Former NFL star OJ Simpson dies at 76

Washington. OJ Simpson, the American football star and Hollywood actor who was acquitted in a sensational 1995 trial of murdering his ex-wife, has died aged 76.

Simpson, acquitted by a Los Angeles jury in what the US media called “the trial of the century”, died on Wednesday after suffering from cancer for several years, his family said on social media on Thursday.

Simpson avoided prison when he was found not guilty of the 1994 stabbing deaths of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman in Los Angeles.

He then served nine years in a Nevada prison after being convicted in 2008 of 12 counts of armed robbery and kidnapping at gunpoint two sports memorabilia dealers at a Las Vegas hotel.

Nicknamed The JuiceSimpson was one of the best and most popular athletes of the late 1960s and 1970s. He overcame a childhood illness to become a star at the University of Southern California and won the Heisman Trophy as the sport’s best college player.

After a stellar NFL career with the Buffalo Bills and San Francisco 49ers, he was inducted into the sports Hall of Fame.

Simpson took advantage of his stardom to develop a career as a sports commentator, publicist and Hollywood actor in films such as the saga Naked Gun.

That all changed after Nicole Brown Simpson and Goldman were found stabbed to death in a gruesome scene outside their Los Angeles home on June 12, 1994.

Simpson quickly emerged as a suspect. He was ordered to surrender to police, but five days after the murders, he fled in his white Ford Bronco with a former teammate, carrying his passport and a disguise. A low-speed chase through the Los Angeles area ended at Simpson’s mansion and he was later charged with the murders.

What followed was one of the most notorious trials in the United States of the 20th century and a media circus.

He had it all: a wealthy, accused celebrity; an African-American man accused of killing his white ex-wife out of jealousy of him; a woman murdered after divorcing a man who had beaten her; a “dream team” of charismatic lawyers; and a huge blunder on the part of prosecutors.

Simpson, who at the beginning of the case pleaded “absolutely 100 percent innocent,” greeted jurors and mouthed the words “thank you” after the predominantly African-American panel of 10 women and two men acquitted him on Oct. 3, nineteen ninety five.

Prosecutors argued that Simpson killed Nicole in a fit of jealousy and presented extensive blood, hair and fiber evidence linking him to the murders. The defense responded that the accused celebrity was framed by racist white police officers.

The trial paralyzed the United States. At the White House, President Bill Clinton emerged from the Oval Office and watched the verdict on his secretary’s television. Many African Americans celebrated his acquittal and saw Simpson as a victim of intolerant policing. Many white Americans were shocked by his exoneration.

Simpson’s legal team included prominent criminal defense attorneys Johnnie Cochran, Alan Dershowitz and F. Lee Bailey, who often outmaneuvered the prosecution.

Prosecutors made a memorable mistake when they ordered Simpson to try on a pair of blood-stained gloves found at the crime scene, confident they would fit perfectly and prove he was the killer.

In a very theatrical display, Simpson had trouble putting on the gloves and told the jury that they didn’t fit properly.

Dershowitz later called the prosecution’s decision to ask Simpson to try on the gloves “the biggest legal mistake of the 20th century.”

“What this verdict tells us is how fame and money can buy the best defense, can take a case with overwhelming incriminating physical evidence and transform it into a case riddled with reasonable doubt,” said Peter Arenella, a UCLA law professor. to the New York Times.

The Goldman and Brown families subsequently filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Simpson in civil court. In 1997, a predominantly white jury in Santa Monica, California, found Simpson responsible for the two deaths and ordered him to pay $33.5 million in damages.

On October 3, 2008, 13 years after his acquittal in the murder trial, a Las Vegas jury found him guilty of charges including kidnapping and armed robbery.

They arose from a 2007 incident at a casino hotel in which Simpson and five men, at least two of them armed, stole sports memorabilia worth thousands of dollars from two dealers.

Simpson said he was just trying to get his property back, but was sentenced to up to 33 years in prison.

“I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” Simpson, dressed in a blue prison jumpsuit and leg and wrist shackles, said at his sentencing. “I didn’t know he was doing anything wrong.”

Simpson was paroled in 2017 and moved to a gated community in Las Vegas. She was granted early parole in 2021 due to his good behavior at age 74.

The saga of his life was told in the 2016 Oscar-winning documentary O.J.: Made in Americaas well as in several television dramatizations.