O.J.’s return comes amid a changed nation — sort of
Gone were the tailored suits O.J. Simpson wore as a defendant two decades ago, replaced by prison blues. A contrite Simpson made the case for his rehabilitation.
When the former NFL running back was acquitted of murder on Oct. 3, 1995, Los Angeles was still recovering from 1992 riots, President Bill Clinton was in his first term and the Chicago Bulls’ Michael Jordan was one of the most popular athletes in the world.
Since then, Latinos have become the nation’s largest minority group and the country has elected its first black president (twice) and a white billionaire who critics say played on racial anxieties among working-class whites to win the White House.
In a few months, Simpson will again walk out of prison a free man. A four-person panel on Thursday granted his release about nine years into his sentence of nine to 33 years for a Las Vegas robbery. Simpson, who claimed he had been trying to recover his stolen property in the robbery, could be free by Oct. 1.
In some ways, Thursday’s 75-minute hearing mirrored Simpson’s 1995 trial, but it also marked a shift from the nation’s emotional investment in the fate of the NFL Hall of Famer, a former movie star and cultural icon.
For one, the stakes for Simpson — and society — were much lower, Columbia University journalism professor Jelani Cobb said.
“He has remained a kind of radioactive figure in American life, precisely because of him being associated with the ancient taboo of a black man accused of doing violence to a white woman,” Cobb said of Simpson. “It has everything to do with who he was and who Nicole Brown Simpson was in terms of race and celebrity.”
Nearly a generation ago, an arrogant and defiant Simpson riveted black and white Americans in one of the country’s earliest versions of reality television, the wall-to-wall Trial of the Century. His acquittal exposed racial fault lines and served as a commentary on the U.S. criminal justice system.
As Simpson’s release hung in the balance Thursday, the specter of the murder trial hung over his hearing. One parole commissioner displayed hundreds of letters in support and opposition of Simpson’s release, noting those opposed referenced the killings as a reason not to let him out of prison. Many saw Simpson’s conviction on the robbery charge as payback for the not-guilty verdict two decades earlier.
The president of the NAACP Albuquerque chapter, Harold Bailey, said many blacks in New Mexico watched Simpson’s Los Angeles trial with interest because of the issues it sparked around policing and the criminal justice system. However, Bailey said, many felt that when Simpson’s was later convicted in Nevada and given a harsh sentence it was handed down because “he was O.J.”
“I think many felt he was being punished because he got off in Los Angeles,” Bailey said. “Some still feel that way.”