O.J. Simpson
Simpson had pled
no contest to a domestic violence charge and was separated from Nicole. He was paying child support. On
June 12,
1994 his former wife Nicole Brown and her friend
Ronald Goldman were found dead outside Brown's
condominium. Simpson was soon charged with their murders. After one of the most widely publicized arrests and trials in American history, on
October 3,
1995, Simpson was found not guilty of the two murders. The verdict was seen live on TV by more than half the US population, making it one of the most watched events in American TV history. There has been significant criticism of the prosecution and the police, and many contend that Simpson would have been found guilty had there not been so many mistakes and irregularities. With the damage done to his public reputation, his acting career was ruined. Many have called this "
The Trial of the Century."[
1]
|
O.J. Simpson's mugshot, taken in 1994 |
On
February 4,
1997, a civil jury in
Santa Monica,
California found Simpson liable for the
wrongful death of Ronald Goldman, battery against Ronald Goldman, and battery against Nicole Brown. The attorney for plaintiff Fred Goldman (father of Ronald Goldman) was
Daniel Petrocelli. Simpson was ordered to pay
$33,500,000 in damages. However, California law protects pensions from being used to satisfy judgments, so Simpson was able to continue much of his lifestyle based on his NFL pension. A 2000
Rolling Stone article reported that Simpson also still makes a significant income by signing autographs. He subsequently moved from
California to
Miami,
Florida. In Florida, a person's residence cannot be seized to collect a debt under most circumstances.
Simpson has not filed for bankruptcy.
The trial was very divided racially between blacks and whites. This was because Mark Fuhrman, the white homicide detective on the case was caught using the word "nigger" in a some taped interviews he had done for a police documentary 10 years prior to the case. It was also believed by many that Det. Fuhrman had planted DNA evidence to help him pin Simpson to the murders.
While Simpson was in jail during the murder trial, Nicole Brown's parents, Louis and Juditha Brown, had custody of Simpson's younger children, Sydney and Justin. When Simpson was acquitted, he was given custody of the children. In late
1998 Simpson won a custody trial filed by the Browns. The ruling was thrown out when an appeals court determined that it was wrong to exclude evidence from the murder trial [
2]. In
2000, Simpson won custody of his children in a second trial.
Even after his two trials Simpson was never far from the news. He appeared in news stories that often had nothing directly to do with him. He was accused of illegally accessing signals from
DirecTV. In 1998 at the end of an interview conducted by
Ruby Wax for
BBC1, Simpson mimed stabbing her with a
banana while mimicking the theme music from
Psycho.
In 1996, shortly after the trials, Simpson visited
Britain. He gave a talk at the
Oxford Union, where he was met by protesting women's rights groups. The protests concerned not the murder of
Nicole Brown but the well-documented domestic abuse she suffered at Simpson's hands.
In 2001, he was tried for burglary and battery in a Florida road rage case that received some publicity, but he was again found not guilty. This verdict was also covered on live national television on an October morning.
There were plans for him to have a
reality TV show in the style of
The Osbournes in 2003. Also, Simpson considered becoming a news commentator for actor
Robert Blake's murder trial.
During 2003, Simpson filmed a
Pay-Per-View comedy special titled
Juiced. The show, a
hidden camera set up show, drew criticism for a sketch where Simpson attempts to sell the infamous White Ford Bronco at a used car lot, telling the salesman, "It was good for me. It helped me get away." A DVD is planned with extra and uncensored material.
Prior to the 2004 Orange Bowl football game featuring Simpson's USC Trojans, the former football star showed up unannounced at a USC practice. The Southern California coach Pete Carroll allowed Simpson to come onto the field and mingle with the players and pose for pictures. Carroll responded to the criticism by proclaiming, "We respect our Heisman Trophy winners."
In June 2004, Simpson had planned a long series of news appearances to mark the tenth anniversary of the killings, but ended up being displaced by another story, the death and funeral of
former President Reagan.
The civil and criminal trials of Simpson were not the only important legal cases that were spawned by the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman on June 12, 1994.
*
Gerald Chamales and his wife, Kathleen, bought a house next to Simpson's estate in
Brentwood at the corner of Ashford and Rockingham just ten days before the murders of which Simpson was accused. The
media circus and hordes of curious
tourists tormented them (and the rest of Simpson's neighbors) for the next four years. Their subsequent legal battle with the
IRS culminated in the rule that they could not apply the drop in their house's value as a casualty loss deduction on their
income tax return, because it was only temporary.
* Simpson's houseguest on the night of the murders,
Brian "Kato" Kaelin, sued Globe Communications for $15 million after it ran a headline in one of its
tabloid newspapers insinuating that Kaelin was the real murderer. The district court granted summary judgment to the defendant, but on appeal, Kaelin convinced the
Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit that he had a valid claim for
defamation. Kaelin settled his lawsuit for an undisclosed amount.
* A
New Hampshire intellectual property attorney, William B. Ritchie, challenged the validity of Simpson's
trademarks under a federal statute that bars immoral, deceptive, or scandalous subject matter. Ritchie argued that because of the whole sequence of events from 1994 through 1997, Simpson's very name had become immoral and scandalous and thus could not be protected as a trademark. Ritchie convinced the
Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that he had standing to challenge Simpson's trademarks under the
Lanham Act. Simpson has since abandoned his trademarks.
* O.J. was referenced, coincidentally years before the murder case, in an episode of
Seinfeld, "The Masseuse", in which Elaine suggests her then-boyfriend, Joel Rifkin, change his name to O.J. Subsequent to Simpson's murder trial, the infamous "glove incident" was parodied in the trial of Elaine's arch-enemy Sue Ellen Mischke who tries on a bra in the courtroom only to proclaim "it doesn't fit."
* In another episode of
Seinfeld, "The Big Salad", the car-chase scene is parodied when
Cosmo Kramer drives a man suspected of murdering a man at a dry cleaners down the
New Jersey turnpike in a white
Ford Bronco."
* Simpson's search for his wife's killer was parodied in the
Doonesbury comic strip.
* In the popular
Grand Theft Auto (video game) series of videogames, the character B.J. Smith is a parody of O.J. Simpson. B.J. was a former football player, was in a police chase, and was in a controversial murder trial within the scope of the three PlayStation 2
GTA games.
*Simpson was parodied in a sketch on
Saturday Night Live in which Simpson, played by
Tim Meadows, works for
NBC as an
NFL color commentator. When using the
telestrator to describe a play, he unknowingly spells out "I Did It" in big letters. Also, on the first
Weekend Update to air after the trial,
Norm MacDonald opened the segment with, "Well, it's official: Murder is legal in the state of California."
* In an episode of
The Saturday Night Armistice, British satirist,
Armando Iannucci was filmed getting an autograph from O.J. during a trip to the UK. After being filmed getting the autograph, (and with O.J. safely out of sight) he unfolded the paper the autograph was on to reveal that the top half of the paper read "I DID IT, Signed...", followed by the autograph.
* In an episode of
Family Guy, it is heavily implied that
Stewie Griffin planted jealousy on O.J.'s mind while drunk on
Mai Tais by saying
"I'm telling you, Juice. She's screwing behind your back. And if I were in your Bruno Maglis, I wouldn't stand for it."
* The video game
Duke Nukem 3D has references throughout the game including a chase scene on a T.V. of Simpson's white Bronco as well as giant billboards saying "innocent?" and "Guilty!".
* In an episode of
The Simpsons, Homer was accused of a murder. A newspaper headline said "The Ho.J Simpson trial begins today" as a delibrate reference to O.J.
*Rock band The
Moistboyz have a song entitled O.G. Simpson, the front cover of the single features a police mugshot of O.J.
*Pins have been marketed that say "Drink
Apple Juice because O.J. will kill you."
*In 1995, an insurance agency based in Southern California who's primary market was higher risk drivers featured a commercial showing the infamous slow highway chase scene.
*
Johnny Crass, a singer sometimes confused with
"Weird Al" Yankovic; made a song titled "Ball Star", a parody of "All Star" by
Smashmouth. The song refers to various aspects of the murders.
*Hip-hop duo,
Tha Dogg Pound, included the lyric "with a twist of my wrist, like O.J., you all die" on their song "What Would You Do?"
*In
Chappelle's Show there was a sketch where
Dave Chappelle goes in to court to testify for O.J. The lawyer says "Would convince you if we told you we found a bloody glove on O.J.'s property?" In which Chappelle replied " Sir, I am unimpressed, what black man don't have no bloody glove on his property (pulls out bloody glove) See, I got one right here, doesn't mean I did anything!". In the WacArnolds sketch Chappelle comes home to his wife to see some black gloves on his refrigerator which causes him to say to his wife "Honey, who you fuckin'? O.J.?".
* In another Chapelle Show sketch, Hollywood Stories,
Charlie Murphy retells his experiances with
Rick James in an imaginative drugs concept. Murphy walks into a bar and says '...the first thing I see is O.J. Simpson and I'm thinking to myself 'Wow that's O.J. Simpson, he has a big motherfuckin' head, man!
*South Park parodied Simpson as being a member of a club, whose members included John and Patsy Ramsey and Gary Condit, who accuse "some Puerto Rican guy" of killing the murder victim they are asscociated with.
*The band Good Charlotte pokes fun at Simpson in their song Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous'' in which the lyrics read, "Well did you know when you're famous you could kill your wife/And theres no such thing as 25 to life/As long as you got the cash to pay for Cochran".
*Simpson was parodied in a
MadTV sketch entitled "O.J. Simpson Bloopers," where Simpson, played by
Orlando Jones, had a blooper reel of his statement of innocence.
The Klansman (1974)
The Towering Inferno (1974)
The Cassandra Crossing (1976)
ROOTS (1977)
Capricorn One (1978)
Cocaine and Blue Eyes (1983)
Blood on Blood TV Episode (1987)
The Naked Gun - From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
Mind Games TV Episode (1989)
The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991)
CIA Code Name: Alexa (1993)
The Naked Gun 33â…":The Final Insult (1994)
Pro Football Hall of Fame: Member profileCollege Football Hall of Fame: Member profile*
1976 Interview by Playboy*
O.J. Passes On Reality Show, But...*
Biography on O.J. Simpson*
OJ Simpson Profile at USC Legends
*
O.J. Simpson Profile at Rosebowl Legends
Civil trial
*
O.J. Simpson Case Photo Gallery*
CNN - Judge allows new shoe photo in Simpson trial - Jan. 6, 1997*
MSNBC - Man behind Simpson guilty verdict - Updated: 8:32 p.m. ET June 13, 2004*
O.J. Simpson civil trial index*
O.J. Simpson Verdict Ten Years Later (PBS Frontline streaming video)
