The OJ Simpson case: how he escaped the electric chair

Former American football player OJ Simpson has died, 76 years old, ill for some time with prostate cancer. In addition to his sporting and cinematographic career (we remember him for example for the role of the policeman Nordberg in the 90s trilogy A blunt bullet). “The Juice”, as he was nicknamed when he wore the San Francisco 49ers jersey, was also known for being the defendant in a trial that had split America, the “OJ Simpson case”, which in 2016 had also become a Tv series, American Crime Story: The People v. OJ Simpson.

The accusation

OJ Simpson was accused of killing his ex-wife Nicole Brown (they had been married for seven years since 1984, had two children, who are now 38 and 35 years old, and had divorced in 1992) and the waiter Ronald Goldman, in front of the house of her in Brentwood around midnight on June 13, 1994. The bodies – torn apart by dozens of stab wounds – were found hours later: the waiter was there to have returned to the woman the glasses that her mother, at dinner with her, had forgotten on the table . No witnesses had witnessed the murder, while OJ Simpson had an alibi: He appeared to be on a plane from Los Angeles to Chicago at 11.45pm that evening.
Because Brown had, before the divorce, accused Simpson of molestation, detectives immediately investigated him. Defended by lawyer Robert Shapiro, he was formally accused of double murder on June 17, after the discovery of some bloodstains.

Simpson's arrest, however, becomes an odyssey: the police warn the lawyer that Simpson must turn himself in by 11 in the morning, they go to pick him up at the house of his friend, also a lawyer, Robert Kardashian in the San Fernando Valley, south of Los Angeles, but they don't find him. In fact, he fled with his friend and former teammate Al Cowlings in his Ford Bronco, spotted by helicopters a few hours later on Highway 405, headed towards Orange County. Simpson was armed and threatened to kill himself, while America stopped to watch the very slow chase filmed live and followed by around 75 million viewers. Simpson then decided to return to his house and was arrested that evening at 7.45pm.

The process

The process, officially known as People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson, took place in Los Angeles and changed American jurisprudence. Simpson was in fact exonerated due to lack of evidence in 1995, escaping the electric chair, although in 1997 he was found guilty in the civil case brought by the families of the victims.

At the center of the trial was not only the murder case, but also the racial issue. The first jury consisted of twelve people, seven African Americans, one Hispanic and four whites. The prosecution aimed to describe Simpson as a violent man who had never resigned himself to divorce, also due to previous complaints from his ex-wife, while the defence, represented by ten lawyers, including Shapiro and Kardashian, in addition to taking advantage of the scarcity of the evidence increasingly introduced the theme of racial discrimination: the policemen were white, but especially the investigator Mark Fuhrman, who had found bloody gloves, but in whose past the defense had highlighted episodes of bullying and racism, discrediting him. Moreover, the gloves themselves, shrunk due to blood and humidity, did not fit Simpson's hands at the trial, and the scene had a huge impact on the jury. DNA tests on blood found under the victims' fingernails and in Simpson's car were later invalidated due to technicalities. Attorney Bob Shapiro later publicly stated that rich murderers almost never end up on death row because, being able to afford famous and expensive lawyers, they are better legally protected than others.

More legal troubles

Despite full acquittal due to lack of evidence, Simpson had other legal troubles. In 2004 he was fined 25 thousand dollars for “illegal use of electronic equipment” for attempting to illegally pick up the television signal. In 2007 he was arrested for burglary of a hotel, but did not go to prison immediately. In 2008 Simpson was found guilty of robbery and kidnapping for that crime and sentenced to 33 years in prison. Only in 2017 was he placed on probation.