OJ Simpson: Football Great, Murder Suspect, and Convicted Felon, Dead at 76
Famous for being a Hall of Fame football player, movie star, and pitchman before really becoming infamous for being acquitted of the murder of his ex-wife and Ron Goldman, and later a convicted felon stemming from a robbery in Las Vegas, OJ Simpson has died after what his family is calling a battle with cancer.
O.J. Simpson, the former football great who was accused of and ultimately acquitted of the brutal 1994 slayings of his ex-wife and her friend, has died, according to his family. He was 76.
“On April 10th, 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 please respect their wishes for privacy and grace,” a statement from his family said.
In May 2023, Simpson posted a video on X, then known as Twitter, revealing that he had recently “caught cancer” and “had to do the whole chemo thing.” He added then that “It looks like I beat it.” Simpson didn’t specify the nature of the cancer.
Then in February 2024, a Las Vegas television station reported that Simpson, then 76, was again undergoing treatment for an unspecified cancer. Simpson himself posted a video on X that day, denying rumors that he was in hospice care, though he did not otherwise confirm or deny reports that he was ill. Two days later in another video update on X, Simpson thanked those people he said had reached out to him, adding “My health is good. I mean, obviously I’m dealing with some issues but I think I’m just about over it.”
On April 10th, 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 please respect their wishes for privacy and grace.
-The Simpson Family
— O.J. Simpson (@TheRealOJ32) April 11, 2024
Orenthal James Simpson, nicknamed “The Juice,” broke records as a college and professional football player, and extended his celebrity and fortune as a sportscaster, a movie and television actor, and as a corporate spokesman, most notably for Hertz rental cars.
All that changed on June 12, 1994, when Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman, were brutally stabbed to death outside of the former’s home in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Brentwood. Within days, police announced their intention to arrest the former football star for the murders.
Five days after the killings, 95 million Americans watched as Simpson’s white Ford Bronco – with longtime friend Al Cowlings at the wheel and Simpson in the back seat with a handgun, threatening to kill himself – led police on a 60-mile, low-speed televised chase through Los Angeles that lasted some two hours.
Simpson ultimately surrendered to police and stood trial for the murders. In October 1995, after 11 months from jury selection to verdict, Simpson was acquitted in a trial that was televised daily and became an international sensation.
Twelve years later, Simpson was arrested in September 2007 after he led a group of men into a Las Vegas hotel and casino to steal, at gunpoint, what he claims was his own sports memorabilia. Simpson was charged with a number of felony counts, including kidnapping and armed robbery. The following year, he was found guilty and sentenced to up to 33 years in prison. Simpson was released on parole on Oct. 1, 2017.
I was a college student in Buffalo during OJ’s great years. I still say he’s the second-best running back I ever saw.
I went to a game against the Jets in lousy weather even by Buffalo standards. With OJ and the Bills’ running game, the weather gave them a huge advantage, and with two minutes to go I left for the bus with the game decided. Up to that point, the game was the first anyone could remember in which nobody completed a forward pass, but Namath completed two in garbage time, spoiling the moment.Report
Don’t leave us hanging, man! Sanders? Payton? Elliott? Okoye?Report
Jim Brown.
Yeah, I know. I’m old.Report
But not wrong.Report
I was in anthropology class when, halfway through, two students walked in and everybody started yelling at them “WHAT HAPPENED WHAT HAPPENED” and they said “Not Guilty” and the professor said something to the effect of “okay, thank you, everybody calm down…” and then returned, seamlessly, to his lecture.
After the class, everybody stood up and started yelling at each other.Report
I think that for a lot of us, the response to the OJ verdict was the first major sign that black culture was seriously messed up.Report
Prosecutor(s) and Judge both dropped the ball.
Clark let the jury be stuffed with people the jury picker expert said would favor the defendant. Judge let everyone ham for the cameras and allowed the defense to introduce stuff without any foundation.
My impression is the DA’s office understood it was going to be a sh*t show and everyone who was competent dodged that bullet, leaving only the least experienced and competent people.
We spent a year going over red herring after red herring when the DNA by itself was stupidly solid.
OJ’s blood was found at the scene.
Victims’ blood was found in OJ’s bedroom/bathroom at his house.
OJ had wounds on him and was behaving very weirdly.
OJ had been stalking his ex-wife and had abused her before.
That’s your case right there. You don’t need to drag it out for another year to go over irrelevant stuff.Report
I didn’t pay any attention to the case, so I can’t comment on whether the results were expected. What was striking to me was the near-universal black support for a murderer.Report
Gee, black people in the 1990’s want to keep their black heros clean in white man’s eyes. Nah, no reason for that at all . . .Report
I don’t accept any description that leaves out some form of the word “murder”.Report
Not the point man.Report
Four words in that last comment, none of them “murder”, so you’re not describing the situation.Report
Does it ever occur to you that your framing isn’t the only one for a situation? Like – maybe the jury was sick and tired of black men being railroaded through the system. Maybe th jury was tired of dirty cops playing stupid games (as the good Doctor notes below). Maybe, just maybe, the jury understood that large issues were at play and decided to acquit to send a powerful message?
No?
and that’s the problem right there. Did OJ kill Nicole – probably. Did a jury convict him? No. The reasons why are at least as important. In fact probably more important then me using words you like.Report
As a Catholic I know a lot about not wanting your most prominent members to be guilty. But those that are guilty don’t really bring shame on any individual member. The individual brings shame on himself when he puts his preferences over justice. Millions of black people in the US acted shamefully.Report
Wow. There’s a stunning . . . ignorance . . . in equating clergy sexual abuse with the reaction of the black community to the OJ trial. That somehow you think they are even remotely related speaks volumes about you and all the things you have clearly failed to learn, both here and elsewhere.
Catholic clergy indeed brought and still bring shame both on themselves and on the whole of the Church, and the refusal of the Church to both expel them, and to actively cover them up is not even close to the same thing. For one thing, the clergy in question weren’t representative of an oppressed minority. A minority with along history of its prominent leaders being lynched, fire bombed and otherwise killed for imply existing.Report
I wasn’t equating them; I was seeing the similarities in those who deny murder and sexual abuse.Report
Again, the black community wasn’t denying murder; it was celebrating racist cops getting their a$$es hand to them on a very public platter for being shown publicly to break the law (unnecessarily as it turned out).Report
The moment we make the jury about “the larger issue” there is no justice.
Trump could (and is) use spurious “larger issues” to defend whatever he wants. OJ did the same.Report
Right. But Pinky went from there to “All Black Bad” because they didn’t accept the murder framing. If he really doesn’t understand why, I feel pity for him. If he does and doesn’t care, my feelings have a different name.
As to Trump – he is definitely trying to create jury nullification outcomes. Hopefully the prosecutors won’t play into his hands with t heir jury selection, nor do I think they have any history of planting evidence.Report
I was in middle school when the verdict was announced, in a class of predominantly black classmates in a predominantly black school. There was indeed celebrating. But not because a murdered may have gone free. But because a racist, corrupt cop serving in a police department that few black people had any fondness for who planted evidence and engaged in other illegal, corrupt practices failed in his attempts. That was what was being celebrated.
But, hey, if you want to say you think black culture is screwed up because black people supported a murderer… what do you say of conservative culture when they celebrate Trump despite all his crimes (including but not limited to rape and sexual assault)?Report
To the extent that conservatives have overlooked Trump’s bad deeds, I’ve been very critical of them for nearly a decade now.Report
Conservatives have handed the GOP over to him to run a campaign of retribution and lies. Seems to me they are quite fine with Trump’s misdeeds.Report
So would you say conservative culture is seriously messed up?Report
hey kazzy i got an idea we’ll agree with you that Trump is bad and you’ll agree with us that a bunch of black kids cheered when OJ got away with knifing his wife
sound good?Report
I don’t deny that black folks cheered the OJ verdict. I watched it happen myself. Willy Owens “went to the bathroom” and snuck by the teachers lounge where they were watching and overheard the verdict and ran down the hallway screaming “NOT GUILTY NOT GUILTY” and most of the kids cheered. Yea. That happened.
But see what you did there? Trump is bad for his actions but nothing about Trump supporters. Black people (i.e., OJ supporters) are bad for their support of OJ.
So… no… that doesn’t sound good.
Here is what sounds good:
Trump is bad. People who support Trump are bad because they support someone who is bad.
OJ was bad. People who supported OJ were bad because they supported someone who was bad.
How’s THAT sound?Report
People who cheer for Trump to be acquitted on charges they believe him guilty of are acting badly. People who convince themselves that Trump is innocent of charges they should know he’s guilty of are acting badly.Report
So, again, would you say conservative culture is seriously messed up? Or just individual conservatives are acting badly?
Because above you said black culture is seriously messed up based on their response to the OJ verdict.
For my two cents, I think voting for a rapist to be President is worse than cheering a murderer’s acquittal. But that’s just me.Report
I think that the MAGA movement is messed up, sure. I think that voting for Trump in the primaries is morally comparable to cheering the Simpson verdict. It’s possible to argue that Trump or Clinton didn’t rape anyone, but I don’t think it’s possible to argue that Simpson didn’t kill anyone.Report
Well if you ignore the judge’s ruling in the E Jean Carrol case that Trump did, in fact, rape here.Report
What about voting for Trump in the general?
And… to be clear… you think trying to elevate a rapist and general miscreant fraud like Trump to the Presidency is equivalent to cheering a trial verdict? No worse?Report
I couldn’t vote for Trump in the general. I don’t accept the argument that the general election is a binary choice, but I can understand it.Report
I’m not asking about YOU voting for Trump. You only mentioned people voting for Trump in the primary.
Again, you seem VERY willing to criticize black culture en masse for celebrating the OJ verdict… an ultimately consequence-less act. And you seem VERY unwilling to criticize conservative culture or the GOP for all of the support they’ve offered to Trump while he runs for President.
Striking.Report
Among the historical conservatives, the libertarians and fiscal/Beltway types didn’t go for Trump, and the socons did (particularly among evangelicals). I criticized them plenty for it. I think this is the first time you’ve asked about the GOP, but I’ve been very critical of them on this site too.Report
Fair enough. Conservative was the wrong descriptor. Would you say that the Republican Party — 94% of Republican voters voted for Trump in 2020 — is seriously messed up at this point?Report
I’ve already noted that I don’t accept the “binary choice” argument for the general election, but I understand it.Report
How does that answer my question?
94% of Republican voters in 2020 voted for Trump. Given your feelings on Trump, do you think this indicates the Republican Party is seriously messed up?Report
It really does answer the question. I find the primary support of Trump to be morally wrong, but I can understand the general election support even if I don’t agree with it. If you want to put another quarter in the machine, I can give you another criticism of Trump supporters though.Report
But you can’t understand Black folks in 1995 cheering OJ’s acquittal? The only explanation is how seriously messed up their culture is. Got it.Report
“Trump is bad. People who support Trump are bad because they support someone who is bad.”
*sigh* do you actually need me to write this? Fine; Trump is bad and people who support Trump are bad.
You honestly thought I was not going to agree with that?Report
“hey kazzy i got an idea we’ll agree with you that Trump is bad and you’ll agree with us that a bunch of black kids cheered when OJ got away with knifing his wife”
I’ll happily say anybody who thinks OJ Simpson was innocent should not be in elected office and I’ll never vote for them.
Can you say the same about your voting patterns and Donald Trump?Report
“Can you say the same about your voting patterns and Donald Trump?”
well I haven’t ever once voted for Donald Trump, so, not sure where you’re goin’ with this oneReport
Have you ever voted for anyone that endorsed Donald Trump when he was the Repubican nominee?Report
“Have you ever voted for anyone that endorsed Donald Trump when he was the Repubican nominee?”
…no?Report
Except when it comes to the voting booth for the vast majority of Republican’s. Which is all they care about from cons like you who try to be above it all.Report
Exactly. Blacks finally had a televised verdict showing how the systemic racism they experienced daily was done, and repudiated.Report
It’s “systemic racism” to think a stalking abusive former husband should be the prime suspect for killing his ex-wife and her lover?
OJ left a silly amount of evidence all over the place.Report
And Furhman still broke law after law to pursue him. Why? If the case was such an easy W?Report
Again, BINGO.Report
What law did Furhman break?
We have the defense accusation that he planted a bloody glove he found from the crime scene in OJ’s house. At that time Furhman knew OJ was in Chicago. It would have been insane to plant evidence on someone who could prove he was thousands of miles away.
DA found reasonably good evidence that the glove was in fact OJ’s (pictures of him wearing it). At the trial it didn’t fit but OJ was off his meds so his hands would have been swollen.
Other than that we have Furhman using the n word.
The defense had lots of wild ideas on how it was a massive conspiracy to frame OJ. They shouldn’t have been allowed to present them without some evidence that they were doing more than just making stuff up.Report
Furhman was convicted of perjury for lying about his use of racial epithets.
Furhman climbed Simpson’s fence without a warrant to let officers on to the property.
Both of those seem pretty damn illegal and neither are in dispute.Report
I take you at your word on that.Report
I was in the 10th grade at the time. My high school decided that “we all know that the teachers and students are really going to be interesting in the verdict and nothing else, so let’s bow down to reality and play the last moments of the trial on the radio rather than do class.” From what I gather, many other schools did the same. I can’t imagine this happening during a current trial of the century. It would be all focus on the work at hand.Report
We also had it on the radio.
Though I guess now everyone’s cell phones would be going off.Report
It was a simpler time.Report
The Actor? From Airplane?Report
If we’re going that route I always thought this was among the most hilarious scenes involving him in a movie.
https://youtu.be/N1ksvI9EsBw?si=YTBpl5n83WekfHuPReport
My take on the prosecution of OJ hasn’t changed: He did it AND the police framed him for it. They planted evidence, and threw the whole thing in doubt. That means a “not guilty” verdict is about the only thing you can do to get the police to stop doing that crap.
To me, the prosecution showed not that black culture was messed up, but the LAPD was full of people who couldn’t trust a jury and loved to mouth off about how terrible black people are.Report
Excellent summation.Report
When the cops were doing the initial investigation they knew OJ was in Chicago and though he had a stupidly strong alibi. Trying to frame someone who is thousands of miles away and can trivially prove that doesn’t seem like a great move.
The cops certainly beclowned themselves. The defense put a magnifying glass on that.
But subtract some level of incompetence and we’re left with an obviously guilty OJ whose lawyers are desperately claiming everything they can even if it’s clearly made up.Report
What did the defense lawyers claim that was clearly. made up?Report
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_to_the_verdict_in_the_O._J._Simpson_criminal_trial#Criticism_of_the_defense
To sum up:
1) Use of “the race card” (which even they admitted was dealt from the bottom of the deck and in a case which for a while was viewed as not involving race).
This includes claiming the cops were planting evidence to frame a black man.
2) “Unethical behavior” is it’s own long brick.
3) Witness perjury
4) Various unreliable expertsReport
The OJ verdict was, for a lot of white people, their first brush with being on the wrong end of injustice.
It doesn’t excuse injustice or make it any less unjust. As with any injustice, the most productive way to deal with it is to develop a deeper sense of solidarity with those who have experienced it also.Report
Yeah, especially women. “This is what injustice is like” must have been really jarring for them.Report
It’s almost like systems can suck for multiple groups of people at the same time for different reasons.
I believe there is a word for this…Report
What proposition are you denying?
“The OJ verdict was, for a lot of white people, their first brush with being on the wrong end of injustice.”
That one?Report
What makes you think I’m denying anything?Report
Oh, maybe you’re not. Maybe instead of arguing P or ~P, you want to point Q out.
Thank you for pointing out Q.Report
To me this is all pretty illogical. Neither white people nor black people (nor to the below, women) were parties to the case.Report
We were *ALL* on trial.
And, unlike OJ, we were found guilty.Report
I think the criminal justice system sucks for lots of groups of people:
1.) People of color
2.) Immigrants
3.) Women
4.) Poor people
5.) Young people
Among others…Report
And as demonstrated by the OJ trial, it works differently depending on the race/ gender/ status of the accuser and victim.
Had OJ been a different color, or his victims a different color, had he been poor instead of rich, anonymous instead of famous, the case very likely would have turned out differently.
Like I said, for lots of people this came as a revelation. For lots of others, not so much.Report
Like I said, for lots of people
Oh, is that what you said?Report
That case was only about race because OJ needed to make it about race. He had no other defense.
If he’d been poor, or even just not famous, then the Judge wouldn’t have put up with the defense shenanigans. It would have just been a mountain of evidence sitting there.Report
It’s really just all about the money. Everyone in theory has the right to do the kind of investigation and work it takes to challenge the credibility of the witnesses and evidence against them (whether it’s effective or not is another matter). But none of those hours of hunting down people and documents and evidence are free of charge.Report
When I read the wiki on his defense, I see a lot of Trump style conspiracy theories, outright lies, and obviously wrong “challenges” to the evidence.
For example there was a claim that OJ’s Ford didn’t have blood on it until it entered police custody but there were photos which proved it did.
The defense didn’t do a good job. They did a bad but noisy job and the Judge let them get away with it. The DA also did a bad job.
Buried in bullshit over the course of a year, the jury couldn’t make sense of it.Report
Well, if Nicole Brown was around today and came out w/ accusations about OJ, with all the information we didn’t know about OJ in 1994, most of the anti-woke right and center would just assume she’s another lying MeTooer trying to bring down a good non-radical black man who doesn’t engage in identity poltiics.Report
And if he went on trial for that and was found “not guilty”, would that mean anything?Report
Nicole did the correct thing (multiple times) and involved the cops.
So we have actual records, actual evidence, actual charges, official investigations, and so on.Report
And yet… did OJ ever goto jail for that?Report
Would you say that this is your first brush with being on the wrong end of injustice?Report
That question doesn’t mean anything in this context.Report
She got divorced and also (I think) got court orders.
It’s not clear what he did before the murders rose to the level of “we jail him” if we’re going to use the normal rules. After the murders, although the court dropped the ball, the rest of society made sure he had no career.
The sports, entertainment, and advertising communities refused to have anything to do with him. No more movies, no more endorsements, no more sports commentary, no more any of that. He was reduced to signing footballs for cash.Report
I’ve never been able to understand the combination of projection people put into, and rorschach test people get out of, the OJ Simpson case or really any other high profile case or why even now so many get so emotional about it. It didn’t vindicate any particular political or social perspective about anything, one way or any other way. Those that think it did are not being very smart.Report
Clearly you aren’t a Black man in America.Report
Last I checked neither were you.Report
For black people, the case very much vindicated their lived experience of a system that always assumed they were criminal and played fast and loose with the facts. To believe otherwise is to not accept that lived experience as genuine.Report
If I asked any of the black people I know if they considered anything about the OJ Simpson situation reflective of their ‘lived experience’ I’m pretty sure they’d think I was either making an off color (no pun intended) joke or that I was being a dick.Report
In 2024? Maybe. In the mid-90s? Probably a very different response.
But why don’t you go ask them and find out?Report
Heh, I choose not to embarass myself by either asking that sort of question or getting into a pissing contest with a couple of white guys over which of us understands black people better.Report
Interesting. You think asking people you have close relationships with a serious question meant to understand their response to and connection with a major historical event that has resurfaced in the public consciousness due to the person at the center of it passing away is embarassing.
To each their own, I suppose.Report
No one I know has any connection to OJ Simpson. And yes, going around asking black people about it strikes me as kind of weird and neurotic. Same with assuming whatever black person I spoke to speaks for all black people as opposed to just for themselves.Report
I’m not talking about asking random black people but asking people with whom you have a relationship. Friends and I often talk about our differing responses to the passing of major figures. Maybe we’re just weird though.Report
Tomorrow, ask them about the OJ thing.Report
I am blessed with many friends but have varying types of friendships. Only a very small subset of them involve discussions of politics or current events beyond the most superficial level (you know what they say about politics and religion at parties).
One of those friends is black but knowing him his response to me asking about OJ Simpson would probably be something less than serious. I’ve known him long enough it’s entirely possible the topic has come up at some point. It would still feel odd to me to ask if he felt some kind of personal vindication about the acquittal.Report
I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees.Report
OJ Simpson’s whole trial was mostly before I was very closely aware of the minutiae of American politics and it always struck me as odd. But Kazzy and Pinky’s exchange up thread was really interesting for me and the parallels they draw between black culture thinking OJ was a murderer but being pleased he got off because they’ve been persecuted by the legal system and conservative culture now adopting a somewhat similar stance strikes me as an extremely cogent similarity.
Though, I do note, that while OJ got acquitted and that verdict was cheered the community never again made him wealthy or revered and OJ became a generally disdained and scorned figure. Which, to date at least, suggests the Black community has more self-awareness than the conservative community does. Trump, after all, still commands their hearts.Report
Or put it this way – conservative scammers are still making millions off conservatives, while OJ Simpson was stuck doing card signings where he eventually got robbed to pay his bills. If conservatives treated every member of the Trump administration and anybody who endorsed Trump for POTUS that way, then maybe people like Pinky might have a point about how terrible black culture is, when it seemed black culture, whatever you want to claim it is, acted better than largely white conservative culture, including the anti-anti-Trump folks like Pinky has for the past decade.Report
I think it’s a mistake to read it as anything particularly enduring. To the extent there’s substance to it, given some of the things discovered about the LAPD, it isn’t hard (for me anyway) to understand why a black (or any) person might come to see the entire investigation as illegitimate, regardless of guilt or innocence. It also isn’t hard for me to think someone would say that stuff was bad but at the end of the day it’s besides the point re: the question of guilt or innocence. But I also think it was a mass media spectacle with facts so remote from the reality of 99% of the population that the opinions on it don’t say much more about people than a poll of who viewers think should be voted off the island on a reality show. OJ’s football career was over anyway, and the bad publicity killed his career as a minor movie star or media personality, which in those days was a decision of the gatekeepers.
Anyway I don’t think there’s much of a parallel to anything political. Partisans always forgive their leaders (compare Tara Reade to Christine Ford). The Democratic party and media ecosystem just isn’t anywhere close to as broken as the Republican/conservative side is.Report
I’ve seen conservatives frequently say that the black community rooting for and celebrating OJ’s acquittal says something enduring about the black community. I fail to see how that can hold while the conservative community rooting for and (if they happen) celebrating Trumps theoretical acquittal somehow says nothing about the conservative community.
I’m also completely missing your point about Ford and Reade. The former seems earnest and coherent but impossible to substantiate whereas the latter is borderline deranged, her accusations are contradictory, seem to have been partially politically motived and then there is the Russia element.Report
Regarding conservatives I suppose that’s true, and Pinky did say he thinks it says something enduring about it. I guess if I was going to talk conservative hypocrisy on Trump this would be way, way down the list, but for purposes of this conversation at OT I feel like I have to concede it. Still, seems pretty random and not like something we’d be talking about had Simpson not happened to he in the headlinea for dying.
I look at the latter situation differently. A person either believes in due process, innocent until proven guilty or they don’t. For all Reade’s apparent nuttiness you can at least put her and Biden in the same building at one point and time. I don’t think either could be substantiated which ends it for me, but I don’t think I’m being unfair to say that reactions were… convenient. Though I also think it’s hard to do an apples to apples. We have our dirty laundry but the Democratic party just isn’t elevating people that require anything close to the kind of rationalizing and hypocrisy Trump does.Report
Okay, fair enough on the former point.
And on the two ladies in question since I, also, believe in innocent until proven guilty I, also, don’t struggle much with either case but the two ladies are very definitely not apples to apples comparisons.Report
Eh I can cop to it being not the best comparison. I thought twice about even saying it due to being kind of half baked but then for some reason hit post anyway.Report
I’ve been there.Report
You realize much of this got kicked off because Pinky said:
“I think that for a lot of us, the response to the OJ verdict was the first major sign that black culture was seriously messed up.”
So North’s immediate response here is perfectly on point. If we are going to fault Black culture en masse for how some members of the Black community responded to the OJ verdict, we should be just as willing to fault however-you-want-to-identify-Trump-supports for their response to Trump’s success.
And, as I argued above, I’d say we ought to take the latter much more seriously because in one scenario you have folks merely cheering something that happened in an ultimately inconsequential display of excitement; in another you have folks actively trying to get the man to be President.Report
See response to North re: Pinky’s comment.Report
I think similarly, which is why I hardly ever comment on news stories.Report
Decade seems overmuch but at least 4-5 years seems defensible. What blows my mind is that Trump is not only treated better by conservatives than OJ was but that Trump is also treated better than previous much more overtly conservative Presidential Candidates and former Conservative Presidents are.
(Edit: this should be a reply to Jesse- guess it got misthreaded)Report
An interesting tweet from Nicole Minet that has zero corroborating evidence whatsoever:
A yet-to-be-approved community note points out that OJ never graduated.Report
Color me skeptical that two of the highest-profile lawyers at the time where doing in-person skull work on case background and personally greasing palms with checks with their names on them…Report
“and my boss lit a cigarette for the first time in years”
Heh… it’s a young’un who doesn’t have a clear timeline of the smoking changes.Report
Oh, that’s a good point. Yeah. in 2012 “for the first time in years” might be accurate. We were still smoking like chimneys in 1995.Report
If she honestly thinks that having charges dropped is something you’d bribe a defense attorney to do, then maybe the reason she dropped out of pre-law and changed to philosophy was more of a skill issue than a moral one…Report
I also like the part about “we’re doing a deal to perform a massive screw-job on the justice system to have our star football player cleared of rape charges. I will definitely sit down and talk all about it to the bimbo college student we hired to make coffee. It’s cool tho, I’ll make her sign an NDA afterwards, something which she’ll definitely consent to ex post facto.”Report
These women had gone to the LAPD with their stories in the late ’60s. The same LAPD that was investigating OJ in 1994. Now it wouldn’t surprise me if the fix got put in at the time, when OJ was a promising football star and cops took a boys will be boys attitude toward things like what the women went through. But what could a USC administrator do decades later to keep a lid on the story? At best, he might be able to cover up whatever part USC might have played in the matter then. How would he be able to shut up the cops?Report
Appropos of nothing I suppose:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/04/11/oj-simpson-racial-divisions-murder-trial/Report