Simpson, Orenthal James "O. J." 1947-

Orenthal James
"O. J." Simpson
1947-

Football player, actor,murder suspect

Almost the American Dream

O. J. Simpson ran away with rushing and scoring records during his spectacular professional football career, but in 1994 he found himself publicly running from the law in what became the most bizarre murder investigation and trial of the decade. The June 1994 murder of Simpson's former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman dominated media attention for nearly two years and turned the football hero and actor into a public pariah. Simpson's trial revealed deep divisions in the way Americans perceived the confluence of race, wealth, and justice, as lawyers, judges, detectives, friends, and family members became household names in a surreal, but very public, murder mystery.

Early Years

Orenthal James Simpson was born 9 July 1947 in San Francisco, California. He and his mother, Eunice, lived in the Petrero Hills public housing projects where there were few opportunities for African American children to succeed and many opportunities to get in trouble. Though Simpson spent his formative years at the neighborhood recreation center, his athletic potential was far from evident. Simpson wore braces for his bowed legs until he was two years old; although athletically talented, he was cut from the local Pop Warner Football team in 1961. Former baseball great Willie Howard Mays Jr. became Simpson's mentor after the teen spent a weekend in juvenile hall. Simpson's athletic star began to shine at Galileo High School. He married his eighteen-year-old high-school sweetheart, Marguerite, in June 1967. After playing football for City College of San Francisco, Simpson became the running back for the University of Southern California (USC). His breakthrough game came on 18 November 1967 against the number one ranked University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), where a national championship, Rose Bowl bid, Pacific-8 title, and Heisman Trophy were all on the line. Although Simpson did not win the Heisman that year, he did in 1968. His 1,750-point victory over runner-up Leroy Keyes of Purdue University is still the largest margin ever in Heisman balloting. His first child, Aaren (who died in a boating accident in 1979), was born on the eve of Simpson winning the coveted trophy.

NFL Superstar

The Buffalo Bills of the American Football League (which would later merge with the National Football League and become the American Football Conference) made Simpson their first round draft pick in 1969. During his eleven-year pro football career, Simpson rushed for more than one thousand yards annually between 1972 and 1976, won four NFL rushing titles, and played in the 1969 AFL All-Star Football game and five NFL Pro Bowl games between 1972 and 1976. In 1973 Simpson became the first running back to rush for more than two thousand yards in a single season, reaching 2,003 yards thanks to a fourteen-game schedule. The Associated Press voted him the NFL's Most Valuable Player that year. Simpson recalled, "I was in the locker room all by myself before the game ended. I started walking around thinking how I could not wish to do anything more or be anyone else. I was part of the history of the game. If I did nothing else in my life, I had made my mark." The Bills traded Simpson to the San Francisco 49ers in 1978, where he retired the following year. During this time, he divorced Marguerite to be with Nicole Brown, an eighteen-year-old blond-haired, blue-eyed recent high school graduate who was working as a waitress in 1977.

Trial of the Century

After football, Simpson pursued a career in acting (most notably in The Naked Gun series of comedic farces), sports broadcasting with the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), and as spokesman for Hertz Rental Car. Simpson was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame in 1985 and married Brown that same year. For a while, it appeared that he was living the American Dream. However, in 1989, Simpson pleaded no contest to beating his wife after police responded to a "911" call from Nicole. The couple divorced in 1992. Simpson later suggested jokingly that the relationship was not over, saying "This is to show you how smart I am. I am dating my ex-wife." On 13 June 1994 the bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, a waiter and aspiring model and actor, were discovered outside her home. Both had been repeatedly stabbed and slashed, but there were no witnesses to the assault. Simpson claimed he was en route to Chicago when the crimes were committed. Nonetheless, police charged Simpson with the deaths four days later, citing a trail of evidence linking him to the scene of the crime, including a bloody glove found outside the murder scene that allegedly matched one found at his estate.

The Chase

Simpson did not immediately surrender. Instead, he and lifelong friend Al Cowlings were spotted by police in a white Ford Bronco on a Los Angeles expressway. Simpson was thought to be carrying a gun and threatening to kill himself. The two men led police on a sixty-mile, low-speed pursuit through southern Los Angeles that ended at Simpson's Brentwood mansion. Simpson, clutching a family photo, then surrendered to police.

The Trials

He pleaded not guilty to the murders and the criminal trial began 23 January 1995, with Judge Lance A. Ito presiding. The jury acquitted Simpson in October 1995. The verdict shocked many white Americans who had become persuaded of Simpson's guilt, and elated many African Americans who were equally convinced he had been framed by a racially biased justice system. The Brown and Goldman families, not satisfied with the verdict and seeking some vindication, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Simpson. The civil trial began 23 October 1996. Superior Court Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki banned still photographers and ordered lawyers and witnesses not to discuss the case with the media. Attorney Daniel M. Petrocelli portrayed Simpson as an egomaniac obsessed with his former wife and who routinely beat her, while defense attorney Robert Baker accused the plaintiffs of character assassination. Simpson again denied killing his wife and Goldman, but could not explain the physical evidence against him. As the civil trial unfolded, an Orange County, California, family court judge awarded Simpson custody of his two children over the objections of the Brown family. More troubles followed the beleaguered former star; the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) seized Simpson's Brentwood mansion and other property to collect the nearly $700,000 he owed in back taxes. On 4 February 1997 the jury found Simpson liable in the slayings and awarded $8.5 million in compensatory damages to the families of the deceased.

After the Trials

Simpson, who had remained quiet during most of the murder trials, attempted to rebuild his public image. Through carefully chosen interviews, a highly publicized but poorly selling video, and a book, I Want to Tell You: My Response to Your Letters, Your Messages, Your Questions (1995), written with the help of Lawrence Schiller, Simpson continued to insist on his innocence and his commitment to finding the "real" killers. He took part in a college debate at the Oxford Union and even made a spontaneous phone call to CNN's "Burden of Proof television show, where he charged that his former wife's allegations of spousal abuse were written to get out of a prenuptial agreement. Only once, he argued, in 1989, did he ever fight with Nicole and leave her injured. He did not vary from the claim he made in his book, "I want to state unequivocally that I did not commit those horrible crimes." More tellingly, Simpson's attorney Alan M. Dershowitz described Simpson as "One of those rare defendants who could challenge the prosecution on a level playing field. Had he been just a regular indicted defendant denied the resources needed to challenge the prosecutors' forensic case, he might have well have gone to prison."

Sources:

Alan M. Dershowitz, Reasonable Doubts: The Criminal Justice System and the O.J. Simpson Case (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).

Elizabeth Hardwick, "Family Values," New York Review of Books (6 June 1996): 7-10.

O. J. Simpson, I Want to Tell You: My Response to Your Letters, Your Messages, Your Questions (Boston: Little, Brown, 1995).

Jeffrey Toobin, The Run of His Life: The People Versus O. J. Simpson (New York: Random House', 1996).