Apr 14, 1995 · For much of the day, O.J. Simpson's lawyers made little effort to hide their glee at the way they thrashed police criminalist Dennis Fung on the witness stand. Johnnie Cochran Jr. roamed the halls Thursday saying, "We're having Fung." Robert Shapiro handed out fortune cookies to authors Joe McGinnis and Dominick Dunne and said, "These are from Dennis …
Apr 18, 1995 · Defense attorney Robert Shapiro, who earlier apologized for handing out Chinese fortune cookies in a perceived ethnic slur against Fung, firmly shook his hand and clasped him at the back of the neck. As Fung moved along the defense table, he came to Simpson, smiled and put out his hand. Simpson shook hands and smiled back.
Feb 17, 2016 · It gives us an inside view of what happened behind-the-scenes of this very public trial. The writers’ goal was to not focus on O.J. Simpson, but on the role the lawyers played in each side. The series is based on the book, The Run of His Life: The People V. O.J. Simpson, by Jeffery Toobin. In the book and represented in the TV series, Toobin ...
Apr 03, 1995 · TESTIMONY OF DENNIS FUNG. MONDAY, APRIL 3, 1995. DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. GOLDBERG: ******. MR. GOLDBERG: WHAT IS YOUR OCCUPATION AND YOUR ASSIGNMENT? MR. FUNG: I AM A CRIMINALIST EMPLOYED BY …
Robert Kardashian | |
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Occupation | Attorney businessman |
Known for | O. J. Simpson murder case |
On the prosecution side, Marcia Clark served as lead counsel, supported by Christopher Darden. Lasting close to a year, the trial and the events surrounding it were considered the most publicized events the world had ever seen. To many, it became a media circus full of colorful characters, opportunists and courtroom dysfunction ...
Reportedly, one juror wholly dismissed Park's testimony because he was unable to recall the number of cars parked at the Rockingham mansion.
After prosecutor Darden made the mistake of demanding Simpson try on the ill-fitted bloody gloves, Cochran uttered the famous phrase: "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.".
However, the blow that removed Shapiro from his lead status was when Cochran won Simpson's favor by visiting him in jail — something Shapiro preferred not to do with any of his clients. Once Cochran took over as lead counsel, Shapiro was vocally critical and attempted to distance himself from his team's chosen strategies. He would later tell Barbara Walters that "not only did we play the race card, we dealt it from the bottom of the deck."
Due to Kaelin's shiftiness on the stand , prosecutor Clark turned against him and treated him as a hostile witness. Regardless, Kaelin — with his thick tufts of blond hair and surfer dude ways — gained considerable popularity in the media as a likable and comedic character of the trial.
Aspiring actor and houseguest of Simpson, Brian "Kato" Kaelin was a star witness for the prosecution. Present at Simpson 's Rockingham mansion at the time of the murders, Kaelin claimed that he ate dinner with Simpson that night but could not account for the star athlete's whereabouts between the hours of 9:36 p.m. and 11 p.m. (the prosecution theorized that Simpson murdered his ex-wife and Goldman between 10 p.m. and 10:30 p.m.).
Although Darden floundered at the start of the trial and was purportedly intimidated by Cochran, he gained momentum as events progressed. However, he made a consequential mistake when he demanded that Simpson try on the infamous bloody gloves, which ended up being too small for the accused's hands.
While some key members of the trial—including Simpson's prone-to-theatrics "Dream Team" defense attorney Johnnie Cochran and fellow lawyer/Simpson family friend Robert Kardashian —have since passed away, others have spent the last 20 years rehashing the events of the trial of the century. Besides being fictionalized in FX's new hit series, ...
But Fuhrman has found much success since the conclusion of the trial; in 1997 he wrote Murder in Brentwood, a bestselling book about the trial, which he followed up with several more popular true crime novels covering everything from the JFK assassination to the death of Terri Schiavo.
Though Cowlings always maintained that he was helping Simpson turn himself in, not flee, he was arrested for aiding a fugitive but never charged due to lack of evidence. In 1997, records show that Cowlings filed for bankruptcy.
Brown, too—along with her late father, Lou—set up a foundation in her sister’s name to educate and raise awareness about domestic abuse.
For more than eight months, the jury—and more than 100 million interested members of the television-viewing public—watched as dozens of witnesses, experts, and legal pros were paraded in front of the cameras, and turned into instant celebrities.
In 1997, Clark co-authored Without a Doubt, a book about the Simpson trial, with Teresa Carpenter. She has since written four novels (with a new one coming out in May) and often appears on television as a legal expert in high-profile cases.
This led to Johnnie Cochran ’s famous declaration: “If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit.”. Shortly after the end of the trial, Darden left the district attorney’s office and was appointed as an associate professor of law at L.A.’s Southwestern University School of Law.
Fung’s exodus after the longest testimony of the trial ended with a strange series of questions from both sides about his reaction to the personalities of attorneys. He said he found defense attorney Barry Scheck’s style of questioning ``aggressive″ but conceded that cross-examination is always tough on a witness.
Ito said the request to have Simpson present was so unusual that little case law existed to guide him. Prosecutor Marcia Clark suggested jurors would not be forthcoming about problems if the famous defendant was there; defense attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr. argued ``the defendant has the most to lose in this whole thing and he should be present.″
Fung said the socks were dark and he thought a sophisticated scientific test would be necessary to detect any dark blood stains.
Scheck was able to elicit from Fung that on June 13, 1994, the day after Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were slain, he saw no blood spots on the back gate of her condominium but did find and collect them when he returned July 3.
He was stopped in midsentence by Ito, who knew what was coming next. Scheck was trying to say that a quarter of the blood sample was suspiciously missing.
As Fung moved along the defense table, he came to Simpson, smiled and put out his hand. Simpson shook hands and smiled back.
The judge sustained an objection and Fung didn’t have to answer.
Marcia Clark, the trial’s lead prosecutor, resigned from the Los Angeles District Attorney's office after the case and left the practice of law. Her memoir of the trial, Without A Doubt, fetched a $4 million advance. Clark, now 67, has gone on to write a series of crime novels and has also appeared as a television commentator about high profile trials.
He and fellow Simpson lawyer Peter Neufeld co-founded The Innocence Project, which uses DNA evidence to exonerate wrongly convicted prisoners. The project has helped overturn over 300 convictions. Scheck, now 71, also teaches at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
After the trial, Cochran continued to practice law and appear as a TV commentator. He died of brain cancer in 2005 at age 68.
Getty Images. Resnick was one of Nicole Brown Simpson's closest friends, who gained notoriety for her cocaine addiction. She checked into a rehab facility three days before Nicole was murdered, and infamously published a salacious tell-all book with a National Enquirer columnist during the trial.
During the trial, Scheck was the unknown lawyer who introduced the still-new science of DNA to jurors. He made headlines for dismantling the police handling of evidence, ultimately wounding the strength of the prosecution’s forensic evidence. He and fellow Simpson lawyer Peter Neufeld co-founded The Innocence Project, which uses DNA evidence to exonerate wrongly convicted prisoners. The project has helped overturn over 300 convictions. Scheck, now 71, also teaches at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
1 Orenthal James Simpson. Getty Images. Two years after Simpson’s 1995 acquittal, a civil court jury found him liable for the deaths of his ex-wife and Goldman, and awarded $33.5 million to the families, which later doubled to $70 million due to interest, as Simpson has never fully paid the restitution.
Liz Cantrell Assistant to the Editor in Chief Liz Cantrell is the assistant to the Editor in Chief of Town & Country , covering arts and culture, and has previously written for Esquire. This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses.
J. Simpson was tried and acquitted for the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald "Ron" Goldman.
From an original jury pool of 40 percent white, 28 percent black, 17 percent Hispanic, and 15 percent Asian, the final jury for the trial had ten women and two men, of whom nine were black, two white and one Hispanic. The jury was sequestered for 265 days, the most in American history.
Bailey suggested that he then planted the glove in order to frame Simpson, with the motive either being racism or a desire to become the hero in a high-profile case. Scheck also suggested that Fuhrman broke into Simpson's Bronco and used the glove like a paint brush to plant blood onto and inside the Bronco.
In a walk around the premises to inspect what may have caused the thumps, Fuhrman discovered a blood-stained right-hand glove, which was determined to be the mate of the left-hand glo ve found next to the body of Goldman. This evidence was determined to be probable cause to issue an arrest warrant for Simpson.
Fears grew that race riots, similar to the riots in 1992, would erupt across Los Angeles and the rest of the country if Simpson were convicted of the murders. As a result, all Los Angeles police officers were put on 12-hour shifts. The police arranged for more than 100 police officers on horseback to surround the Los Angeles County courthouse on the day the verdict was announced, in case of rioting by the crowd. President Bill Clinton was briefed on security measures if rioting were to occur nationwide.
The defense team's reasonable doubt theory was summarized as "compromised, contaminated, corrupted" in opening statements. They argued that the DNA evidence against Simpson was "compromised" by the mishandling of criminalists Dennis Fung and Andrea Mazzola during the collection phase of evidence gathering, and that 100% of the "real killer (s)" DNA had vanished from the evidence samples. The evidence was then "contaminated" in the LAPD crime lab by criminalist Collin Yamauchi, and Simpson's DNA from his reference vial was transferred to all but three exhibits. The remaining three exhibits were planted by the police and thus "corrupted" by police fraud. The defense also questioned the timeline, claiming the murders happened around 11:00pm that night.
Simpson's 9-1-1 call is traced to the I-5 Freeway near the Ascension Cemetery in Lake Forest.