4 OJ trial 20 years on
Police racism, judicial inequality and fame all key elements in US trial of the century
It’s 20 years since the OJ Simpson murder trial. In our World section, we examine what’s changed in the US since and list 10 things you need to know about the case.
The OJ Simpson murder trial uncovered many painful truths. None hit harder than the idea that white and black people often look at the same facts and see different realities.
Today, 20 years after the case divided the United States, few opinions have changed. Despite two decades of increasing racial acceptance, highlighted by the election of the country’s first black President, the saga still reflects deep-rooted obstacles to a truly united America.
Most people still believe that Simpson, the black football legend, killed his white ex-wife and her friend, polls show. But for many AfricanAmericans, his likely guilt remains overwhelmed by a potent mix: the racism of the lead detective and the history of black mistreatment by the justice system.
For these people, Simpson’s acquittal is a powerful rebuke to what they see as America’s racial crimes. Others simply see a murderer who played the race card to get away with it.
“We were consumed with it,” recalls Carlos Carter, then one of the few black people working in the trust department of a Pittsburgh bank. “It represented something bigger than the case, the battle between good and evil, the battle between the white man and the black man. It was at that level.”
Shannon Spicker is a white woman who was working her way through college in Ohio at the time.
“Most of us didn’t understand why it was racially charged,” she says. “We didn’t understand how people could defend him. We knew he was guilty, but they defended him because he was black. It was weird.”
On June 12, 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman were knifed to death outside her Los Angeles condo. Suspicion quickly focused on Simpson, who had beaten Nicole in the past and had no alibi.
Several factors complicated the drama: Simpson had a mixed-race marriage in a nation that had historically punished black men who dared to explore inter-racial sex. He was the target of a Los Angeles Police Department that had a reputation for racism and corruption.
But Simpson also was a wealthy Hollywood actor with little connection to the black community, a man who divorced his black wife for a young blonde and travelled in Los Angeles’ most privileged white circles. His money and fame placed him far from the poor, black men languishing in the criminal justice system.
“OJ was in a weird place,” says Ronnie Duncan, a black man who was then working as a TV sportscaster. “He lived a lavish life in LA, sunny skies, beautiful women, everyone takes you out to lunch. But one thing we recognise, you can deny it all you want, but I can be driving right now and — ”. Duncan makes the sound of a police siren.
Simpson was charged with double murder, punishable by the death penalty. The prosecution’s evidence included relatively new DNA analysis. Prosecutors said DNA matched Simpson’s blood to samples from the murder scene. They said they found blood matching the victims’ in Simpson’s Bronco, on a glove and on a sock at his home.
Lead detective Mark Fuhrman, who had produced the bloody glove from Simpson’s estate, was a white cop who used the N-word and then lied about it on the stand. (He was later convicted of perjury.)
Defence lawyers suggested that Fuhrman planted the glove out of a racist desire to frame a black man. They said other blood evidence could have been planted, too, or at least was unreliable due to sloppy police work.
“That was huge for me,” recalls Carter. “I thought [the police] compromised it so much I can’t trust the evidence. The corruption overshadowed all the other things that may have been logical to me.”
Cameron Vigil, who is white, saw it differently.
“Clearly [ Fuhrman] was difficult and lying and trying to obfuscate while he was up there,” recalls Vigil, a 45-year-old strategic retail analyst from North Carolina.
“Just because he is a not very smart, racist guy,” Vigil says, “I don’t know that means OJ’s not guilty.”
Yet that was the verdict from the jury. Nine jurors were black, two white, and one Hispanic.
Duncan literally jumped for joy when he heard the verdict.
“It wasn’t so much for OJ I was jumping for joy . . . It was the victory over the United States justice system that has always had a different treatment for me and my brother.”
The cheers that echoed across black America troubled Spicker.
“These two innocent people were killed, and you’re cheering because their murderer was just set free,” she said. “It was a shame. It feels racist against the white victims.”
Carter now thinks that Simpson was guilty, but he makes no apologies for his feelings at the acquittal 20 years ago.
“That pride that I felt, I don’t take it back. I don’t feel I was hoodwinked. I was just living in the moment, and it was a victory for my people,” says Carter, now 42.
“I couldn’t have cared less about OJ,” he says, “but when I saw him, I saw myself.”