The OJ Simpson murder trial was the must-watch television soap opera of last century. What should have been an open-and-shut case turned into an eight-month-long saga that America could not look away from.
Court TV captured every moment of the legal drama and witnesses went from the stand to Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show” soundstage or to the seat opposite Larry King.
Journalist Dominick Dunne, covering The People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson for Vanity Fair, described it as the “Super Bowl of murder trials,” while Judge Lance Ito announced that he expected to see “some fabulous lawyering skills.”
On the trial’s opening day, January 24, 1995, even Bill Clinton’s State of the Union to Congress was overshadowed.
The twists and turns came fast and furious.
From the start, the ballyhooed Dream Team of defense attorneys — Johnnie Cochran, F. Lee Bailey, Robert Kardashian, Robert Shapiro and more — was at war with itself, with Bailey accusing Shapiro of running a secret campaign to trash his legal reputation via the supermarket tabloids.
Cochran’s opening immediately catapulted him to national fame for his memorable phrase making.
The defense would prove that the evidence against Simpson was “contaminated, compromised and ultimately corrupted,” he boasted to jurors.
He outlined a gripping defense: The NFL star who ran through airports in the ads was too arthritic to pull off the double murder of his estranged wife Nicole Brown Simpson, 35, and her friend Ron Goldman, 25.
And he hinted at a racial loading to the case for which the African American community embraced him, with the Reverend Jesse Jackson calling him “the people’s lawyer.”
The prosecution story was simple. On Sunday June 12, 1994, Simpson had driven over to try to reconcile with Nicole — whom he had beaten for years before they split — but she refused. In “a final act of control,” he stabbed her to death on the walkway leading to the condominium at 875 South Bundy Drive at about 10.45pm.
Then Goldman, her close platonic friend, walked in to return a pair of eyeglasses and Simpson killed him too, to silence a potential witness.
The prosecution scored an immediate win when Denise Brown took to the stand, maintaining Simpson was a wife beater who called Nicole a “fat pig” while she was pregnant.
But the racial undercurrent stoked by Cochran exploded when LAPD murder detective Mark Fuhrman, who found the bloodied glove alleged to have been tied to the murder, was asked by Bailey if he had ever used the N-word. Fuhrman said he had not.
It was a lie — and there was a tape, thanks to a screenwriter who had interviewed Fuhrman as research for a movie. The cop used the word profusely.
Furman further raised eyebrows when he pleaded the 5th Amendment each time the defense asked him about about planting evidence, giving untruthful testimony falsifying police records.
The prosecution hoped to have more luck with OJ housemate Brian “Kato” Kaelin, called to the stand to testify on March 21. He brought a surfer-dude vibe to court.
But his contradictions about Simpson’s disposition on the day of the killing – ranging from “carefree” to “angry” – led Judge Ito to deem Kato a hostile witness.
Almost instantly, his looks and airhead disposition made him a favorite punchline for comedians. They even landed him a May 15 appearance on Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show.”
Finally a win for the prosecution came on April 1 when Charles Cale, one of several dog walkers called to testify, maintained that Simpson’s white Bronco was not where the former footballer said it was on the night of the alleged murder.
Said to have left a sick bed to testify, Cale was cognizant enough to recognize the media scrutiny placed even on small-time participants in the trial.
Asked for his home address, to prove his proximity to Simpson’s digs, he demurred.
Some moments of the trial had a gothic overtone. During the week of June 6, a female juror ran from the courtroom after being disgusted by a display of color autopsy photos and the descriptions to go with it.
Soon after, coroner Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran worked with prosecutor Brian Kelberg to physically show how Simpson might have slashed the neck of Ron Goldman.
It was horrific and led Ron’s dad, Fred Goldman, to dab his eye with a tissue.
But one moment was to enter the ages, becoming the subject for parodies and endless stand-up fodder as Simpson was asked by the prosecution to try on the bloody glove.
OJ squirmed and struggled to get it on, generating speculation that he employed the acting skills that got him cast in “Naked Gun.”
The glove represented a serious error in the prosecution’s presentation of its case against Simpson.
Five days later, another fashion accessory, supposedly belonging to Simpson, took center stage. This time it was a pair of size 12 Bruno Magli shoes. More specifically, it was a bloody footprint from the shoes, at the scene of the crime, and the image of a Magli heel on Nicole’s back.
The shoe-size corresponded with that of Simpson and a similar Magli shoe, in that size, perfectly matched the sole of his Reebok.
Such was the obsession with this trial that, according to CNN, by 1996, sales of Magli shoes rose 30 percent.
As summer stretched on, the defense took center stage. On August 10, Michael Baden, the former chief medical examiner of New York, testified that whoever committed the murder took longer to finish the job than prosecutors claimed.
This was critical because more time at the crime scene would have allowed less time for the getaway OJ stood accused of making.
For working on Simpson’s side, Baden received $100,000.
Nearly two weeks later, on August 23, the defense threw up another smokescreen, maintaining that there were two killers – neither of whom was Simpson.
Its expert witness, Henry C. Lee, then director of the Connecticut State Police forensics lab, maintained that there were different bloody shoe prints.
He also made a point of showing how bloodstain patterns would be indicative of a struggle. To demonstrate, he was poised to slam his hand into a blob of red ink.
Seemingly playing to the Court TV cameras and the ever-growing viewership of the trial, Judge Ito cheekily asked Lee, “You ever been to a Gallagher show?”
He invoked the name of a single-named prop comic who was then famous for smashing watermelons.
The trial reached its climax during the early days of October.
Cochran, ever the showman, delivered the most memorable line of the trial.
Calling back to the prosecution’s screw-up with the black glove, he implored the jurors, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”
it was the quip heard around the world.
Viewership of the trial steadily grew and peaked at 150 million viewers on verdict day.
TVs were wheeled into school classrooms and office workers stopped work as 57 percent of the country — including Clinton — tuned in to see the end of a courtroom drama.
After all that, it took only four hours for the jurors to reach a verdict.
One of them, Lionel Cryer, a former Black Panther, smiled and winked at Simpson.
Then the court clerk read, “Not guilty.”
Simpson smiled. Cryer raised a fist into the air, giving the black-power salute. Fred Goldman described the decision as his second biggest nightmare, just behind the murder of his son.
But he would go on to receive some justice. In 1997, families of Goldman and Brown were awarded a $33.5 million civil judgment against Simpson.
After the verdict, Ron Goldman stated, “We finally have justice for Ron and Nicole.”
But Simpson died without ever coughing up the money.
