One of the lasting legacies of the trial of OJ Simpson, among the most famous of the 20th century, is how it reshaped modern media.
More than 2,500 journalists descended on the courthouse in downtown Los Angeles to produce wall-to-wall coverage, as millions tuned in to daily broadcasts of a trial that became, in the words of The Times, a “theatre of the absurd”.
The case prompted national soul-searching on race, called into question trial by jury and became such a television phenomenon that President Clinton interrupted a meeting to watch the verdict.
This newspaper was there to see the prosecution unravel from the night of the murders in 1994 to Simpson’s acquittal the following year.
Before the trial: from bloodied glove to highway chase
Three days after Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were found stabbed to death outside her Los Angeles home, her ex-husband OJ Simpson, the record-breaking American football player turned Hollywood actor, was pictured in The Times in his lawyer’s car, being taken in for questioning.
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His head was in his hands. As The Times noted, at that time the punishment for such a crime potentially included the death penalty.
That first Times report on the murders, published on June 15, 1994, noted that a blood-soaked glove was found at the home. It also reported that four years after Simpson’s marriage to Nicole Brown in 1985, he was charged with assaulting her, fined and sentenced to two years’ probation. “The former running-back allegedly kicked and slapped his wife and shouted ‘I’ll kill you’,” the report read.
Later, Simpson agreed to turn himself in before leading police on a highway chase watched on television by some 95 million people.
The Times said the scene caused “anger and embarrassment to the LA police department”.
Hearings begin and evidence shown to world
The first preliminary hearing and Simpson’s first full day in court before his trial was July 1, 1994, when 100 pieces of evidence were shown, including the discovery of the blood-stained glove.
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Court papers presented at the hearing and “broadcast live on almost every American television station” alleged detectives had found a trail of spots, “allegedly dried blood leading up the drive at the stars mansion when they arrived early on the morning of June 13 to tell him of his ex-wife’s death”.
Two months before the trial began, The Times noted how the case was becoming a media circus, saying that having a defendant “of any other name would not entertain”.
The prosecution: ‘devastating proof of guilt’
On January 23, 1995, The Times reported that millions tuned in to watch the OJ Simpson trial, and he would face his jury for the first time after pleading not guilty.
Reports suggested that DNA analysis of the blood from the murder scene and at Simpson’s house “has already appeared to implicate him”.
It would later come to light that the blood spots found at his home contained not only his blood, but traces of Brown Simpson’s as well, which Marcia Clark, the prosecutor, said “was devastating proof of his guilt”.
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Key prosecution arguments in the trial featured in The Times, with a front-page headline on January 25, 1995 reading: “Simpson ‘killed for jealousy’.”
The report said the prosecution argued it was the “ultimate act of control” after a 17-year relationship marked by a cycle of “abuse, humiliation and apology”.
Clark argued in court that testimony showed on the night of the murders Simpson was in an “ugly mood, morose, depressed and clearly fixated on his wife”. She said “being wealthy and famous cannot change one simple truth. He’s a person and people have good sides and bad sides. We will show you the other side of the smiling face you saw on the Hertz commercial”, a reference to Simpson’s appearance in advertisements for the car rental company.
Trial becomes a ‘theatre of the absurd’
Two days after prosecution arguments, The Times reported the “OJ Simpson trial was transformed into the theatre of the absurd, as one prosecutor fell ill, another claimed that the defence had found its witnesses in the gutter and a demand for delay in proceedings left the jury cloistered in limbo”.
A key witness emerged who “has evidence to suggest others may have committed the crimes” — Rosa Lopez, a neighbour’s maid, claimed to have seen Simpson’s car outside his house at the time of the murders.
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The Times reported that Johnnie Cochran, Simpson’s lead attorney, managed to “paint a portrait of Mr Simpson far removed from the stalker, wife-beater and obsessively jealous husband as described by the prosecution”.
Simpson was asked to show “swollen legs and arthritic hands, damaged by years of American football — a man, in short, incapable of killing his former wife”.
In February 1995 a former police officer testified that the day after Brown Simpson was found murdered, Simpson admitted he had “dreams about killing her”. The judge, Lance Ito, “astonished legal experts by allowing second-hand reports of dreams into a case otherwise based on hard physical evidence”.
The jury was accompanied by police on a “high security field trip” to Simpson’s home, with the defendant in tow.
The Times noted the home “had been carefully prepared to strike a wholesome note in the jurors’ minds, with fresh flowers in each room, fires burning and a bible lying on the table”. At first Simpson seemed “jovial”, but when leaving the house was “subdued”.
‘If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit’
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On June 14, a year after the killings and with the trial well under way, a vigil was held for Brown Simpson and Goldman.
Two days after that vigil came a pivotal moment in the trial in which Simpson was allowed to approach the jury for only the second time, “in a potentially crucial episode”.
Already wearing latex inner gloves, he pulled on the blood-stained leather gloves that the prosecution said linked him to the murders.
The Times reported at first they did not seem to fit, with Simpson grimacing while saying: “Too tight, too tight.”
The defence argued at this point that the right-hand glove, which was found at the scene, was planted there to frame him.
Cochran quipped that Simpson would be a great actor “if he could act his hands larger”, then said the infamous line: “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit!”
Racial tensions simmer as verdict draws near
Another pivotal moment in the case came in September, when the former detective Mark Fuhrman, who at the beginning of the trial said he had found the bloody glove at Simpson’s house, asserted his fifth amendment privilege not to answer questions at the trial.
The defence responded: “Today you saw a lead detective responsible for obtaining a majority of evidence in this case refuse to answer questions on the grounds it may incriminate him. It is unprecedented in the history of jurisprudence.” At the time, no Los Angeles police officer had pleaded the fifth in 60 years.
That month, The Times reported that the judge had formally handed a decision on the verdict to the jury. Cochran finished his arguments by saying that “Detective Mark Fuhrman framed OJ Simpson for the murders”.
With racial tensions rising across the country, tapes were played in court of Fuhrman using racial slurs more than “40 times”. He had also been recorded boasting about being the key witness, “and if I go down, they lose the case. The glove is everything, without the glove — bye-bye.”
The Times reported how, in fiery rhetoric “worthy of a television evangelist, Cochran told jurors that a vote for acquittal would be a vote for social justice by saying, ‘we then become guardians of the constitution’.”
President Clinton weighed in and said he was concerned about the racial implications of the trial, saying he hoped the “American people will not let this become a symbol of the larger racial issue in our country”.
The verdict: ‘already the stuff of legend’
On the day the verdict was announced, the Times front page remarked upon the speed at which the jury had come to their verdict the previous day, saying it had “astonished lawyers on both sides”.
Simpson himself was reported to have thrown down his pencil in disgust and stalked back to his holding cell after hearing how quick the jury’s decision was.
The LA police department announced a full tactical alert for the downtown area, with streets around the courthouse closed amid fears of rioting after the verdict was announced.
With the case “already the stuff of legend”, America and the world were glued to their screens awaiting the verdict that would end “the most convoluted and expensive trial in history”.
After his not guilty verdict was announced, on October 4, 1995 the Times front page led with a picture of his clenched fists and triumph on his face, reporting how he said of his acquittal: “The incredible nightmare is over. Some day people will believe I did not kill anyone.”
Simpson vowed to catch the person who killed his ex-wife and said “I will pursue as my primary goal in life the killers or killer who slaughtered Nicole and Mr Goldman.”
By the time the verdict came in, television advertisements running before or after the moment were selling at $200,000, nearly $410,000 in today’s money. The Times noted that demand for electricity soared in New York, as 750,000 TV stations were switched on for the verdict.
The aftermath: victims’ long fight for compensation
In 1997 Simpson was found liable in a civil wrongful death lawsuit, a trial that The Times reported would leave him in financial ruin.
The unanimous verdict and award of millions of dollars in damages against him “was the bluntest possible rejection of Mr Simpson’s acquittal by a mainly black jury in his murder trial 16 months ago”, the newspaper wrote on February 6, 1997.
He was ordered to pay $25 million in punitive damages for the deaths of Brown Simpson and Goldman, but never paid out more than $400,000 of the money he owed, claiming he had nothing left beyond his home and NFL pension.
In 2007 he was arrested and later convicted of robbery, having entered a room at the Palace-Station hotel casino in Las Vegas and seized at gunpoint a hoard of sports memorabilia that he claimed belonged to him.
On April 11, 2024, after Simpson’s death from cancer, The Times published his obituary, concluding: “If OJ Simpson was innocent of the crime of murder, he was arguably also a martyr, though to which cause it is difficult to say. If, on the other hand, he was a two-time killer who, together with his lawyers, made a mockery of the American judicial system, then the shadow that hung over him for the rest of his life was the least he deserved.”
The Times archive: explore 200 years of history as it appeared in the pages of The Times, from 1785 to 1985.
