O. J. Simpson Trial(英)

tory. The jury had been sequestered for the better part of a year and was showing signs of strain and exhaustion. Judge Ito was under attack for the allowing the trial to drag on and his seeming inability

to keep lawyers under control.

　　Marcia Clark's summation for the prosecution sought, among other things, to do damage control on the Fuhrman issue. Clark denounced Fuhrman as a racist, the "worst type" of cop, and as someone we didn't want "on this planet." But, she told the jury, that doesn't mean there was a frame-up. She took the jury again through the prosecution's "mountain of evidence" as puzzle pieces on a video screen accumulated to reveal the face of O. J. Simpson. Christopher Darden followed Clark, telling the jury that Simpson could be "a great football player" and "a murderer" as well.

　　Johnnie Cochran's summation for the defense added controversy to an already very controversial trial. His co-counsel, Robert Shapiro, was later to condemn his closing for "not only playing the race card, but playing it from the bottom of the deck." Cochran compared the prosecution case to Hitler's campaign against the Jews:

　　There was another man not too long ago in this world who had those same views, who wanted to burn people, who had racist views, and ultimately had power over people in his country. People didn't care. People said he's crazy. He's just a half-baked painter. And they didn't do anything about it. This man, this scourge, became one of the worst people in the world, Adolf Hitler, because people didn't care, didn't stop him. He had the power over his racism and his anti-religionism. Nobody wanted to stop him...And so Fuhrman. Fuhrman wants to take all black people now and burn them or bomb them. That's genocidal racism. Is that ethnic purity? We're paying this man's salary to espouse these views...

　　The jury spent only three hours deliberating the case that had produced 150 witnesses over 133 days and had cost $15 million to try. As America watched at 10 a.m. PST on October 3, 1995, Ito's clerk, Deidre Robertson, announced the jury's verdict: "We the jury in the above entitled action find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty of the crime of murder." Simpson sighed in relief, Cochran pumped his fist and slapped Simpson on the back. The Dream Team gathered in a victory huddle. From the audience came the searing moans of Kim Goldman, Ron's sister, and the cry of his mother Patti Goldman, "Oh my God! Oh my God!"

　　Simpson announced after the verdict that he would devote the rest of his life to tracking down the real killer of his ex-wife, but he would soon be preoccupied with a civil trial. The trial, held in Santa Monica, would take just three months and would produce a very different result. Simpson was forced to testify, clumsily trying to explain the unexplainable. Photos showing Simpson wearing the size 12 Bruno Magli shoes that he claimed not to own turned up first in one newspaper, then in others. The judge in the civil trial, Hiroshi Fujisaki, proved he was no Lance Ito, and prevented the Simpson defense from introducing fanciful theories of a top-to-bottom conspiracy. After seventeen hours of deliberation, the jury concluded——using the preponderance of the evidence test applicable in civil cases——that O. J. Simpson had wrongfully caused the death of Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson. The jury ordered Simpson to pay compensatory damages of $8.5 million and punitive damages of $25 million. Under California law, however, Simpson can continue to survive on the $25,000-a-month income from a judgment-proof pension fund.

　　The Simpson trial demonstrated the polarization of racial attitudes on issues such as law enforcement that still exists in our country [POLLING DATA ON SIMPSON VERDICT]. It may be for that, more than anything, that the trial will be remembered. But it had other effects. It created a greater awareness of domestic violence issues, provided lessons in how not to run a criminal trial, slowed the trend toward the use of cameras in courtrooms, and created a new type of "immersion" journalism that still flourishes today

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