OJ Simpson, 76, died of cancer on Wednesday at his Las Vegas home. Thirty years ago, the beloved Hall of Fame football player, successful actor, and rental car pitchman was accused of brutally stabbing and murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. His trial — and eventual acquittal — captivated the nation. Simpson maintained his innocence, but then in a bizarre 2006 interview that didn’t air for more than a decade, seemed to confess to the murders, while also blaming a hypothetical accomplice. The case was a flashpoint of celebrity, race, and justice.
“[It] raised the question of whether a Black man in America, even one who had crossed the racial barriers and attained all of the wealth and status he had, could be tried without prejudice for the slaying of a white person,” says USC law professor Jody Armour.
There was also the sheer shock of the crime, says Jim Newton, editor at Blueprint, who covered the trial: “It was a strange combination of deeply, movingly seriousness: Two dead people, a double knife murder in Brentwood, unheard of, really. …. There was just the horror of it and the sadness of it, but then there was also this big national conversation on race, on domestic violence, on class, on all the different issues that got warped into it.”
On top of it all was the massive public attention. Newton points to what he describes as a circus outside of the courthouse, such as large crowds and vendors selling watches, t-shirts, and other items.
Armour adds that Simpson's trial happened in the wake of the 1992 riots, which also focused on the relationship between police and the Black community. Meanwhile, Mark Fuhrman, an LAPD detective, was called to testify at the trial.
“Mark Fuhrman was really exposed as an avowedly, virulent racist. … We coined ‘N word’ because in tapes of his interview, he used the N word so much that reporters had to come up with a way to report it without using the epithet themselves. So you have Mark Fuhrman … finding the bloody garb that seemed like the most incriminating piece of evidence, and yet, it just didn't smell right.”
Armour continues, “I always thought he was guilty, but the way that the evidence was stacked up against them with somebody like Mark Fuhrman, at the heart of it, it just made it look very suspicious to many in the Black community.”
