Now a defense attorney, he said he would have no problem defending Simpson, and that Cochran referred clients to him before he died. He also claims not to have watched the recent wave of OJ-inspired media, including his smoldering representation by actor Sterling K. Brown.
By manipulating the media, according to the prosecutor — Quartz Not one of his better days. Published July 23, 2017This article is more than 2 years old. Johnnie Cochran, OJ Simpson’s lawyer, was able to win an acquittal for his client by making the mid-nineties trial about race, not a double murder.
The O. J. Simpson murder case (officially titled People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson) was a criminal trial held at the Los Angeles County Superior Court in which former National Football League (NFL) player, broadcaster, and actor Orenthal James "O.
That line was given to Simpson by his lawyer Johnnie Cochran, which explains the awkwardness of his delivery. On his own in the civil trial, lying from his heart, he was altogether different. “He’d rather lie than eat,” wrote Steve Dunleavy in the New York Post.
Both defense attorneys Robert Shapiro and Johnnie Cochran believed from the outset that Simpson was guilty, Toobin says.
That judgment came down in 1997 after Simpson was acquitted in a criminal court of their murders. According to a Nevada court filing from Fred Goldman in February, Simpson has paid close to $133,000 of the settlement but still owes the family more than $50 million.
One phrase that came out the Simpson trial was the 'No-J's. ' He loved representing the everyday person,” Cochran said. Nearly two years after the verdict, Simpson was found liable for the wrongful deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman during a civil trial.
A civil court jury found O.J. Simpson liable for the deaths even though he was cleared in “The Trial of the Century.” The civil jury awarded $33.5 million in damages to the victims' families. That judgment was renewed in court in 2015 and extended through 2025.
OJ Simpson reportedly receives money from pensions through the Screen Actors Guild and the NFL. Simpson receives an estimated $25,000 monthly payout from the NFL pension.
No. Simpson's legal team will continue fighting the Ron Goldman judgments, his attorney said.
Christopher Darden When the case ended, Darden became a college professor before starting his own law firm. He is now 65 and still practicing law.
His practice as a lawyer earned him great wealth. With his earnings, he bought and drove cars such as a Jaguar and a Rolls-Royce. He owned homes in Los Angeles, two apartments in West Hollywood and a condo in Manhattan. In 2001, Cochran's accountant estimated that within five years he would be worth US$25–50 million.
Twenty-five years ago today, in his closing argument at the sensational O.J. Simpson double-murder trial in Los Angeles, lead defense lawyer Johnnie L. Cochran stood before the jurors and urged them to keep this in mind: “If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.”
The flurry of court activity represents another turn in a more than two-decade fight by Ron Goldman's parents to collect some $33.5 million that a California civil jury ordered Simpson to pay in 1997, two years after he was acquitted of double murder in what came to be known as "The Trial of the Century."
The slain man's father has hounded Simpson for years and contends Simpson has never willingly paid any of the judgment. Nevada court records list the amount of Goldman's claim now at $58 million. Simpson, 74, lives in a gated golf course community in Las Vegas.
j. Simpson had willfully and wrongfully caused the death of Ronald Goldman and had maliciously attacked and assaulted Nicole Brown Simpson. It ordered Simpson to pay the Goldman family $8.5 million in compensatory damages, and to pay $12.5 million in punitive damages to each of the two families.
The eight-month long O.J. Simpson trial has frequently been described as "the trial of the century," and for good reason. Despite being way too young to closely follow or even understand the case, I still vividly remember hearing about it everywhere I went. Although Simpson was at the center of the case, Johnnie Cochran, who died of a brain tumor in 2005, has basically become synonymous with the famous trial — and both men's names are back in the spotlight since the premiere of Ryan Murphy's new FX series, American Crime Story. A lawyer doesn't simply land an incredibly high-profile case without a strong background — so let's take a look at Johnnie Cochran's case history before the Simpson trial.
Actor Todd Bridges was charged with assault by firearm for the 1989 shooting of a drug dealer and was represented by Cochran during his 1990 trial. The Los Angeles Times reported that eyewitnesses provided conflicting accounts about Bridges' whereabouts at the time of the shooting and jurors ultimately agreed the prosecution's case had "too many holes ," finding the actor not guilty. Cochran told the paper that the verdict signaled that "justice is alive and well in Los Angeles."
In 1970, Geronimo Pratt, a member of the Black Panther Party, was charged with the murder of a white schoolteacher, Caroline Olsen. Cochran was Pratt's defense attorney in the 1972 trial which The Los Angeles Times described as "a sham, marked by the prosecution's deceitful withholding of exculpatory evidence and the presence of a government spy, still unidentified, inside the defense team." Pratt was convicted and spent 27 years in prison — eight of them in solitary confinement.
As reported by The Washington Post, Leonard Deadwyler, an African-American man , was shot dead by Los Angeles police during a traffic stop in 1966. Deadwyler was unarmed and had been speeding in order to get his pregnant wife to the hospital. After the district attorney did not press charges, Deadwyler's family hired Cochran to sue the city of Los Angeles.
Shortly after returning to private practice, Cochran took on the case of Ron Settles, a college football player who died in his jail cell after a struggle with a police officer. According to The New York Times, county officials alleged that Settles' death was a suicide — but his family vehemently denied this claim:
However, the Goldman family brought a civil case against Simpson, and in 1997 the jury in the civil case ruled him as “liable” for the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman and decided that he must pay $33.5 million in punitive award to the victims’ families.
The government is more involved in this type of law because the defendant has broken a crime that was established by the government, such as murder or theft. However, civil law is more private; it deals with disputes between individuals and entities including defamation, divorce, and negligence .
The answers lies in the many differences between criminal and civil law. 1. There are different parties in criminal and civil law. A major factor that we used to differentiate between criminal and civil law is the parties involved. In criminal law, the parties are the defendant (the person accused of committing a crime) and ...
She stared at me, aghast, and realized for the first time that it had been he. Following the first trial, Ohlmeyer hired Jason Simpson, Simpson’s son by his first marriage, to be the chef in his home.
Inside, the relationship of Baker’s team with Simpson was very different from that in the criminal trial, where Simpson was constantly coddled and comforted by Cochran’s team. In the civil trial no one seemed to jump to every time Simpson spoke.
In attempting to minimize Ron Goldman’s ambition of one day owning a restaurant, Baker said, “Let’s examine reality. Ron Goldman wouldn’t have a restaurant now. He would be lucky to have a credit card.”. The tone of his voice matched the ugliness of his words.
That line was given to Simpson by his lawyer Johnnie Cochran, which explains the awkwardness of his delivery. On his own in the civil trial, lying from his heart, he was altogether different.
There’s nothing a lawyer hates more than being made to look like a liar in front of the jury. —Jeffrey Toobin , author of The Run of His Life, commenting on a coolness between defense attorney Robert Baker and O. J. Simpson after the photographs of Simpson wearing the Bruno Magli shoes turned up.
Johnnie Cochran has his Court TV show. Marcia Clark, who received a bonus from Los Angeles district attorney Gil Garcetti after losing the criminal case, has left the office and is about to appear on her new syndicated television show, LadyLaw.
Lyle was on the telephone in the jail. Erik, who was best man, was on a telephone in a different part of the jail. The bride and the performing judge, Nancy Brown, were on a speakerphone in Abramson’s office. Abramson acted as surrogate groom and placed the ring on the bride’s finger.
LAPD criminalist and hair fiber expert Susan Brockbank testified on June 27, 1995, and FBI Special Agent and fiber expert Doug Deedrick testified on June 29, 1995, to the following findings:
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 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.
District Attorney Gil Garcetti elected to file charges in downtown Los Angeles, as opposed to Santa Monica, in which jurisdiction the crimes took place. The Los Angeles Superior Court then decided to hold the trial in Downtown Los Angeles instead of Santa Monica due to safety issues at the Santa Monica Court house.
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.
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.
The so-called trial of the century spanned nine months yet the jury found Simpson not guilty of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman in under four hours. But why?
In a press conference the day after the trial, juror Brenda Moran said, per CNN: "In plain English, the glove didn't fit.". Moran also dismissed domestic abuse claims against Simpson, saying it "was a murder trial, not a trial about domestic abuse" and that focusing on those claims were "a waste of time.".
Aldana told The New York Times reported on by The Baltimore Sun that he voted not guilty because he said that "things just didn't add up" in relation to the evidence they were presented in court. He also maintained that he can "sleep at night, no problem".