presented as evidence in the criminal trial. Marcia Clark conceded that such evidence did imply guilt yet defended her decision, citing the public reaction to the chase and suicide note as proof the trial had been compromised by Simpson's celebrity status. Most of the public, including Simpson's friend Al Michaels, interpreted his actions as an admission of guilt yet thousands of people encouraged him to flee prosecution and were sympathetic to his feelings of guilt.

On June 20, Simpson was arraigned and pleaded not guilty to both murders and was held without bail. The following day, a grand jury was called to determine whether to indict him for the two murders but was dismissed on June 23, as a result of excessive media coverage that could have influenced its neutrality. Instead, authorities held a probable cause hearing to determine whether to bring Simpson to trial. California Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy-Powell ruled on July 7that there was sufficient evidence to bring Simpson to trial for the murders. At his second arraignment on July 22, when asked how he pleaded to the murders, Simpson firmly stated: "Absolutely, one hundred percent, not guilty."

Jill Shively testified to the grand jury that soon after the time of the murders she saw a white Ford Bronco speeding away from Bundy Drive in such a hurry that it almost collided with a Nissan at the intersection of Bundy and San Vicente Boulevard, and that she recognized Simpson's voice. She talked to the television show for $5,000, after which prosecutors declined to use her testimony at trial.

Jose Camacho of Ross Cutlery provided store receipts showing Simpson had purchased a 12-inch (305 mm) stiletto knife six weeks before the murders. The knife was recovered and determined to be similar to the one the coroner said caused the stab wounds. The prosecution did not present this evidence at trial after Camacho sold his story to the National Enquirer for $12,500. Tests on the knife determined that an oil used on new cutlery was still present on the knife, indicating it had never been used.

Former NFL player and pastor Rosey Grier visited Simpson on November 13 at the Los Angeles County Jail in the days following the murders. A jailhouse guard, Jeff Stuart, testified to Judge Ito that at one point Simpson yelled to Grier that he "didn't mean to do it", after which Grier had urged Simpson to come clean. Ito ruled that the evidence was inadmissible as being protected because of clergy-penitent privilege.

At first, Simpson's defense sought to show that one or more hitmen hired by drug dealers had murdered Brown and Goldman - giving Brown a " Colombian necktie" - because they were looking for Brown's friend, Faye Resnick, a known cocaine user who had failed to pay for her drugs. She had stayed for several days at Brown's condo until entering rehab four days before the killings. Ito ruled that the drug killer theory was "highly speculative" with no evidence to support it. Consequently, Ito barred the jury from hearing it and prohibited Christian Reichardt from testifying about his former girlfriend Resnick's drug problems.

Rosa Lopez, a neighbor's Spanish-speaking housekeeper, stated on August 18 that she saw Simpson's Bronco parked outside his house at the time of the murders, supporting his claim he was home that night. During cross-examination by Clark, Lopez admitted she was not sure what time she saw Simpson's Bronco but the defense still intended to call her. However, a taped July 29 statement by Lopez did not mention seeing the Bronco but did mention another housekeeper was also there that night, Sylvia Guerra. Prosecutors then spoke with Guerra, who said Lopez was lying and claimed the defense offered both housekeepers $5,000 to say they saw the Bronco that night. When Ito warned the defense that Guerra's claim as well as the earlier statement not mentioning the Bronco and the tape where Clark claims "that [Lopez] is clearly being coached on what to say" will be shown to the jury if Lopez testifies, they dropped her from the witness list.

When the trial began, all of the networks were getting these hate-mail letters because people's soap operas were being interrupted for the Simpson trial. But then what happened was the people who liked soap operas got addicted to the Simpson trial. And they got really upset when the Simpson trial was over, and people would come up to me on the street and say, 'God, I loved your show.'

The murders and trial - "the biggest story I have ever seen", said a producer of NBC's - received extensive media coverage from the very beginning; at least one instant book was proposed two hours after the bodies were found, and scheduled to publish only a few weeks later. The case was a seminal event in the history of reality television. The Los Angeles Times covered the case on its front page for more than 300 days after the murders. The nightly news broadcasts from the Big Three television networks gave more air time to the case than to the Bosnian War and the Oklahoma City bombing combined. The media outlets served an enthusiastic audience; one company put the loss of national productivity from employees following the case instead of working at $40 billion. The Tonight Show with Jay Leno aired many skits on the trial, and the Dancing Itos - a troupe of dancers dressed as the judge - was a popular recurring segment. According to Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post, the acquittal was "the most dramatic courtroom verdict in the history of Western civilization".

Participants in the case received much media coverage. Limo driver Park said the media offered him $100,000 but refused, as he would be removed as a witness. Fans approached Clark at restaurants and malls, and when she got a new hairstyle during the trial, the prosecutor received a standing ovation on the courthouse steps; approved of the change, but advised her to wear "more fitted suits and tailored skirts". While Cochran, Bailey and Dershowitz were already well-known, others like Kaelin became celebrities, and Resnick and Simpson's girlfriend Paula Barbieri appeared in . Those involved in the trial followed their own media coverage; when Larry King appeared in the courtroom after a meeting with Ito, both Simpson and Clark praised King's talk show. Interest in the case was worldwide; Russian president Boris Yeltsin's first question to President Clinton when they met in 1995 was, "Do you think O.J. did it?"

The issue of whether to allow any video cameras into the courtroom was among the first issues Judge Ito had to decide, ultimately ruling that live camera coverage was warranted. Ito was later criticized for this decision by other legal professionals. Dershowitz said that he believed that Ito, along with others related to the case such as Clark, Fuhrman and Kaelin, was influenced to some degree by the media presence and related publicity. The trial was covered in 2,237 news segments from 1994 through 1997. Ito was also criticized for allowing the trial to become a media circus and not doing enough to regulate the court proceedings.

Among the reporters who covered the trial daily from the courtroom, and a media-area that was dubbed "Camp O. J.", were Steve Futterman of CBS News, Linda Deutsch and Michael Fleeman of the Associated Press, Dan Whitcomb of Reuters, Janet Gilmore of the Los Angeles Daily News, Andrea Ford of the Los Angeles Times, Michelle Caruso of the New York Daily News, Dan Abrams of Court TV, Harvey Levin of KCBS, and David Margolick of The New York Times. Writers Dominick Dunne, Joe McGinniss and Joseph Bosco also had full-time seats in the courtroom.

On June 27, 1994, published a cover story, "An American Tragedy", with a photo of Simpson on the cover. The image was darker than a typical magazine image, and the Time photo was darker than the original, as shown on a cover released at the same time. Time became the subject of a media scandal. Commentators found that its staff had used photo manipulation to darken the photo, and speculated it was to make Simpson appear more menacing. After the publication of the photo drew widespread criticism of racist editorializing and yellow journalism, Time publicly apologized.

Charles Ogletree, a former criminal defense attorney and current professor at Harvard Law School, said in a 2005 interview for PBS' that the best investigative reporting around the events and facts of the murder, and the evidence of the trial, was by the National Enquirer.

Simpson wanted a speedy trial, and the defense and prosecuting attorneys worked around the clock for several months to prepare their cases. The trial began on January 24, 1995, seven months after the murders, and was televised by closed-circuit TV camera via Court TV, and in part by other cable and network news outlets, for 134 days. Judge Lance Ito presided over the trial in the C.S. Foltz Criminal Courts Building.

District Attorney Gil Garcetti elected to file charges in downtown Los Angeles, as opposed to Santa Monica, in which jurisdiction the crimes took place. The Los Angeles Superior Court then decided to hold the trial in Downtown Los Angeles instead of Santa Monica due to safety issues[clarification needed ] at the Santa Monica Court house. The decision may have affected the trial's outcome because it resulted in a jury pool that was less educated, had lower incomes, and contained more African Americans. Richard Gabriel, a jury consultant for Simpson, wrote that more educated jurors with higher incomes were more likely to accept the validity of DNA evidence and the argument that domestic violence is a prelude to murder. Gabriel noted that African Americans were far more likely than other minorities to be receptive to claims of racially motivated fraud by the police.

In October 1994, Judge Lance Ito started interviewing 304 prospective jurors, each of whom had to fill out a 75-page questionnaire. On November 3, twelve jurors were seated with twelve alternates. Over the course of the trial, ten were dismissed for a wide variety of reasons. Only four of the original jurors remained on the final panel.

According to media reports, Clark believed women, regardless of race, would sympathize with the domestic violence aspect of the case and connect with Brown personally. On the other hand, the defense's research suggested that black women would not be sympathetic to Brown, who was white, because of tensions about interracial marriages. Both sides accepted a disproportionate number of female jurors. From an original jury pool of 40 percent white, 28 percent black, 17 percent Hispanic, and 15 percent Asian, the final jury for the trial had ten women and two men, of whom nine were black, two white, and one Hispanic.[clarification needed ]

The two lead prosecutors were Deputy District Attorneys Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden. Clark was designated as the lead prosecutor and Darden became Clark's co-counsel. Prosecutors Hank Goldberg and William Hodgman, who had successfully prosecuted high-profile cases in the past, assisted Clark and Darden. Two prosecutors who were DNA experts, Rockne Harmon and George "Woody" Clarke, were brought in to present the DNA evidence in the case and were assisted by Prosecutor Lisa Kahn.

According to the prosecution, Simpson then drove over to Brown's home in his Ford Bronco to reconcile their relationship as a result and when Brown refused, Simpson killed her in a "final act of control". Goldman then came upon the scene to return some eyeglasses and was murdered as well in order to silence him and remove any witnesses. Afterwards, the prosecution said that Simpson walked to his Bronco and drove home, where he parked it and walked into his house. There, he took off his blood stained clothes, put them in the knapsack (except his socks and the glove), put clean ones on, and left towards the limousine. At the Airport, prosecution said that Simpson opened the knapsack, removed the clothes, Bruno Magli shoes, and the murder weapon, and threw them in the trash before putting the knapsack in one of his suitcases and headed towards his flight.

The prosecution opened its case by calling LAPD 911 dispatcher Sharon Gilbert and playing a four-minute 9-1-1 call from Brown on January 1, 1989, in which she expressed fear that Simpson would physically harm her and Simpson himself is even heard in the background yelling at her and possibly hitting her as well. The officer who responded to that call, Detective John Edwards, testified next that when he arrived, a severely beaten Brown ran from the bushes where she was hiding and to the detective screaming "He's going to kill me, he's going to kill me", referring to Simpson. Pictures of Brown's face from that night were then shown to the jury to confirm his testimony. That incident led to Simpson's arrest and eventual pleading of no contest to one count of domestic violence for which he received probation for one year. LAPD officer and long time friend of both Simpson and Brown, Ron Shipp, testified on February 1, 1995, that Simpson told him the day after the murders that he did not want to take a polygraph test offered to him by the police because "I've had a lot of dreams about killing her. I really don't know about taking that thing". The jury dismissed Shipp's claims after defense attorney Carl E. Douglas accused him of being an alcoholic who was testifying against Simpson because he wanted to promote his acting career. The prosecution then called Brown's sister to the witness stand. She tearfully testified to many episodes of domestic violence in the 1980s, when she saw Simpson pick up his wife and hurl her against a wall, then physically throw her out of their house during an argument. She also testified that Simpson was agitated with Brown the night of their daughter's dance recital as well, the same night Brown was murdered. Although a home videotape taken immediately after the dance recital showed a cheerful Simpson being given a kiss by Brown's sister, Kato Kaelin corroborated Brown's sister claim that Simpson was "upset" with Brown because of the black dress she wore, which he said was "tight".

The prosecution planned to present 62 separate incidents of domestic violence, including three previously unknown incidents Brown had documented in several letters she had written and placed in a bank safety deposit box. Judge Ito denied the defense's motion to suppress the incidents of domestic violence, but only allowed witnessed accounts to be presented to the jury because of Simpson's Sixth Amendment rights. The letters Brown had written and the statements she made to friends and family were ruled inadmissible as hearsay because Brown was dead and unable to be cross-examined. Despite this, the prosecution had witnesses for 44 separate incidents they planned to present to the jury.

However, the prosecution dropped the domestic violence portion of their case on June 20, 1995. Marcia Clark stated it was because they believed the DNA evidence against Simpson was insurmountable, but the media speculated it was because of the comments made by dismissed juror Jeanette Harris. Christopher Darden later confirmed that to be true. Harris was dismissed on April 6 because she failed to disclose that she was a victim of domestic violence from her ex-husband. But afterwards, Harris gave an interview and called the evidence of Simpson's abuse of Brown "a whole lot of nothing" and also said "that doesn't mean he is guilty of murder". This dismissal of Simpson's abusive behavior from a female juror, who was also a victim of such abuse by her own husband, convinced the prosecution that the jury was not receptive to the domestic violence argument. After the verdict, the jurors called the domestic violence portion of the case a "waste of time". Shapiro, Dershowitz, and Uelmen later admitted they believe that race played a factor in the jurors' dismissal of Brown's abuse by Simpson.

The defense retained renowned advocate for victims of domestic abuse, Dr. Lenore E. Walker. Cochran said that she would testify that Simpson does not fit the profile of an abuser that would murder his spouse. Walker's colleagues were appalled by her decision to defend Simpson and accused her of betraying her advocacy for a $250,000 retainer. Walker was dropped from the witness list for "tactical reasons" after she submitted her report on the case. In it, she opines that the statistic from Dershowitz that of the two million incidents of abuse per year, only 2,000 victims are actually murdered by their spouses as being misleading because Brown was already dead. The relevant statistic was "of the murdered spouses who were also victims of abuse, what percentage of them were murdered by their current or ex-husband?" When she reported that number was 80.3%, they dropped her from the witness list.

The revelation of Simpson's abuse of Brown is credited with turning public opinion against him. The public shock at the reason why Walker was dropped from the defense witness list is credited with transforming public opinion on spousal abuse from a private familial matter to a serious public health issue.

Los Angeles County Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran, testified on June 14, 1995, that Brown's time of death was estimated as between 10:00 pm and 10:30 pm. Kato Kaelin testified on March 22, 1995, that he last saw Simpson at 9:36 pm that evening. Simpson was not seen again until 10:54 pm when he answered the intercom at the front door for the limousine driver, Allan Park. Simpson had no alibi for approximately one hour and 18 minutes during which time the murders took place. Allan Park testified on March 28 that he arrived at Simpson's home at 10:25 pm on the night of the murders and stopped at the Rockingham entrance: Simpson's Bronco was not there. He then drove over to the Ashford entrance and rang the intercom three times, getting no answer, starting at 10:40pm. At approximately 10:50 pm he saw a "tall African American shadowy figure resembling Simpson" approach the front door before aborting towards the southern walkway that leads to Kaelin's bungalow.

Park's testimony was significant because it explained the location of the glove found at Simpson's home. The blood trail from the Bronco to the front door was easily understood but the glove was found on the other side of the house. Park said the "shadowy figure" initially approached the front door before heading down the southern walkway which leads to where the glove was found by Fuhrman. The prosecution believed that Simpson had driven his Bronco to and from Brown's home to commit the murders, saw that Park was there and aborted his attempt to enter through the front door and tried to enter through the back instead. He panicked and made the sounds that Kaelin heard when he realized that the security system would not let him enter through the rear entrance. He then discarded the glove, came back and went through the front door. During cross examination, Park conceded that he could not identify the figure but said he saw that person enter the front door and afterwards Simpson answered and said he was home alone. Park conceded that he did not notice any cuts on Simpson's left hand but added "I shook his right hand, not his left".

The prosecution presented a total of 108 exhibits, including 61 drops of blood, of DNA evidence allegedly linking Simpson to the murders. With no witnesses to the crime, the prosecution was dependent on DNA as the only physical evidence linking Simpson to the crime. The volume of DNA evidence in this case was unique and the prosecution believed they could reconstruct how the crime was committed with enough accuracy to resemble an eyewitness account. Marcia Clark stated in her opening statements that there was a "trail of blood from the Bundy Crime scene through Simpson's Ford Bronco to his bedroom at Rockingham".

Simpson's DNA found on blood drops next to the bloody footprints near the victims at the Bundy crime scene. Probability of error was 1-in-9.7 billion.

Simpson's DNA found on a trail of blood drops leading away from the victims, towards and on the back gate at Bundy. Probability of error was 1-in-200.

Simpson, Goldman, and Brown's DNA found on blood on the outside of the door and inside Simpson's Bronco. Probability of error was 1-in-21 billion.

Simpson's DNA found on blood drops leading from the area where his Bronco was parked at Simpson's Rockingham home to the front door entrance.

Simpson, Brown and Goldman's DNA on a bloody glove found behind his home.

Simpson and Brown's DNA found on blood on a pair of socks in Simpson's bedroom. Probability of error was 1-in-6.8 billion.

The fibers from the glove found at Simpson's home microscopically match the one found at the crime scene, proving they were each other's mate.

Both of the victims, the two gloves, and the Blue knit cap worn by the killer had hair consistent with Simpson. The hair in the Blue Knit cap worn by the killer was embedded in the seams, indicating it was there from being worn repeatedly.

Dark blue cotton clothing fibers were found on both victims. The video from the Dance recital that Simpson attended earlier that night shows him wearing a similarly colored shirt. Kato Kaelin testified that Simpson was still wearing that shirt when they got home from McDonalds but not anymore when he answered the door for the limousine driver. The police searched his home but the shirt was never found.

Hair consistent with Goldman was found on Brown and clothing fibers consistent with Brown was found on Goldman. This supported the prosecution's theory that the assailant killed Brown first, then Goldman, and afterwards returned to Brown to cut her throat. The hair consistent with Brown that was found on the Rockingham glove was torn which also supports the prosecution claim that the killer grabbed Brown by her hair to cut her throat.

Fibers that were only used in the 1993-1994 model year Ford Bronco, the same car that Simpson owns, were found on both victims, the knit cap and on both gloves.

The glove found at Simpson's home that belonged to the murderer had hair and clothing fibers consistent with Simpson, Brown and Goldman as well as fibers from a 1993-1994 Ford Bronco and Brown's Akita dog.

On June 19, FBI shoeprint expert William J. Bodziak testified that the bloody shoeprints found at the crime scene and inside Simpson's Bronco were made from a rare and expensive pair of Bruno Magli Italian shoes. He determined the shoes were a size 12, the same size that Simpson wore, and are only sold at Bloomingdales. Only 29 pairs of that size were sold in the U.S. and one of them was sold at the same store that Simpson often buys his shoes from. Bodziak also testified that, despite two sets of footprints at the crime scene, only one attacker was present because they were all made by the same shoes. During cross-examination Bailey suggested the murderer deliberately wore shoes that were the wrong size, which Bodziak dismissed as "ridiculous".

Simpson denied ever owning a pair of those "ugly ass shoes" and there was only circumstantial evidence he did. Bloomingdales employee Samuel Poser testified he remembered showing Simpson those shoes but there was no store record of him purchasing them. Although the prosecution could not prove that Simpson owned a pair of those shoes, Bodziak testified that a similar bloody shoeprint was left on the floor inside Simpson's Bronco. Scheck suggested that Fuhrman broke into the Bronco and left the footprint there; he produced a photo of Fuhrman walking through a puddle of blood. Bodziak admitted that he was not able to confirm that the shoeprint in the car definitely came from a Bruno Magli shoe, but dismissed Scheck's claim because none of the shoeprints at the crime scene were made by Fuhrman's shoes, making it unlikely he could have made a bloody shoeprint in the Bronco.

Simpson hired a team of high-profile defense lawyers, initially led by Robert Shapiro, who was previously a civil lawyer known for settling, and then subsequently by Johnnie Cochran, who at that point was known for police brutality and civil rights cases. The team included noted defense attorney F. Lee Bailey, Robert Kardashian, Harvard appeals lawyer Alan Dershowitz, his student Robert Blasier, and Dean of Santa Clara University School of Law Gerald Uelmen. Assisting Cochran were Carl E. Douglas and Shawn Holley. Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld were also hired; they headed the Innocence Project and specialized in DNA evidence. Simpson's defense was said to have cost between US$3 million and $6 million; the media dubbed the group of talented attorneys the Dream Team, while the taxpayer cost of prosecution was over US$9 million.

The defense team's reasonable doubt theory was summarized as "compromised, contaminated, corrupted" in opening statements. They argued that the DNA evidence against Simpson was "compromised" by the mishandling of criminalists Dennis Fung and Andrea Mazzola during the collection phase of evidence gathering, and that 100% of the "real killer(s)" DNA had vanished from the evidence samples. The evidence was then "contaminated" in the LAPD crime lab by criminalist Collin Yamauchi, and Simpson's DNA from his reference vial was transferred to all but three exhibits. The remaining three exhibits were planted by the police and thus "corrupted" by police fraud. The defense also questioned the timeline, claiming the murders happened around 11:00 pm that night.

Dr. Robert Huizenga testified on July 14, 1995 that Simpson was not physically capable of carrying out the murders due to chronic arthritis and old football injuries. During cross-examination, the prosecution produced an exercise video that Simpson made a few weeks before the murders titled O.J. Simpson Minimum Maintenance: Fitness for Men, which demonstrated that Simpson was anything but frail. Dr. Huizenga admitted afterwards that Simpson could have committed the murders if he was in "the throes of an adrenaline-rush".

Dr. Michael Baden, a forensic pathologist, testified that the murders happened closer to 11:00pm, which is when Simpson has an alibi and stated that Brown was still conscious, standing, and took a step after her throat was cut and that Goldman was standing and fighting his assailant for ten minutes with a lacerated jugular vein.

Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld argued that the results from the DNA testing were not reliable because the police were "sloppy" in collecting and preserving it from the crime scene. Fung and Mazzola did admit to making several mistakes during evidence collection which included not always changing gloves between handling evidence items, packaging and storing the evidence items using plastic bags, rather than paper bags as recommended, and storing them in the police van, which was not refrigerated, for up to seven hours after collection. This, they argued, would allow bacteria to degrade all of the "real killer(s)" DNA and thus make the samples more susceptible to cross-contamination in the LAPD crime lab.

The contamination claim was made by microbiologist Dr. John Gerdes. He testified on August 2, 1995, that Forensic PCR DNA matching is not reliable and "The LAPD crime lab has a substantial contamination problem. It is chronic in the sense that it doesn't go away". Gerdes testified that because of the LAPD's history of contamination, he would not consider any of the PCR DNA matches in this case reliable because the tests were carried out by the LAPD. He also claimed that the consulting labs' PCR DNA matches were not reliable, as the evidence they tested went "through the LAPD" for packaging and shipping. Gerdes believed only three of the DNA matches to have been valid, which were the same three the defense alleged were planted by the police.

During cross-examination, Dr. Gerdes admitted there was no evidence that cross-contamination had occurred and that he was only testifying to "what might occur and not what actually did occur". He accepted that the victims' blood was in the Bronco and Simpson's blood was at the crime scene and neither was due to contamination. He also conceded that nothing happened during "packaging and shipping" that would affect the validity of the results at the two consulting labs. The prosecution implied that Gerdes was not a credible witness: he had no forensic experience and had only testified for criminal defendants in the past and always said the DNA evidence against them was not reliable due to contamination. Clark also implied that it was not a coincidence that the three evidence items he initially said were valid were the same three the defense claimed were planted while the other 58 were all false positives and the 47 substrate controls, which are used to determine if contamination occurred, were all false negatives. Defense forensic DNA expert Dr. Henry Lee testified on August 24, 1995, and admitted that Gerdes's claim was "highly improbable".

Barry Scheck's eight-day cross-examination of Dennis Fung was lauded in the media. However, Howard Coleman, president of Seattle-based forensic DNA laboratory GeneLex, criticized Scheck's cross-examination as "smoke and mirrors" and stated "Everything we get in the lab is contaminated to some degree. What contamination and degradation will lead you to is an inconclusive result. It doesn't lead you to a false positive".

The only physical evidence offered by the defense that the police tried to frame Simpson was the allegation that two of the 108 DNA evidence samples tested in the case contained the preservative Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid, or EDTA. Ironically, it was the prosecution who asked to have the samples tested for the preservative, not the defense. The defense alleged that the drop of blood on the back gate at the Bundy crime scene, which matched Simpson, and the blood found on a pair of socks in Simpson's bedroom, which matched Brown, were planted by the police. In order to support the claim, the defense pointed to the presence of EDTA, a preservative found in the purple-topped collection tubes used for police reference vials, in the samples. On July 24, 1995, Dr. Fredric Rieders, a forensic toxicologist who had analysed results provided by FBI special agent Roger Martz, testified that the level of EDTA in the evidence samples was higher than that which is normally found in blood: this appeared to support the claim they came from the reference vials. During cross-examination, Clark asked Dr. Rieders to read out loud the portion of the EPA article that stated what the normal levels of EDTA in blood are, which he referenced during his testimony. This demonstrated that he misread it and that the levels found in the evidence samples were consistent with those found in blood that was not preserved in a police reference vial. Dr. Rieders then claimed it was a "typo" but the prosecution produced a direct copy from the EPA confirming the normal amounts of EDTA found in unpreserved blood. The prosecution also had Dr. Rieders admit that EDTA is also found in food and specifically the ingredients used in McDonald's Big Mac and French fries that Simpson had eaten earlier that night with Kato Kaelin.

FBI special agent Roger Martz was called by the defense on July 25, 1995, to testify that EDTA was present in the evidence samples, yet instead said he did not identify EDTA in the blood, contradicting the testimony given by Dr. Rieders the day before. Initially, he conceded the blood samples "responded like EDTA responded" and "was consistent with the presence of EDTA" but clarified his response after hearing during the lunch break that "everyone is saying that I found EDTA, but I am not saying that". When the defense accused their own witness of changing his demeanor to favor the prosecution, he replied "I cannot be entirely truthful by only giving 'yes' and 'no' answers". Martz stated that it was impossible to ascertain with certainty the presence of EDTA, as while the presumptive test for EDTA was positive, the identification test for EDTA was inconclusive. Martz also tested his own unpreserved blood and got the same results for EDTA levels as the evidence samples, which he said conclusively disproved the claim the evidence blood came from the reference vials. He contended that the defense had jumped to conclusions from the presumptive test results, while his tests had in fact shown that "those bloodstains did not come from preserved blood".

The defense alleged that Simpson's blood on the back gate at the Bundy crime scene was planted by the police. The blood on the back gate was collected on July 3, 1995, rather than June 13, the day after the murders. The volume of DNA on that blood was significantly higher than the other blood evidence collected on June 13. The volume of DNA was so high that the defense conceded that it could not be explained by contamination in the lab, yet noted that it was unusual for that blood to have more DNA on it than the other samples collected at the crime scene, especially since it had been left exposed to the elements for several weeks and after the crime scene had supposedly been washed over. On March 20, 1995, Vannatter testified that he instructed Fung to collect the blood on the gate on June 13 and Fung admitted he had not done so. The defense suggested the reason why Fung did not collect the blood is because it was not there that day; Scheck showed a blown-up photograph taken of the back gate on June 13 and he admitted he could not see it in the photograph.

The prosecution responded by showing that a different photograph showed that the blood was present on the back gate on June 13 and before the blood had been taken from Simpson's arm. Officer Robert Riske was the first officer to the crime scene and the one who pointed out the blood on the back gate to Fuhrman, who documented it in his notes that night. Multiple other officers also testified under oath that the blood was present on the back gate the night of the murders. The prosecution also pointed out that the media cameras present proved that Vannatter never returned to the Bundy crime scene (Brown's home) that evening, where Simpson's blood was allegedly planted.

Barry Scheck alleged the police had twice planted the victims' blood inside Simpson's Bronco. An initial collection was made on June 13; the defense accused Vannatter of planting the victims' blood in the Bronco when he returned to Simpson's home later that evening. The prosecution responded that the Bronco had already been impounded by the time Vannatter returned and was not even at Rockingham.

Vannatter denied planting Brown's blood on the socks. The video from Willie Ford indicated that the socks had already been collected and stored in the evidence van before Vannatter arrived and footage from the media cameras present appeared to prove that he never went inside the evidence van when he arrived at Rockingham.

The last exhibit allegedly planted was the bloody glove found at Simpson's property by Fuhrman. Unlike the sock and the back gate, the defense provided no physical or eyewitness evidence to support their claim that the prosecution could then refute. Jeffrey Toobin published an article in The New Yorker months before the trial began, which cited a source in Simpson's defense team that they intended to accuse Fuhrman of planting the glove with the motive being racism. Robert Shapiro later admitted he was Toobin's source.

The prosecution denied that Fuhrman planted the glove. They noted that several officers had already combed over the crime scene for almost two hours before Fuhrman arrived and none had noticed a second glove at the scene. Lange testified that 14 other officers were there when Fuhrman arrived and all said there was only one glove at the crime scene. Lt. Frank Spangler also testified that he was with Fuhrman for the duration of his time there and stated he would have seen Fuhrman purloin the glove if he had in fact done so. Clark added that Fuhrman did not know whether Simpson had an alibi, if there were any witnesses to the murders, whose blood was on the glove, that the Bronco belonged to Simpson, or whether Kaelin had already searched the area where the glove was found.

During cross-examination by Bailey, Fuhrman denied that he had used the word "nigger" to describe African Americans in the ten years prior to his testimony. A few months later, the defense discovered audiotapes of Fuhrman repeatedly using the word - 41 times in total, eight years before the murders. The Fuhrman tapes became the cornerstone of the defense's case that Fuhrman's testimony lacked credibility. Clark called the tapes "the biggest red herring there ever was".

After McKinny was forced to hand over the tapes to the defense, Fuhrman says he asked the prosecution for a redirect to explain the context of those tapes but the prosecution and his fellow police officers abandoned him after Ito played the audiotapes in open court for the public to hear. The public reaction to the tapes was explosive and compared to the video of the Rodney King beating from a year prior. After the trial, Fuhrman said that he was not a racist and apologized for his previous language, saying he was play-acting for a screenplay when he made the tapes, and had been asked to be as dramatic as possible. Many of his minority former coworkers expressed support for him.

On September 6, 1995, Fuhrman was called back to the witness stand by the defense, after the prosecution refused to redirect him, to answer more questions. The jury was absent but the exchange was televised. Fuhrman, facing a possible prosecution for perjury, was instructed by his attorney to invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination to two consecutive questions he was asked. Defense attorney Uelmen asked Fuhrman if it was his intention to plead the Fifth to all questions, and Fuhrman's attorney instructed him to reply "yes". Uelmen then briefly spoke with the other members of the defense and said he had just one more question: "Did you plant or manufacture any evidence in this case?" Following his attorney's instruction, Fuhrman replied, "I choose to assert my Fifth Amendment privilege".

Cochran responded to Fuhrman's pleading the Fifth by accusing the other officers of being involved in a "cover-up" to protect Fuhrman and asked Judge Ito to suppress all of the evidence that Fuhrman found. Ito denied the request, stating that pleading the fifth does not imply guilt and there was no evidence of fraud. Cochran then asked that the jury be allowed to hear Fuhrman taking the fifth and again Ito denied his request. Ito also criticized the defense's theory of how Fuhrman allegedly planted the glove stating "it would strain logic to believe that".

On June 15, 1995, Christopher Darden surprised Marcia Clark by asking Simpson to try on the gloves found at the crime scene and his home. The prosecution had earlier decided against asking Simpson to try them on because they had been soaked in blood from Simpson, Brown and Goldman, and frozen and unfrozen several times. Instead they presented a witness who testified that Brown had purchased a pair of those gloves in the same size in 1990 at Bloomingdales for Simpson along with a receipt and a photo during the trial of Simpson earlier wearing the same type of gloves.

The leather gloves appeared too tight for Simpson to put on easily, especially over the latex gloves he wore underneath. Clark claimed that Simpson was acting when he appeared to be struggling to put on the gloves, yet Cochran replied "I don't think he could act the size of his hands". Darden then told Ito of his concerns that Simpson "has arthritis and we looked at the medication he takes and some of it is anti-inflammatory and we are told he has not taken the stuff for a day and it caused swelling in the joints and inflammation in his hands". Cochran informed Ito the next day that Shawn Chapman contacted the Los Angeles County Jail doctor, who confirmed Simpson was taking his arthritis medication every day and that the jail's medical records verified this. Uelmen came up with, and Cochran repeated, a quip he used in his closing arguments: "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit".

In Cochran's summation to the jury, he was unable to refute any of the prosecution's claims, so he instead dedicated his entire argument to attacking the LAPD, particularly Fuhrman, Lange and Vannatter. He emphasized that Fuhrman was proved to have repeatedly referred to black people as "niggers" and also to have boasted of beating young black men in his role as a police officer. Cochran compared Fuhrman to Adolf Hitler and referred to him as "a genocidal racist, a perjurer, America's worst nightmare and the personification of evil", and claimed without proof that Fuhrman had planted the glove in an attempt to frame Simpson for the murders based purely on his dislike of interracial couples. Cochran also presented a piece of paper to the jury with the title "Vannatter's Big Lies", and claimed, without any evidence or proof, that Vannatter had returned to the crime scene with Simpson's blood to plant it there, despite Vannatter having previously testified that he had given it to Dennis Fung in order to avoid the exhibits from getting mixed up. Cochran referred to Fuhrman and Vannatter as the "two devils of deception", and very notably implored the jurors to "stop this cover-up" and "acquit Simpson and send the police a message", which was interpreted by many as a naked appeal for a jury nullification. Following his summation, Cochran received numerous death threats, and hired bodyguards from Louis Farrakhan. In response, Fred Goldman, who was himself Jewish, referred to Cochran himself as "the worst kind of racist ever" and a "sick man" for comparing Fuhrman to Hitler while associating himself with Farrakhan, who was widely considered a black supremacist and anti-Semite, while Robert Shapiro, also Jewish, expressed that he was particularly offended by Cochran comparing Fuhrman's claims to the Holocaust, claiming that no comparison would ever be possible. In an interview regarding Vincent Bugliosi's analysis on the case, Vannatter claimed that he was so infuriated at Cochran's claims about him that he felt a desire to strangle him in the courtroom.

Fears grew that race riots, similar to the riots in 1992, would erupt across Los Angeles and the rest of the country if Simpson were convicted of the murders. As a result, all Los Angeles police officers were put on 12-hour shifts. The police arranged for more than 100 police officers on horseback to surround the Los Angeles County courthouse on the day the verdict was announced, in case of rioting by the crowd. President Bill Clinton was briefed on security measures if rioting were to occur nationwide.

The only testimony that the jury reviewed was that of limo driver Park. At 10:07 am on Tuesday, October 3, 1995, Simpson was acquitted on both counts of murder. The jury arrived at the verdict by 3:00 pm on October 2, after four hours of deliberation, but it postponed the announcement. After the verdict was read, juror number nine, 44-year-old Lionel Cryer, gave Simpson a black power raised fist salute. The New York Times reported that Cryer was a former member of the revolutionary nationalist Black Panther Party that prosecutors had "inexplicably left on the panel".

An estimated 100 million people worldwide watched or listened to the verdict's announcement. Long-distance telephone call volume declined by 58%, and trading volume on the New York Stock Exchange decreased by 41%. Water usage decreased as people avoided using bathrooms. So much work stopped that the verdict cost an estimated $480 million in lost productivity.[better source needed ] The U.S. Supreme Court received a message on the verdict during oral arguments, with the justices quietly passing the note to each other while listening to the attorney's presentation. Congressmen canceled press conferences, with one telling reporters, "Not only would you not be here, but I wouldn't be here, either".

African American LAPD Police Chief Willie Williams indicated that he had no plans to reopen the investigation, saying of the acquittals, "It doesn't mean there's another murderer". The LAPD also declined to reexamine the evidence with modern methods because Simpson can not be tried for the same crime again under the Fifth Amendment.

The strong public reaction to Brown's letters and statements describing her abuse spurred passage of the Violence Against Women Act in 1994, which Clark and Douglas referred to as the "O.J. rule". After the trial, researchers reported increased reporting, arrests, and harsher sentences for those convicted of domestic violence.

After the verdict, polling showed that 75% of White Americans thought Simpson was guilty while 70% of African Americans thought he was innocent. An NBC poll taken 10 years later in 2004 reported similar results with 87% of whites believing Simpson was guilty compared to only 27% of African Americans believing so. In 2016, 20 years after the verdict, polling showed the gap had narrowed with a majority of both now believing he was guilty: 83% of white Americans and 57% of black Americans.

Political impact and civil rights

Scholarly consensus is that the trial damaged race relations in America and point to polling which shows that belief in Simpson's guilt depended on the race of the individual and not on the evidence against him. Analysis of the "racial gap" in polling shows that it did not cross the political spectrum. Conservatives regardless of race or gender thought Simpson was guilty. Where the gap emerged was among liberals - with black liberals believing Simpson was innocent while white liberals thought he was guilty. African American Stanford University Law Professor Richard Thompson Ford wrote that this made the verdict a wedge issue that divided liberals along racial lines as white liberals felt the verdict was a racially motivated jury nullification and resented the images of African Americans celebrating the verdict. Opponents of civil rights seized upon the situation and rebranded themselves as advocating " race neutrality", instead of " separate but equal", which appealed to white liberals now due to the verdict and is credited with why voters in California passed proposition 209 in 1996 that ended affirmative action in the state. A historic drop in diversity in the University of California followed which led to a similar lack of diversity seen in the state's White-collar job market, particularly the High tech area of Silicon Valley. Opponents then tried to pass Proposition 54 to effectively conceal the impact of prop 209 but voters rejected that measure. The murder of George Floyd revived empathy for racial injustice among white liberals but the unsuccessful attempt to repeal prop 209 in 2020 is credited to the trial's legacy of undermining race relations.

Polling shows that minorities were divided by the verdict as well. Latinos and African Americans both believed that fraud was taking place in the LAPD but disagreed on the cause. Simpson said he felt vindicated by the Rampart Scandal which proved that fraud was happening in the C.R.A.S.H anti-gang unit. However, this fraud was not racially motivated: all the officers involved were minorities themselves and were actually found to be affiliated with one of the gangs they were supposed to be policing.

Several jurors together published Madame Foreman in 1995 to respond to allegations the verdict was racially motivated. They concluded that Simpson probably was guilty but the prosecution failed to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

Johnnie Cochran published Journey to Justice in 1996 about the trial and denied he played the " race card" and maintains the LAPD tried to frame Simpson.

Robert Shapiro published The Search for Justice in 1996 about the case and he concluded there was reasonable doubt but criticized Bailey and Cochran for bringing race into the trial. In contrast to Cochran's book, Shapiro wrote "I never believed that Simpson was being victimized by a racist police organization because he was black...or that he was seen as a black hero".

Marcia Clark published Without a Doubt in 1998 about the case. She opines that the acquittal demonstrates the legal system is still compromised by race and celebrity because the prosecution's physical evidence should have easily convicted Simpson.

Christopher Darden published In Contempt in 1998 about the trial. He attributes the acquittal to poor stewardship by a "starstruck" Judge Ito and a "dysfunctional and uneducated" jury.

Vincent Bugliosi published Outrage: The five Reasons why O. J. Simpson got away with Murder in 1997. Bugliosi believed Simpson was guilty and blames the verdict on an incompetent jury, prosecution, and Judge. He wrote that "Other than when a killer is apprehended in the act, I have never seen a more obvious case of guilt. All of the evidence - not some or most of it - points irresistibly to Simpson's guilt and his guilt alone".

Henry Lee published Blood Evidence: How DNA Is Revolutionizing The Way We Solve Crimes in 2003 and wrote that both of the defense's forensic DNA experts, Lee and Edward Blake, had rejected Scheck's contamination claim.

Mark Fuhrman published Murder in Brentwood in 1998, defending himself against fraud claims. He wrote his taking the 5th amendment was to avoid prosecution for perjury.

Tom Lange and Philip Vannatter published Evidence Dismissed: The Inside Story of the Police Investigation of O.J. Simpson in 1997 and defended themselves against allegations of corruption and incompetence.

Daniel M. Petrocelli published Triumph of Justice: The final judgement of the Simpson Saga in 1998 and compares the criminal and civil trials. He attributes the acquittal to bad rulings by Judge Ito, unethical behavior by the defense and unreliable testimony from Gerdes, Rieders, Lee, and Baden.

Darnell Hunt published O.J. Simpson Facts and Fictions: News Rituals in the Construction of Reality And wrote that the racial gap in polling is a manufactured product of selective reporting of facts by the media due to them treating the trial as a form of entertainment and not as a legal proceeding.

In November 2006, ReganBooks announced a book ghostwritten by Pablo Fenjves based on interviews with Simpson titled If I Did It, an account which the publisher said was a hypothetical confession. The book's release was planned to coincide with a Fox special featuring Simpson. On November 20, News Corporation canceled the project due to public criticism. Later, the Goldman family was awarded the rights to the book and published it under the title If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer. On March 11, 2018, Fox broadcast Simpson's previously unaired interview in a special titled O.J. Simpson: The Lost Confession?. The interview was interpreted as being a form of implied confession because Simpson used first person language ("Obviously I must have [removed the glove]" ) in explaining how he committed the murders.

In an interview with Barbara Walters, Robert Shapiro, who is Jewish, said he was offended by Cochran comparing Fuhrman to Adolf Hitler, and said he would never work with Bailey or Cochran again. He also admitted the defense played the " race card", "from the bottom of the deck". Robert Kardashian admitted that prior to the jurors visiting Simpsons home that the defense team had switched out his photos of white women for photos of his children and switched out a picture of a nude Paula Barbieri (Simpson's girlfriend at the time, who was white) for a Norman Rockwell painting from Cochran's office.

Simpson gave two high-profile interviews regarding the case - in 1996 with Ross Becker and in 2004 with Katie Couric. In the February 1998 issue of Esquire, Simpson was quoted as saying, "Let's say I committed this crime ...even if I did this, it would have to have been because I loved her very much, right?". In April 1998, Simpson did an interview with Ruby Wax and pretended to stab her using a banana in an apparent joke referencing the stabbing death of his wife. In May 2008, Mike Gilbert released his book How I Helped O.J. Get Away with Murder, which quotes Simpson allegedly saying: "If she hadn't opened that door with a knife in her hand ... she'd still be alive."

In the documentary O.J.: Made in America, juror Carrie Bess said she believed "90% of the jury actually decided to acquit Simpson as payback for Rodney King". Juror Lionel Cryer, who gave Simpson a Black Power salute after the verdict, said in retrospect he would render a guilty verdict. Juror Anise Aschenbach, who initially voted guilty before changing her vote, stated she regrets the decision and believes Simpson is guilty because he is not looking for the "real killer" like he promised he would.

In 1996, Fred Goldman and Sharon Rufo, the parents of Ron Goldman, and Lou Brown, father of Nicole Brown filed a civil suit against Simpson for wrongful death. The plaintiffs were represented by Daniel Petrocelli and Simpson by Robert Baker. Presiding Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki did not allow the trial to be televised, did not sequester the jury, and prohibited the defense from alleging racism by the LAPD and from condemning the crime lab. The physical evidence did not change but additional evidence of domestic violence was presented as well as 31 pre-1994 photos of Simpson wearing Bruno Magli shoes, including one that was published 6 months before the murders, proving it could not be a forgery. Results from a polygraph test that Simpson denied taking showed "extreme deception" when he denied committing the murders. Fuhrman did not testify but Simpson did on his own behalf and lied several times.

The jury found Simpson liable for the murders and awarded the victims' families $33.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Simpson filed for bankruptcy afterwards and relocated to Florida to protect his pension from seizure. His remaining assets were seized and auctioned off with most being purchased by critics of the verdict of the criminal trial to help the plaintiffs recoup the costs of litigation. Simpson's Heisman Trophy was sold for $255,500 to an undisclosed buyer. All the proceeds went to the Goldman family who said they have received only 1% of the money that Simpson owes from the wrongful death suit.

According to O.J.: Made in America director Ezra Edelman, no plausible alternative theory has emerged since the trial. Such theories have been rejected by the trial's participants, with Hunt opining that these claims were attempts to tap into the public interest in the case and were never meant to be taken seriously.

William Dear published O.J. Is Innocent and I Can Prove It, which was adapted into the BBC documentary O.J.: The True Untold Story (2000). The documentary primarily rehashes the contamination and blood planting claims from the trial and asserted that Simpson's elder son Jason is a possible suspect.

In 2012, the documentary film My Brother the Serial Killer alleged convicted murderer Glen Edward Rogers confessed to being involved in the murders and claimed he had been hired by Simpson to do it. The families of Brown and Goldman dismissed its claims and accused Henry Schlieff of Investigation Discovery of irresponsibility. He replied that he believed Simpson was guilty and the documentary's intention was not to prove Rogers committed the crimes.

In 1995, Fox premiered the television movie The O. J. Simpson Story, which followed some of the more tawdry events in the relationship between Simpson and Brown, up to and including his arrest for Brown's murder. Simpson is portrayed by Bobby Hosea.

In 2000, 20th Century Fox produced American Tragedy, starring Ving Rhames as Cochran, Christopher Plummer as Bailey, Ron Silver as Shapiro, and Raymond Forchion as Simpson.

BBC TV's documentary, O.J. Simpson: The Untold Story (2000), produced by Malcolm Brinkworth, "reveals that clues that some believe pointed away from Simpson as the killer were dismissed or ignored and highlights two other leads which could shed new light on the case".

In 2014, ID premiered the documentary OJ: Trial of the Century, which begins on the day of the murders, ends on the reading of the verdict, and comprises actual media footage of events and reactions as they unfolded.

In February 2016, FX premiered the anthology series American Crime Story. The self-contained first season, The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, was adapted from the book The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson (1997), by Jeffrey Toobin, who had also served as a legal analyst for the on the trial. The cast included Sarah Paulson as Clark, Courtney B. Vance as Cochran, John Travolta as Shapiro, David Schwimmer as Kardashian, Sterling K. Brown as Darden, and Cuba Gooding Jr. as Simpson. It received critical acclaim and several Emmy Awards.

In April 2014, ID premiered O.J. Simpson Trial: The Real Story, which entirely comprises archival news footage of the murder case, the Bronco chase, the trial, the verdict, and reactions.

In June 2016, ESPN premiered O.J.: Made in America, a five-part, eight-hour documentary by Ezra Edelman on the trial. The documentary received widespread acclaim and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

In January 2020, Court TV premiered OJ25, a 25-part series documenting each week of the trial and hosted by former Los Angeles prosecutor and legal analyst Roger Cossack.

The 1997 film Lost Highway, directed and co-written by David Lynch, was partially inspired by the case. In the film a man is imprisoned for his wife's murder, which he does not remember, and is released after he transforms into different man. Lynch found it remarkable that Simpson, who he believed committed the murders, could continue a casual lifestyle afterward.

Episodes of sitcoms, such as The Simpsons, , , , It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia ("Reynolds vs. Reynolds: The Cereal Defense") and (" The Big Salad", " The Caddy"), have mocked the case, or more specifically, Simpson himself.

Saturday Night Live Weekend Update host Norm Macdonald frequently made jokes about O.J. Simpson's trial, such as the iconic line "Well, it is finally official: Murder is legal in the state of California" after Simpson's acquittal. It is rumored that the constant Simpson jokes were the cause for then NBC President Don Ohlmeyer to remove him from the Weekend Update segment, and eventually from the show altogether.

Cowlings' white Ford Bronco was featured in the reality TV show . The then-owner of the vehicle estimated its value in excess of $1,000,000.

The heavy-metal band Body Count recorded the song "I Used to Love Her", sung from the perspective of OJ Simpson murdering his wife, on their 1997 album Violent Demise: The Last Days. A 2021 article in Metal Hammer described the song as "jaw-droppingly offensive".

R&B group H-Town dedicated their album Ladies Edition, Woman's World (1997) to Brown, to help victims of domestic violence.

Rapper Jay-Z's song " The Story of O.J." references the trial.

Hip hop artist Magneto Dayo released a 2013 " diss track" song titled "OJ Simpson" in which he insults his ex-girlfriend/artist V-Nasty, by referencing the Simpson murder case. The song's lyrics were also added to the Houston Press' list of "The 15 Most Messed-Up O.J. Simpson Lyrics".

Electronic musician James Ferraro referenced the police chase in the song "White Bronco" on his 2015 album .

Kendrick Lamar included OJ in the music video for " The Heart Part 5", using Deepfake technology. The infamous glove also appears on the single's cover.

The video game Duke Nukem 3D has several allusions to the Simpson trial, including a television playing the Bronco chase.

The suit Simpson wore when he was acquitted on October 3, 1995, was donated by Simpson's former agent Mike Gilbert to the Newseum in 2010. The Newseum has multiple trial-related items in their collection, including press passes, newspapers and the mute button that Superior Court Judge Lance Ito used when he wanted to shut off the live microphone in court so lawyers could talk privately during the trial. The museum's acquisition of the suit ended the legal battle between Gilbert and Fred Goldman, both of whom claimed the right to the clothing.

Cowlings's white Ford bronco that he drove in the police chase is on display at the Alcatraz East Crime Museum in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

In 2017, Adam Papagan curated a pop-up museum showcasing artifacts and ephemera from the trial at Coagula Curatorial gallery in Los Angeles.

Cotterill, Janet (2002). Language and Power in Court: A Linguistic Analysis of the O.J. Simpson Trial. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave. ISBN 978-0333969014.

Linedecker, Clifford L. (1995). O.J. A to Z: The Complete Handbook to the Trial of the Century. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0312142131.

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People v. Simpson Court Superior Court of California for and in the County of Los Angeles Full case name The People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson Decided October 3, 1995; 27 years ago Verdict Not Guilty in violation of Penal Code Section 187(a), a felony upon Nicole Brown Simpson, a human being.

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Kardashian and Simpson were best friends

Robert and O.J. met on a tennis court in 1969 and stayed friends for decades, sharing business interests as well as a love of the jet-set lifestyle and the University of Southern California, where the former earned his bachelor's degree and the latter earned his Heisman Trophy. Simpson was an usher at Kardashian's 1978 wedding to Kris Houghton - now better known as Kris Jenner - and Kardashian was there in 1977 when Simpson met Nicole Brown, his future wife. The couples would spend a lot of time together, with Kris and Nicole becoming close friends as well.

Kris eventually cheated on Kardashian - and he caught her in the act

"I constantly lied to Robert" during her affair, Jenner wrote in her 2011 autobiography "Kris Jenner ... And All Things Kardashian." "I could not control myself." He caught her and her lover meeting for breakfast - she thought he had her followed by a private detective - which led to a huge fight. The cat-and-mouse would go on for three months, with him catching them together three times. He eventually filed for a divorce, which was final in March 1991.

Kardashian was very involved in the events leading to Simpson's arrest

Kardashian carried the notorious bulging Louis Vuitton bag after Simpson's return from Chicago on June 13, 1994, and said he was rebuffed by police when he tried to give it to them at the house. Prosecutors suspected it might have contained bloody clothes or perhaps even a murder weapon and later wanted to quiz him on its contents, but Kardashian said he'd never looked inside.

The night before Simpson led authorities on a slow-speed chase in the white Ford Bronco on June 17, 1994, Simpson spent the night at Kardashian's Encino home. That morning, Kardashian said, he found his friend in Khloe's room contemplating suicide. He persuaded Simpson to go outside and look for a more suitable place to shoot himself than a child's bedroom and eventually talked him out of pulling the trigger.

As police were arriving to arrest him, Simpson then got into the Bronco with A.C. Cowlings, who'd taken over the suicide watch, and Kardashian tried to talk to his friend by cellphone during the 60-mile pursuit that captivated the country. That evening, Kardashian read Simpson's rambling goodbye letter aloud to reporters and in turn to a national TV audience and in doing so became a public figure.

Kardashian visited Simpson regularly in jail

"I've never been in a jail before. It's extremely depressing," Kardashian told The Times in October 1994. "It makes me sick every time I go down there. We can't have any physical contact. I want to hug him, I want to show him that I care. It's very difficult."

Kardashian said that while the defense team was "going 20 hours a day on this," Simpson had it much worse. "I can't complain. I sleep in a real bed at night. Look where he's sleeping ... he's in a cage."

Kardashian reactivated his law license to help defend his best friend

Kardashian hadn't practiced law for 20 years before Simpson went on trial, but at the request of lead attorney Robert Shapiro he reactivated his license. "I know O.J. better than anyone on the legal team," he told The Times in 1994. "There are so many things I know about his personality. My job is really strategy and liaison between the lawyers and O.J."

There was a reason Kardashian sat next to Simpson when the bloodiest evidence was presented

Simpson's lawyers were concerned about how their client would conduct himself when grisly photographs of his dead ex-wife and Goldman were shown to the jury, sources close to the defense told The Times in June 1995, and the defense team thought Kardashian was the best pick to keep his friend steady while the courtroom camera was trained on the defendant's face.

Kardashian, whose usual seat during the trial was at the rail separating the audience from the action, was moved to sit at the table, where he also shifted forward slightly to block the camera's view.

The trial drove a wedge between him and Kris and their children

"I think that the division in our family between guilty and innocence is very sad. I do not want our family torn apart by this case. Please understand that I am trapped in the position I am in and can't get out. I must see this case through. I truly believe in O.J.'s innocence and unless they find him guilty, I will continue to support him. I realize, Kris, that you also strongly believe in his guilt. You are entitled to your beliefs - just as I am ... ," Kardashian wrote in a letter addressed to his ex and their children Kourtney, Kim, Khloe and Rob on the eve of the trial and reprinted in Jenner's autobiography.

"The past 7 months have taken such an emotional toll on my life -- you have no idea," he continued. "The other day, someone asked me a simple question about something that happened during the week of June 12 and for no reason, I started to cry. My life will never be the same. I'm sorry for what has happened but I was only helping my friend - just as any of you would do. Please don't let whatever is going to happen in this case affect our family." He went on to apologize in advance if he was rude or harsh in any way in the coming months, explaining that it would be a very stressful time.

The first day of the trial, the scene in downtown L.A. was such a madhouse that he and another attorney had to take a bus to get back to the courthouse after lunch. He would eventually have to hire private security to protect Jenner and their kids, after harassment by the media and others, and death threats.

Kardashian pretty much hated Nicole's friend Faye Resnick

"It's disgusting that she would write this type of book about her best friend," Kardashian said outside the courthouse after Resnick's "Nicole Brown Simpson: The Private Diary of a Life Interrupted" was published in October 1994. "It serves no purpose. The poor woman is brutally murdered. She can't defend herself. Everything is hearsay in the book. I'm just glad I'm not her best friend."

And why did he think she wrote her tell-all? "Money, my friend," he told The Times. "Money."

By 1996, Kardashian questioned O.J.'s innocence

"I have doubts," Kardashian told Barbara Walters in a "20/20" interview that October. "The blood evidence is the biggest thorn in my side; that causes me the greatest problems. So I - I struggle with the blood evidence. "

Kardashian died of esophageal cancer in 2003, eight weeks after being diagnosed

"The knowledge that he had cancer was one thing, but to think it would actually take his life. I never in a million years thought that would happen to him," Jenner told E!'s Giuliana Rancic in October 2004, tearing up as she spoke. "It still stings so bad, like it's so fresh." She and Kardashian had remained friends after their split, with joint custody of their children.

Whether Kardashian knew it or not, he predicted the future

After the verdict, Kardashian's point of view was among those solicited by The Times for a roundup of perspectives on the trial. In it, he bemoaned his loss of privacy, and in doing so predicted the current media atmosphere, in which every little tidbit is served up to an audience hungry for details. The "trial of the century" practically invented reality TV, and the personal-turned-public would be an art mastered by his ex and their children, whose lives would be turned into an inescapable empire.

"O.J. Simpson never lied to me. He has told me that he did not commit these horrible crimes and I have no reason not to believe him. It was from that perspective that I came to stand by his side during his trial," Kardashian wrote in 1995.

"For me, the question was: What would you do for a friend? Would you give up your business, put your personal life on hold and devote a year and a half of your life to a friend? I did, without realizing what an awful journey I was about to take.

"Who wants their life and everything they have done for the past 25 years dragged in front of the American public? Within a week, the assault began. I was totally unprepared for the avalanche of reporters, cameras and gawking members of the public that besieged my home and invaded my life. Overnight, I was the subject of hate letters and phone calls at all hours of the day and night. I was threatened; my children were threatened.

So great is society's demand for information that we can no longer say that all the news gathered is worthy of airing. Much of it is not.

Robert Kardashian, 1995

"Why should reporters and photographers camp outside our homes? Why should the personal life of a private citizen be torn apart just to provide one more meaningless detail to feed the mass hysteria?

"I recognize that the First Amendment protects free speech and freedom of the press. But the recent trend of the press to intrude into the private lives of innocent individuals in the name of 'getting the story' demonstrates the dwindling interest in the equally valid constitutional right to privacy. So great is society's demand for information that we can no longer say that all the news gathered is worthy of airing. Much of it is not.

"In such an environment, it's not hard to see why old family values like trust and friendship are increasingly rare. The price is too high in a society that tears apart anyone who dares to take a public stand in the midst of controversy."

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Robert Kardashian: Keeping up with the man who stood by O.J. Simpson

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With "American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson" drawing to a close Tuesday night, Robert Kardashian has emerged as a moral compass in the drama that depicts the murder trial of the former NFL football player accused of killing ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and friend Ron Goldman on June 12, 1994.