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Simpson hired a team of high-profile defense lawyers, initially led by Robert Shapiro and then subsequently by Johnnie Cochran. The team included F. Lee Bailey, Robert Kardashian, Alan Dershowitz, Gerald Uelmen, Carl E. Douglas and Shawn Holley.
The trial began on January 24, 1995, with Lance Ito as the presiding judge. The Los Angeles district attorney’s office, led by Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden, emphasized the domestic violence that had occurred prior to and after the Simpsons’ 1992 divorce as a motive for the murders.
In 1996, Fred Goldman and Sharon Rufo, the parents of Ron Goldman, and Lou Brown, father of Nicole Brown filed a civil suit against Simpson for wrongful death. The Plaintiffs were represented by Daniel Petrocelli and Simpson by Robert Baker.
O. J. Simpson murder case. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Jump to navigation Jump to search. Criminal trial decided October 3, 1995, in United States. People v. Simpson. #N#Court. Superior Court of California for and in the County of Los Angeles. Full case name.
Christopher Allen DardenChristopher Allen Darden (born April 7, 1956) is an American lawyer, author, actor, and lecturer. He worked 15 years in the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, where he gained national attention as a co-prosecutor in the O. J. Simpson murder case....Christopher DardenChildren36 more rows
Darden eventually left the DA's office to teach law at Southwestern University. He also started his own private practice in Los Angeles as a criminal defense attorney. Outside of the court, Darden is a successful author with numerous books to his name.
F Lee Bailey was the showman-like criminal defence lawyer whose roster of celebrity clients included OJ Simpson and Patty Hearst. Bailey, who has died aged 87, could have continued his successful career and retired in wealth and fame, had it not been for an unwise error that ultimately brought him ignominy.
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."
Christopher Darden, a longtime litigator and former attorney with the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, announced he was stepping away from the case, citing threats against him and his family.
In the latest episode of FX's “The People v O.J. Simpson,” Chris Darden (played by Sterling K. Brown) and Marcia Clark (Sarah Paulson) finally lose it over what a mess the trial has become.
While the murder trial was going on, three civil suits for wrongful death had been filed against O.J. Simpson: by Fred Goldman, father of Ron Goldman; by Ron's mother, Sharon Rufo, who had divorced Fred when Ron was six years old; and by the Brown family.
Simpson Attorney Robert Shapiro Says He 'Knew There Would Be No Conviction' Robert Shapiro says he outflanked the prosecution. The famed defense attorney did not say whether he thought O.J. was guilty, but he believes that "legal justice" was served.
Kardashian had let his license to practice law become inactive before the Simpson case but reactivated it to aid in Simpson's defense as a volunteer assistant on his legal team, alongside Simpson's main defense attorneys, Robert Shapiro and Johnnie Cochran.
According to reports, Judge Lance Ito still resides with his wife, Peggy York, at their home in Pasadena, California.
The O.J. Simpson trial was the criminal trial in which former gridiron football star O.J. Simpson was tried for the 1994 murder of his ex-wife Nico...
The attorneys representing O.J. Simpson included F. Lee Bailey, Robert Blasier, Shawn Chapman Holley, Robert Shapiro, and Alan Dershowitz. Johnnie...
On October 2, 1995, the jury for the O.J. Simpson trial began deliberating, and its members reached a verdict in less than four hours. Judge Lance...
After O.J. Simpson's 1995 trial, which was a criminal case, the victims’ families sued Simpson for wrongful death. The civil trial began in October...
To the millennial people, Robert Kardashian is now famous as the father of celebrities and global heartthrobs Kim, Kourtney and Khloe Kardashian. But the 90’s saw him as a celebrity on his own right. He began his career in the late 1960s as a lawyer.
It was around 1973 that he met O.J. Simpson, a football star of that time, and developed a friendship. The friendship soon turned into a professional relationship, with the two setting up a music video company and a frozen yogurt shop and hiring criminal defense attorney.
Following Simpson’s acquittal, the relationship between the two once-close friends soured. In 1996, Robert Kardashian mentioned to ABC News that he was suspicious of the innocence of Simpson. He clearly said that he had doubts with the blood evidence.
Simpson gets charged for the murders of Brown and Goldman. Fans on the side of the freeway cheering O.J. Simpson on during the Bronco chase. Photo: Vinnie Zuffante/Archive Photos/Getty Images. Although he originally promised to surrender to authorities, Simpson flees and becomes a fugitive.
Judge Ito rules that the jury is allowed to hear evidence of Simpson's alleged domestic abuse towards Brown.
"He killed her out of jealousy," Darden told the jury. "He killed her because he couldn't have her."
12:10 am: Brown's dog leads neighbors to the dead bodies of Goldman and Brown, which lie near the gate.
August 29, 1995 : Tapes are released of Mark Fuhrman saying racial slurs. The jury hears old taped recordings of Fuhrman making multiple racial slurs, (which he had denied ever having done during his cross-examination), and also bragging about his enforcement of police brutality.
June 12, 1994: Nicole Simpson Brown and Ron Goldman are murdered. 6:30 pm: After attending her daughter's dance recital, Brown has dinner with friends and family at the Brentwood restaurant Mezzaluna, where Goldman works as a waiter. Brown's mother accidentally leaves her eyeglasses at the restaurant and Goldman volunteers to stop by Brown's house ...
June 16, 1994: Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman's funerals. O.J. Simpson and his children at Nicole Brown Simpson's funeral. Photo: The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images. Simpson and his two children attend Brown's funeral. A funeral is also held for Goldman.
He helped prosecute Catherine Thompson, convicted of killing her husband for his insurance money and sentenced to death in 1992. Goldberg also prosecuted Jose Guerra for the murder of as registered nurse who was attacked in her home. Goldberg is a graduate of UCLA and the Loyola Law School.
As a deputy district attorney, he has prosecuted about 30 felony trials including eight murder trials.
He has taken more than 19 homicide cases to jury since becoming a Los Angeles County prosecutor in 1980. Darden became a deputy district attorney in 1981 and completed a six-and-a-half year assignment with the Special Investigations Division before joining the prosecution team.
She successfully prosecuted the first DNA evidentiary jury trial in California. She received her law degree from Southwestern University School of Law and is a graduate of the University of Southern California. Cheri Lewis, born 8-8-52, is assisting in the research and preparation of prosecution motions and pleadings.
Barry Scheck, born 9-19-49, is a law professor and director of clinical education at the Cardoza Law School in New York City. He is a graduate of Yale University and the University of California, Boalt Hall School of Law.
Alan Dershowitz, born 9-1-38, a Harvard Law School professor and author, won a reversal of the conviction of Claus Von Bulow, who was charged with trying to murder his socialite wife.
William Hodgman, born 12-14-52, is director of the Bureau of Central Operations, which includes the Special Trials Division. He joined the District Attorney's Office in 1978 and has prosecuted about 130 trials, including 40 murder cases. He helped win the 1992 conviction of Charles Keating for securities fraud.
The two lead prosecutors were Deputy District Attorneys Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden. Clark was designated as the lead prosecutor and Darden became Clark's co-counsel. Prosecutors Hank Goldberg and William Hodgman, who have successfully prosecuted high-profile cases in the past, assisted Clark and Darden. Two prosecutors who were DNA experts, Rockne Harmon and George "Woody" Clarke, were brought in to present the DNA evidence in the case and were assisted by Prosecutor Lisa Kahn.
J. Simpson was tried and acquitted for the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald "Ron" Goldman.
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.
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.
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.
Bailey was part of Simpson's defense team when the former NFL football star was acquitted in the June 1994 deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman.
Bailey wrote the document, "The Simpson Verdict," in 2007 as a proposal for a book that never materialized. He published it on his website Sunday. "It's time somebody put out the real facts of the case," he told The Associated Press.
But the defense team decided not to call any of the four to the witness stand out of fear that additional jurors would be dismissed and a mistrial declared if the eight-month trial didn't soon end, Bailey wrote. Bailey said Monday he thinks the real killers were out to collect a drug debt and killed Nicole Simpson and Goldman after mistaking them for their targets.
Professional athlete, actor, and sports newscaster O.J. Simpson were charged for the double homicide of Nicole Brown Simpson, his ex-wife, and Ronald Lyle Goldman, a close personal friend, and waiter.
As the most publicized case in U.S. history, the state of California spent well over $20 million on the trial. It garnered more attention than the infamous Charles Manson murders. The prosecution was convinced that Simpson was behind the murders despite a minimal amount of evidence linking him to the crimes.