OJ Simpson’s trial divided America and those divisions remain nearly 30 years later
IF Shakespeare had been around in 1990s America, he might well have written a tragedy about the spectacular rise and sudden, devastating fall of one Orenthal James Simpson.
College football hero. NFL star. Movie star. TV star. Cultural icon. All anyone had to say for more than a quarter of a century was “OJ” and a dozen images from the field and the screen popped into the minds of Americans from seven to 70 years old. I still remember Simpson dashing through an airport in the Hertz rental car commercials of the 1970s.
Then the man with the golden image suddenly became a pariah, charged with the fatal stabbings on June 12, 1994, of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.
The story − in the days before social media and streaming services and when cable TV news was at its peak − riveted the nation for months.
It also divided the nation, largely along racial lines. For many white Americans, myself included, the weight of evidence pointing to the conclusion that Simpson was guilty of murder was overwhelming.
But that was not the case for many black Americans, who had good reason not to trust that the American criminal justice system − and the Los Angeles justice system in particular only three years after police were caught on video beating Rodney King − had been fair and honest in handling and presenting the evidence against Simpson.
It seems the world has changed a thousand times in a thousand ways in the 30 years since that white Ford Bronco chase, which ended in Simpson’s arrest, paraded in slow motion through southern California as an estimated 95 million people watched on live TV. But the racial divides over our justice system very much remain.
I remember standing in the Miami Herald newsroom on October 3, 1995, when the verdict was read. Not guilty.
Immediate cheers (mostly from black colleagues) and groans (mostly from white co-workers) signalled the deep divide in how many
Americans viewed the accusations against and the acquittal of OJ Simpson.
In the three decades since, Simpson served as the easy punchline in a million jokes told from small-town bar rooms to Hollywood talk shows, especially after Simpson, in the wake of the trial, pledged to find the “real killers”.
And now the man whose name was synonymous with football and murder, fame and domestic violence, is dead. According to a post on social media attributed to the Simpson family, he died on Wednesday of prostate cancer at the age of 76.
The sadness I feel at the news isn’t about Simpson, although the waste and destructiveness of his life are truly tragic. My sadness rather is centred on the lessons not learned nearly 30 years after the “trial of the century”.
Domestic violence and racial divisions still plague us. The lure of voyeurism, even when lives have been stolen by violence, is perhaps stronger than ever.
Time rolls over the once strong and proud. It seems only our frailties remain.