Johnnie Lee Cochran Jr. ( / ˈkɒkrən /; October 2, 1937 – March 29, 2005) was an American lawyer and civil activist best known for his leadership role in the defense and criminal acquittal of O. J. Simpson for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.
Christopher Darden | |
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Spouse(s) | Marcia Carter ( m. 1997) |
Children | 3 |
Jun 03, 2021 · By David K. Li. F. Lee Bailey, the flamboyant defense lawyer best known for his key role in O.J. Simpson's "Dream Team," has died, a longtime colleague said Thursday. Bailey's …
Jun 08, 2020 · Barry Scheck. Peter Neufeld. Gerald F. Uelmen. Click to see full answer. Keeping this in consideration, who was OJ Simpson's first lawyer? Simpson was represented by a high …
Jun 03, 2021 · June 3, 2021 / 4:00 PM / CBS Los Angeles. LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — F. Lee Bailey, a criminal defense attorney who played a key role murder trial of O.J. Simpson as a member of …
Jun 04, 2021 · Mr Bailey was part of the "dream team" of lawyers that defended the American football player OJ Simpson when he was charged with murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown …
Feb 22, 2016 · Hollywood lawyer Robert Shapiro was one of the legal team who represented OJ Simpson during his trial. He's well known for representing some of the biggest names and …
The team also included F. Lee Bailey, Alan Dershowitz, Robert Kardashian, Shawn Holley, Carl E. Douglas, and Gerald Uelmen.
During closing arguments in the Simpson trial, Cochran uttered the now famous phrase, "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."
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 ...
Pleading not guilty to the murders of ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman, which occurred on June 12, 1994, Simpson hired a "dream team" defense, which included lead attorney Robert Shapiro, Johnnie Cochran (who later took over as lead counsel), F. Lee Bailey, Barry Scheck, Robert Kardashian and Alan Dershowitz.
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.
Reportedly, one juror wholly dismissed Park's testimony because he was unable to recall the number of cars parked at the Rockingham mansion.
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.).
F Lee Bailey, one of the defence lawyers in the 1995 murder trial of OJ Simpson, has died aged 87. Mr Bailey defended a host of notorious clients, including the Boston Strangler and the US army commander at the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War. He was renowned for his dramatic style and his ability to throw reasonable doubt on ...
Mr Bailey was part of the "dream team" of lawyers that defended the American football player OJ Simpson when he was charged with murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.
De Salvo confessed to being the Boston Strangler, responsible for the rape and murder of 13 women between 1962 and 1964. De Salvo later recanted his confession but was killed in his cell in 1973.
image copyright. Getty Images. image caption. Mr Bailey defended a host of notorious clients during a career that spanned decades. Mr Bailey first rose to prominence in 1966, when he succeeded in overturning the conviction of an Ohio osteopath, Dr Sam Sheppard, who had been jailed for the murder of his wife.
He took on the case of Patricia Hearst, a newspaper heiress who was kidnapped in 1974, when she was just 19 years old, by a violent far-left group calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army. Ms Hearst ended up taking part in armed robberies organised by the group - Mr Bailey claimed she had been brainwashed.
Darden was co-prosecutor on the Simpson case. He had been working at the DA’s office for 15 years before the trial and left afterwards to teach law at university level.
Fans of Boston Legal will know Clemenson best as Jerry “Hands” Espenson but he’s played quite a number of roles throughout his career. The flight surgeon from Apollo 13 (yup, that was him) popped up in everything from Michael J Fox’s sitcom springboard Family Ties to The Big Lebowski, and even went on to become CSI:Miami’s new medical examiner Dr. Tom Loman back in 2009.
In 1994 he was accused of the murders of his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. In episode two , he tries to flee with fellow footballer Al Cowlings in a white Ford Bronco, with the world watching and the police in desperate pursuit.
The original big screen Danny Zuko in Grease shot to fame with starring roles in Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction, popping up everywhere and anywhere in the following decades. He made a string of action and thriller films including Face/Off with Nicholas Cage, before returning to his musical roots to play Edna Turnblad in the 2007 Hairspray reboot. Travolta’s also well known for his roles in the Look Who’s Talking trilogy.
Hollywood lawyer Robert Shapiro was one of the legal team who represented OJ Simpson during his trial. He’s well known for representing some of the biggest names and faces, including Johnny Carson, Linda Lovelace and the Kardashian family. When his client makes a run for it, Shapiro tries his best to deal with the fallout.
A veteran star of the big screen, Gooding Jr is probably best known for his Academy Award-winning role as American football player Rod Tidwell in Jerry Maguire. Most recently you may have spotted him in Selma, The Butler and American Gangster, or known him from Boyz n The Hood and A Few Good Men.
Three-time Tony Award nominee Vance is probably best known for his work on stage, or as Assistant District Attorney Ron Carver from Law and Order: Criminal Intent. His early work included roles in The Hunt for Red October and Dangerous Minds, and he also starred in The Preacher’s Wife and Space Cowboys.
Two years later, Cochran entered private practice. Soon thereafter, he opened his own firm, Cochran, Atkins & Evans, in Los Angeles. In his first notable case, Cochran represented an African-American widow who sued several police officers who had shot and killed her husband, Leonard Deadwyler.
In 1964, the young Cochran prosecuted one of his first celebrity cases, Lenny Bruce, a comedian who had recently been arrested on obscenity charges.
During closing arguments in the Simpson trial, Cochran uttered the now famous phrase, "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit." He used the phrase, which had been devised by fellow defense team member Gerald Uelmen, as a way to try to persuade the jury that Simpson could not have murdered Nicole Brown Simpson nor Ron Goldman. In a dramatic scene, Simpson appeared to have difficulty getting the glove on; stained with blood of both victims and Simpson, it had been found at the crime scene.
Cochran. The court ruled 7–2 that in light of Cochran's death, an injunction limiting the demonstrations of Ulysses Tory "amounts to an overly broad prior restraint upon speech." Two justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, said that Cochran's death made it unnecessary for the court to rule. Lower courts, before Cochran died, held that Tory could not make any public comments about Cochran.
In 1978 , Cochran returned to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office in the leadership position of First Assistant District Attorney. Though he took a pay cut to do so, joining the government was his way of becoming "one of the good guys, one of the very top rung.".
In 1990, Cochran joined a succeeding firm, Cochran , Mitchell & Jenna, and joined Cochran, Cherry, Givens & Smith in 1997.
Though Cochran lost the case, it became a turning point in his career. Rather than seeing the case as a defeat, Cochran realized the trial itself had awakened the black community. In reference to the loss, Cochran wrote in The American Lawyer, "those were extremely difficult cases to win in those days.
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, ...
Like so many other key people in the O.J. Simpson trial, lawyer Robert Shapiro, who successfully defended Simpson, eventually wrote a book about the case— The Search for Justice: A Defense Attorney’s Brief on the O.J. Simpson Case.
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.
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.
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.