Obituaries

[Cinederose]

too young

[Pdoggg]

OJ Simpson, superstar running back passed away today.

Below is the New York Times article from October 4th, 1995:

NOT GUILTY: THE OVERVIEW;Jury Clears Simpson in Double Murder; Spellbound Nation Divides on Verdict

Orenthal James Simpson, a man who overcame the spindly legs left by a childhood case of rickets to run to fame and fortune, surmounted a very different sort of obstacle today, when a jury of 10 women and 2 men cleared him of charges that he murdered his former wife and one of her friends.

The verdict, coming 16 months after Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald L. Goldman were slashed to death in the front yard of Mrs. Simpson's condominium and after 9 months of what often seemed like interminable testimony, sidebars and high-priced legal bickering, was reached in the end with breathtaking speed. When it was read, much of the nation, President Clinton included, stopped work to listen to it.

And with the Simpson verdict, as with the Simpson case, the nation once more divided -- largely along racial lines. So, too, did defense lawyers, with the onetime chief of Mr. Simpson's legal team, Robert L. Shapiro, criticizing his successor.

"Not only did we play the race card, we dealt it from the bottom of the deck," Mr. Shapiro told Barbara Walters tonight in an interview on an ABC News special.

In a scene that lent a certain symmetry to the entire Simpson saga, Mr. Simpson immediately returned to the freeways of Los Angeles in a white van, and as fans waved from the streets he headed back to his home at 360 North Rockingham Avenue. While a dozen helicopters flew overhead, and fans festooned the fence with roses and balloons, he was met by A. C. Cowlings, who had been in the driver's seat of the white Ford Bronco on June 17, 1994, five days after the killings.

Mr. Simpson pursed his lips, gulped a few times and wore a forced, pained grin as Deirdre Robertson, the law clerk to Judge Lance A. Ito, read the verdict. Mrs. Robertson tripped over "Orenthal," but not over what came next: "not guilty." When she uttered those words, Mr. Simpson's body instantly uncoiled. He then breathed a sigh of relief, and a faint smile appeared.

As Mrs. Robertson's recitation continued -- ". . . in violation of Penal Code Section 187A, a felony, upon Nicole Brown Simpson, a human being," Mr. Simpson waved at the panelists and mouthed the words "Thank you." The reading then unfolded again, with the name "Ronald L. Goldman" substituted for Mrs. Simpson. Mr. Simpson embraced his chief lawyer, Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., and silently thanked and rethanked the jury again.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is this your verdict, so say you one, so say you all?" Mrs. Robertson then asked. "Yes," the panel members -- nine black, two whites and a Hispanic man -- replied matter-of-factly. Critics of what the jurors did today maintained that they had been manipulated by a cynical defense team that talked more about the racism of the Los Angeles police than about the guilt or innocence of their client. Mr. Simpson's lawyers countered that prosecutors simply had not proven their case.

As he left court, one juror, a former Black Panther whom prosecutors had inexplicably left on the panel, gave Mr. Simpson a clenched fist salute with his left arm. Before the verdict was read, the same juror, Lionel Cryer, a 44-year-old black man, had smiled and winked at him. At that point, one defense lawyer, Carl Douglas, whispered to his client, "We won; we won," though Mr. Douglas later said it was because the juror thought most hostile to the defense -- Anise Ascherbach, a 60-year-old white woman -- had also smiled in their direction.

After the jurors were individually polled, and the victims' families fled, Judge Ito discharged his last duty in the case. "The defendant, having been acquitted of both charges, he is ordered transported to an appropriate sheriff's facility and released forthwith," the judge said.

Within an hour or so, Mr. Simpson, who faced life in prison for the double killings, traded his blue jailhouse jumpsuit and his courtroom woolens for blue jeans, checked out of the cell where he has lived for the last 474 days and began what promises to be a well-remunerated but awkward new life -- a life of glamour and golf games and highly compensated interviews, but a life, too, of bodyguards and ostracism by those passionately convinced of his guilt.

With Judge Ito telling jurors to "expect the worst" from swarms of reporters seeking their stories, almost all of them disappeared, saying little of substance. "I think we did the right thing -- in fact, I know we did," was all that one panelist, Brenda Moran, 44, a black computer technician, said. As to how jurors could render judgment so quickly, she added simply: "We were there for nine months. We didn't need another nine months to decide."

The victims' families quickly went into seclusion, though Fred Goldman, the father of one of those who died, called the outcome his second biggest nightmare, exceeded only by the murder of his only son.

Mr. Simpson said nothing to reporters. But in a statement read by his elder son, Jason, he expressed relief that an "incredible nightmare" was over. He said his first obligation was to his two youngest children, "who will be raised the way that Nicole and I had always planned." Those children are now in the custody of two people who are convinced that he murdered their daughter. Another task, Mr. Simpson said, was to bring to justice whoever killed their mother and Mr. Goldman.

"They are out there somewhere," he stated. "Whatever it takes to identify them and bring them in I'll provide somehow. I can only hope that some day, despite every prejudicial thing that has been said about me, people will understand and believe that I would not, could not and did not kill anyone."

When the verdict was announced, a strange mix of gasps and sobs arose from the gallery. "Oh, my God!" Mr. Simpson's eldest daughter, Arnelle, exclaimed. Jason Simpson placed his head in his hands and began to weep. Mr. Simpson's elderly mother, Eunice, smiled gently in her wheelchair. At a news conference afterward, she explained her apparent serenity.

"I knew that my son was innocent," she said. "The prayer of the righteous prevaileth much." Her daughter, Shirley Baker, was more demonstrative. "I just feel like standing on top of this table and dancing a jig," she said.

Across the aisle, Nicole Brown Simpson's parents, Louis and Juditha Brown received the verdict stoically, though two of her sisters began crying outside court. But the family of Ron Goldman broke out into paroxysms of grief and anger. His sister, Kimberly, looked down to the floor and sobbed convulsively, despite the caresses of her father. Under their breaths, the Goldmans uttered obscenities at Mr. Simpson.

The jury's decision, made after only three hours of deliberations, was one "rush to judgment" to which Mr. Cochran did not object. Defense lawyers attributed their victory not to racial considerations but to their ability to destroy the chronology of the prosecution's case. No reasonable person, Mr. Cochran said, could possibly have believed that Mr. Simpson killed two people, returned home, changed clothes, cleaned up and hid his weapon in the time that prosecutors had allotted.

"We said that if we could shatter the prosecution's timeline so that O. J. Simpson couldn't have committed this crime, that there would be a reasonable doubt," Mr. Cochran said at a news conference in Judge Ito's courtroom. "That's even before we ever got to the socks, the glove and Fuhrman or anything." By building much of its case around Mr. Mark Fuhrman, he added, it was the prosecution, not the defense, that had injected race into the case.

Mr. Cochran began at that news conference much as he closed his closing statement: on a religious note. "I want to thank God," he said, as a chorus of "Yeah!" arose from the Simpson family's side of the table. "He always directs our paths and He's worthy to be praised. We think this verdict bespeaks justice."

At another news conference, District Attorney Gil Garcetti, stunned by a humiliating repudiation of a case based on what he often called a "mountain of evidence," said he was "profoundly disappointed" and angry. "This was not, in our opinion, a close case," said Mr. Garcetti, whose political future has clearly been clouded by today's verdict. "Apparently their decision was based on emotion that overcame the reason."

At the same wake-like news conference, a somber and subdued Deputy District Attorney Marcia Clark saluted colleagues for striving to make sure "that the lives of Ron and Nicole were not thrown away." Ms. Clark also importuned law students working in her office not to lose faith in the system, based on what they had seen here. Her fellow prosecutor, Christopher A. Darden, who as a high school football player had aspired to wear Mr. Simpson's number, then said that he never anticipated having to tell the Goldmans that "he" had been acquitted.

"We came here in search of justice," Mr. Darden said. "You have to be the judges, I expect, as to whether or not any of us found it today. But I'm not bitter and I'm not angry." He then began to thank his colleagues. But as he did so, he broke down. The words abruptly stopped and all he could do was shake his head, nod his head and briefly wave his hand as if to say, "No more." He then left the lectern and doubled over, with Mr. Goldman's stepmother and some lawyers offering solace.

For all of the prosecutors, a whole new ordeal is about to begin: an orgy of post-mortems and second-guessing. Commentators and political opponents now will debate just what it was that turned the tide: the decision to try the case in downtown Los Angeles, where juries are more predominantly black; relying so heavily on a police officer whom they knew to be a racist; asking Mr. Simpson to put on the murderer's gloves, or the overwhelming popularity and wealth of the defendant.

"What this verdict tells you is how fame and money can buy the best defense, can take a case of overwhelming incriminating physical evidence and transform it into a case riddled with reasonable doubt," said Peter Arenella, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Mr. Arenella acknowledged that prosecutors had suffered a number of self-inflicted wounds. But even had they tried a perfect case, he said, they might not have prevailed given the haste with which, prosecutors argued, Mr. Simpson committed his foul deeds and the longstanding antagonism of many blacks, including presumably some jurors, toward the police.

"A predominantly African-American jury was more susceptible to claims of police incompetence and corruption and more willing to impose a higher burden of proof than normally required for proof beyond a reasonable doubt," he said. "This was not a good day for the American criminal justice system unless one believes that the L.A.P.D. were not only incompetent but criminal in their investigation of this case."

Mrs. Simpson, 35, had spent virtually her entire adult life dating, living with, being married to, trying to reconcile with or escape from Mr. Simpson. Prosecutors charged that Mr. Simpson killed her in a jealous rage, and killed Mr. Goldman when he happened upon the scene. Supporting their scenario was a history of domestic violence that had left Mrs. Simpson black, blue and fearful for her life, and a raft of blood, hair and fiber tests linking Mr. Simpson to the crime.

Mr. Simpson's response from the start -- indeed, just after low-speed Bronco chase -- was that he was "absolutely 100 percent not guilty."

Many blacks reacted jubilantly today to the exoneration of someone whose heroic status seemed enhanced by what they saw as the bigotry of the police and prosecutors. Many whites, by contrast, were aghast.

"Nicole was right," said Faye Resnick, one of Mrs. Simpson's friends who wrote a book about their relationship. "She said he was going to kill her and get away with it."

In Washington, President Clinton left the Oval Office and walked to his secretary's television to watch the verdict. Later, he scribbled a statement urging respect for the decision and offering "our thoughts and prayers" for the victims' families.

The verdict will surely have repercussions for the legal system as well, though what those will be is not yet clear. Because a verdict was reached, what Judge Ito referred to as "the Simpson matter" may not spur on the call for nonunanimous verdicts in criminal cases. But never again, it seems likely, will a jury be sequestered for so long, a gilded incarceration that many people think shortened the deliberations.

When Mr. Goldman's father spoketoday, his former indignation had clearly yielded to resignation. "Last June 13, 1994, was the worst nightmare of my life," he began, heaving deeply and searching for his voice and breath. "This is the second."

[seven]

2 hours ago, Pdoggg said:

OJ Simpson, superstar running back passed away today.

And murderer. Good riddance.