Football star not guilty of murder, trial of the century

OJ Simpson, the football star who later became an actor and then best known for being accused of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman during a highly publicized and televised car chase. of a trial during which he was ultimately acquitted. of murder charges, died. He was 76 years old.

In a post to Simpson's official X account (formerly known as Twitter), the Simpson family shared the following statement: “On April 10, our father, Orenthal James Simpson, succumbed to his battle with cancer. He was surrounded by his children and grandchildren. During this time of transition, his family asks that you respect their wishes for privacy and grace.

Simpson's death follows a life marked by success in sports and Hollywood that transformed into an athlete who became a suspected murderer and convicted armed robber. Born Orenthal James Simpson on July 9, 1947, in San Francisco, Simpson's won the Heisman Trophy at USC and later with the Buffalo Bills – where he had a record 2,000-yard rushing during the 1973 season – were followed by playing the lovable dunce in the Naked gun movies and becoming a rental car pitcher as the college and National Football League hero became a celebrity for hire.

With his membership at the exclusive Riviera Country Club, a 6,200-square-foot mansion in Brentwood, and a coterie of rich and famous white friends, Simpson once told the media, “I'm not black, I'm OJ.” included commercials for Hertz cars in which Simpson sprinted to catch a rental car, smiling widely as he jumped over an airport guardrail and brushed past a clapping old lady. But the celebrity life of a Football Hall of Famer turned Hollywood star imploded in the face of what became known as the “trial of the century.”

It began on June 12, 1994, when Simpson's ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, was found murdered outside her Brentwood condominium with a young man later identified as Goldman. Simpson was immediately identified as a possible suspect in the murder of the mother of his two young children, Sydney and Justin. And the police pursuit of the deceased football hero in a white Bronco driven by a friend, Al Cowlings, on June 17, 1994, was filmed by helicopter shot and broadcast live on American prime-time television, leaving the audience fascinated.

What followed was a murder trial – with intersecting themes of gender, race, sex and violence and strong ratings for the cable news channels that carried a split feed – where Simpson was ultimately convicted not guilty of double murder outside Brentwood home. An estimated 150 million people watched Simpson go free when the verdict was announced on October 3, 1995. He has always maintained his innocence and the double murder of Goldman and Brown Simpson remains unsolved.

The trial itself, made famous by courtroom evidence of Bruno Magli's shoe prints, an Isotoner glove and drops of blood in the infamous white Bronco, left prosecutors Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden and the defense of Simpson's “Dream Team” led by Johnnie Cochran as celebrities. Also rising to prominence during the trial were Brian “Kato” Kaelin, occupant of the Simpson guesthouse, and Mark Fuhrman, a former LAPD detective, both of whom testified on the witness stand.

The OJ Simpson trial also taught Hollywood that cheap programming could generate huge audiences and enormous profitability, for both cable and broadcast networks, and gave rise to an explosion in television -reality that followed, which relied much less on actors, screenwriters, expensive sets and other production elements. .

But the double murder trial, which lasted eight months, also left Simpson ostracized and facing great obstacles in getting his life back on track. The disgraced football star had become a cultural Rorschach, with a Washington Post A poll taken at the time of the verdict found that 72 percent of whites believed Simpson guilty, while 71 percent of African Americans believed him innocent.

With questions about his guilt or innocence left unanswered, interest in Simpson in the years to come was apparently persistent. And he has not remained a stranger to the courtrooms. A civil ruling followed, ordering Simpson to pay $33.5 million to the Goldman family. Simpson returned to court to stand trial for a 2007 incident in Las Vegas in which he and armed friends attempted to recover sports memorabilia that Simpson claimed to be his. Simpson went to prison after being convicted of the armed robbery. He was released in 2017, after nine years in prison.

The original People v. Orenthal James Simpson The murder trial that was covered extensively by CNN, Court TV and other cable networks also laid the foundation for an era of saturated media coverage and tabloids to follow. Simpson's murder trial reached a new, younger audience as the subject of FX's first episode. American Crime Story: The People vs. OJ Simpson, starring Cuba Gooding Jr. as Simpson, Sarah Paulson as Clark, Sterling K. Brown as Darden, and Courtney B. Vance as Cochran. The hit 2016 series, from prolific producer Ryan Murphy, won eight Emmy Awards, including best limited series and acting awards for Paulson and Vance.

American crime story was Fox's second attempt at tackling The Simpsons drama. In 2006, then-parent company News Corporation expanded on Simpson's explosive book, If I did it, and a pre-recorded television interview on Fox in which the fallen star recounted, hypothetically, how he could have murdered his ex-wife, after a backlash from the Goldman and Nicole Simpson Brown families. This fiasco prompted Fox boss Rupert Murdoch to apologize.

Simpson was also the subject of Ezra Edelman's five-part miniseries and documentary film. Olympics: Made in America, which debuted to rave reviews in 2016 and won numerous awards, including the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The project still has 100% freshness on Rotten Tomatoes.

And for a true crime TV audience seemingly obsessed with trying the past again, Martin Sheen produced for Investigation Discovery. Concrete proof: OJ is innocenta true crime documentary series that attempted to show that Simpson was innocent by reinvestigating the murder case from start to finish.