They called it the Trial of the Century.
In 1995, retired Hall of Fame football player Orenthal James “O.J.” Simpson was accused of brutally murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman outside her home in Brentwood, California. Each had been stabbed multiple times; Brown’s throat had been slit so deeply she was nearly decapitated.
Even before the trial, the case had Americans riveted. First, Simpson failed to surrender to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) after officials identified him as a suspect and issued an arrest warrant. Then came the low-speed highway pursuit, in which a cavalcade of police cars gave chase to a white Ford Bronco heading south on California’s I-5 freeway. Highway lanes had cleared, thousands gathered alongside the road and on overpasses and news helicopters followed along from the sky. According to Simpson friend Al Cowlings, who was at the wheel and on the phone with the LAPD, the despondent football star had a gun pointed to his own head. The scene proved so captivating that NBC cut away from the NBA Finals to show it.
But once Simpson’s murder trial formally began on January 24, 1995, the coverage went into overdrive.
A&E True Crime looks back at some of the most noteworthy moments from the eight-month criminal trial that captured the nation’s attention like none has since.
February 3, 1995: Denise Brown Testifies
Simpson began his trial with sympathy from a large swath of viewers. That’s because in addition to his on-field heroics, Simpson had crossed over into mainstream culture as an affable media personality, appearing in Hertz commercials and the 1988 crime comedy The Naked Gun.
[Stream O.J. Speaks: The Hidden Tapes in the A&E app.]
But the prosecution, led by Marcia Clark, tried to chip away at that public persona by introducing Simpson’s other side: that of a vicious batterer who tormented Nicole Brown Simpson for years.
Weeping throughout her testimony, Nicole’s older sister, Denise Brown wore angel earrings in memory of her slain sister as she detailed the abuse she had witnessed.
She tearfully told the jury about O.J. calling his wife a “fat pig,” and also shared some of the more heated moments she witnessed, saying “He picked her up and threw her against the wall. He picked her up and threw her out of the house.”
June 15, 1995: O.J. Simpson Tries on the Gloves
The prosecution in the O.J. Simpson case had physical evidence—most of which was DNA—tying Simpson to the crime scene. But one of the most noteworthy pieces of evidence was an extra-large pair of black leather gloves.
The left-handed glove had been found outside Brown’s home. The right-handed glove had been found at Simpson’s residence. Furthermore, an employee at Bloomingdale’s in New York told the courtroom that he had sold Brown a pair of those same gloves a few years before the murder, when the couple was still married.
But the prosecution made a costly error in asking the defendant to try the gloves on in court. Simpson struggled to get the gloves on over his sizeable hands. The image of him barely fitting into the gloves generated favorable coverage for the defendant and helped create some of the doubt needed for his eventual acquittal.
Years after the trial, one of the jurors, Yolanda Crawford, said the glove was a key piece of evidence that worked in Simpson’s favor.
The gloves “appeared to be tight, or too tight. It was just something that backfired,” Crawford told CNN shortly after the trial.
August 29, 1995: Jurors Hear LAPD Officer Mark Fuhrman’s Recorded Racist Remarks
Mark Fuhrman, who is white, was one of the lead investigators in the O.J. Simpson case. And from the trial’s onset, the defense accused the LAPD and Fuhrman, specifically, of being biased because of racism. They argued that the police had framed Simpson.
When he was first brought to the stand, Fuhrman was asked repeatedly about his own history of making racist remarks about Black people, which he steadfastly denied.
But in August, the defense received hours of audio tapes from a screenwriter who had interviewed Fuhrman as part of her research for a writing project. In those tapes, Fuhrman uses the n-word numerous times and brags about police brutality and fabricating evidence.
After excerpts from those tapes were presented to the jury, Fuhrman was brought back to the stand and asked follow-up questions about his previous testimony. Fuhrman responded by asserting his 5thamendment right to not self-incriminate.
Most damningly for the prosecution, Fuhrman pleaded the 5th when asked if he planted or manufactured any evidence in the Simpson case.
For the majority-Black Simpson jury, the captured audio of Fuhrman’s callous racism was a major strike against one of the prosecution’s most important witnesses. At the time of the Simpson trial, the reputation of the LAPD among Black Angelenos had already suffered significantly in the wake of the 1991 police beating of Rodney King, an incident had sparked massive riots throughout the city.
October 3, 1995: O.J. Simpson Is Acquitted
The criminal trial lasted nearly nine months. But the jury deliberated for less than four hours.
The jurors found Simpson not guilty of both murders, leading him to mouth the words “thank you” and smile with relief. After the verdict was read, one of the jurors raised a “Black power” fist at Simpson as he left the courtroom—further indication of how much race had played a central role in the case.
According to polls taken immediately after the trial, the American public appeared to be polarized along racial lines with regard to Simpson’s guilt, with the majority of white Americans certain of O.J.’s culpability and the majority of Black Americans of his innocence.
But Simpson’s legal reprieve would prove short-lived.
In 1997, Simpson was found guilty in a $34 million civil suit for the wrongful deaths of Brown and Goldman. In 2008, he was found guilty of armed robbery at a Las Vegas casino hotel, sending him to state prison for nine years. He was released on parole in 2017.
O.J. Simpson denied he was involved in the murders until his death on April 10, 2024 at the age of 76.
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The 10 Biggest Crime Stories of the 2010s
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