Jun 03, 2021 · The Rise and Fall of F. Lee Bailey, the Lawyer Who Set O.J. Simpson Free By Andrew Goldman Jun 3, 2021 On June 3, 2021, F. Lee Bailey died at the age of 87, according to NBC News. In light of the...
Alan Dershowitz, who was one of O.J. Simpson’s defense attorneys during the Trial of the Century, has come out against FX’s series “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.”
Jan 21, 2016 · The following decade, Cochran won a huge, unprecedented court payment for a 13-year-old molested by an officer. In the early 1970s, Cochran also went to court in defense of Geronimo Pratt, a ...
The People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson was a criminal trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court in which former National Football League (NFL) player, broadcaster and actor O. J. Simpson was tried and acquitted for the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.The pair were stabbed to death outside …
The attorneys representing O.J. Simpson included F. Lee Bailey, Robert Blasier, Shawn Chapman Holley, Robert Shapiro, and Alan Dershowitz. Johnnie Cochran later became the defense team's lead attorney. The attorneys were known as the “Dream Team."
Alan Dershowitz was the Felix Frankfurter professor emeritus at Harvard Law School and as of 2013 remained one of the most successful lawyers and legal scholars in the country. After representing Simpson, he has represented Julian Assange, Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein.
June 16, 1994Nicole Brown Simpson / Date of burial
In his closing arguments, lead defense counsel Johnnie Cochran famously declared that “if it does not fit, you must acquit.” Cochran listed 15 points of reasonable doubt in the case. 3 After less than four hours of deliberations, the jury found Simpson not guilty on both counts of murder.
Who Was Robert Kardashian? Robert Kardashian started out as a lawyer in the late 1960s. He soon became involved in a number of business ventures, including some with his friend, football legend and celebrity O.J. Simpson in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1994, Kardashian came to Simpson’s aid after the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson ...
Robert Shapiro. Attorney Robert Shapiro is known for representing many high-profile clients, most notably O.J. Simpson. Reality television personality Khloé Kardashian has starred on 'Keeping Up with the Kardashians' and 'Revenge Body with Khloé Kardashian.'.
Born on February 22, 1944, Robert Kardashian was the son of Armenian-American parents who had a successful meat-packing company. Kardashian grew up in Los Angeles where he attended Dorsey High School.
Johnnie Cochran established himself as a sought after attorney dealing with high-profile police brutality cases involving the African American community . He attracted famous clients like Michael Jackson and led O. J. Simpson 's defense team in the 1995 murder trial.
The “trial of the century,” as it was dubbed, began in January 1995 and was among the most publicized in history, followed by millions around the world. Cochran, displaying his trademark style, came to lead the team, with some conflict rising among the attorneys amidst sensational proceedings.
In 1966, a Black motorist named Leonard Deadwyler, while attempting to get his pregnant wife to a hospital, was killed by police officer Jerold Bova. Cochran filed a civil suit on behalf of Deadwyler's family; though he lost, the attorney was nonetheless inspired to take on police abuse cases over the ensuing years.
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.
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.
The defense alleged that Simpson's blood on the back gate at the Bundy crime scene was planted by the police. The blood on the back gate was collected on July 3, 1995, rather than June 13, the day after the murders. The volume of DNA on that blood was significantly higher than the other blood evidence collected on June 13. The volume of DNA was so high that the defense conceded that it could not be explained by contamination in the lab, yet noted that it was unusual for that blood to have more DNA on it than the other samples collected at the crime scene, especially since it had been left exposed to the elements for several weeks and after the crime scene had supposedly been washed over. On March 20, 1995, Vannatter testified that he instructed Fung to collect the blood on the gate on June 13 and Fung admitted he had not done so. The defense suggested the reason why Fung did not collect the blood is because it was not there that day; Scheck showed a blown-up photograph taken of the back gate on June 13 and he admitted he could not see it in the photograph.
The pursuit and Simpson' s subsequent arrest were among the most widely publicized events in American history. Simpson was represented by a high-profile defense team, referred to as the " Dream Team ", which was initially led by Robert Shapiro and subsequently directed by Johnnie Cochran.
The defense alleged that the police had planted Brown's blood on the socks found in Simpson's bedroom. The socks were collected on June 13 and had blood from both Simpson and Brown, but her blood on the socks was not identified until August 4. The socks were found by Fuhrman, but the defense suggested Vannatter planted the blood. He had received both blood reference vials from the victims earlier that day from the coroner and booked them immediately into evidence. Vannatter then drove back to Rockingham later that evening to hand deliver the reference vial for Simpson to Fung, which the defense alleged gave him opportunity to plant the blood. Fung testified he could not see blood on the socks he collected from Simpson's bedroom but the prosecution later demonstrated that those blood stains are only visible underneath a microscope.
In November 2006, ReganBooks announced a book ghostwritten by Pablo Fenjves based on interviews with Simpson titled If I Did It, an account which the publisher said was a hypothetical confession. The book's release was planned to coincide with a Fox special featuring Simpson. "This is a historic case, and I consider this his confession," publisher Judith Regan told the Associated Press. On November 20, News Corporation, parent company of ReganBooks and Fox, canceled both the book and the TV interview due to a high level of public criticism. CEO Rupert Murdoch, speaking at a press conference, stated: "I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project."
In 1996, Cochran wrote and published a book about the trial. It was titled Journey to Justice, and described his involvement in the case. That same year, Shapiro also published a book about the trial called The Search for Justice. He criticized Bailey as a "loose cannon" and Cochran for bringing race into the trial. In contrast to Cochran 's book, Shapiro said that he does not believe that Simpson was framed by the LAPD, but considered the verdict correct due to reasonable doubt. In a subsequent interview with Barbara Walters, Shapiro, who is Jewish, claimed that he was particularly offended by Cochran for comparing Fuhrman's words to the Holocaust, and vowed that he would never again work with Bailey or Cochran, but would still maintain a working relationship with Scheck.