It has been called the trial of the century and the most solved unsolved murder mystery of all time.
In this episode, we'll be talking about the trial of O.J. Simpson and the legacy it has left on America.
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the trial of O.J. Simpson.
[00:00:28] It has been called the trial of the century and the most solved unsolved murder mystery of all time.
[00:00:36] It was also played out on live TV, and, albeit indirectly, bears some responsibility for the worldwide fame of the Kardashians.
[00:00:46] So, in this episode we’ll tell the story of what happened on one fateful night in Beverly Hills, the evidence for and against O.J. Simpson, the outcome of the trial, and the legacy this left on America.
[00:01:01] I should add that this episode does contain references to violence and to a murder scene, so if that isn’t your cup of tea, you should press pause now.
[00:01:12] OK then, the trial of O.J. Simpson.
[00:01:17] If you ask an American what they were doing on June 17th, 1994, you might be surprised to find out that many people over a certain age will be able to tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing.
[00:01:33] To be precise, 95 million Americans, or 37% of the entire population, tuned in to watch perhaps the most surreal piece of reality TV in history.
[00:01:48] Earlier that day, at 11am to be precise, a man called O.J. Simpson had failed to hand himself in to the Los Angeles Police.
[00:02:00] His ex-wife had been found brutally murdered, the police wanted to question him about it, but he hadn’t turned up to the police station when he was supposed to.
[00:02:11] And nobody knew where he was. The police had gone to his home; he wasn’t there, nor was his car.
[00:02:20] At 1.50pm he was officially declared a fugitive, on the run from the law.
[00:02:27] This man, O.J. Simpson, wasn’t just any Joe Bloggs; he was a household name, a hugely popular American football player.
[00:02:39] By 4.45pm, there was a warrant out for his arrest, and the District Attorney declared that anyone helping O.J. Simpson would be prosecuted too.
[00:02:52] Just 15 minutes later, at 5pm, there was a news conference chaired by O.J. Simpson’s close friend and lawyer, Robert Kardashian.
[00:03:03] If you are wondering whether Robert Kardashian is any relative of The Kardashians, yes, he is their father.
[00:03:12] Anyway, Robert Kardashian read out a letter from O.J. Simpson.
[00:03:18] It read: “I have nothing to do with Nicole's murder. I loved her; always have and always will. If we had a problem, it's because I loved her so much. Don’t feel sorry for me, I’ve had a great life, great friends. Please think of the real O.J., not this lost person. Thanks for making my life special. I hope I helped yours. Peace and love. O.J.”
[00:03:46] It sounded like a suicide note, the words of a man who was about to end his life.
[00:03:54] But less than an hour later, a police responder received a call, someone had dialled 911.
[00:04:02] It was O.J. Simpson. And he was calling from a payphone, so it was relatively simple to see where he was.
[00:04:11] The police headed to the area where the call had been made, and then a member of the public spotted O.J. sitting in the passenger seat of a driving car.
[00:04:22] A police car pulled up beside O.J.’s car, but the driver of the car shouted to the police officer that O.J. was in the back seat and had a loaded gun pointed at his head. “Please, back off”, he told her.
[00:04:39] Back up was called for, 20 more police cars were in hot pursuit, and a cable news helicopter was soon flying overhead.
[00:04:49] Now, when you think of police chases on TV or in films, you probably think of hugely dramatic scenes with the driver swerving to avoid oncoming traffic, crashing into the side of the highway, and everything taking place at 150 kilometres an hour.
[00:05:10] This police chase, which has gone down as one of the most famous police chases in history, was nothing like that.
[00:05:18] It did take quite a long time, almost an hour in total.
[00:05:22] But the entire thing happened very slowly, with the “chase” all happening at 60 kilometres an hour. It was so slow and so long that more than 9 different news helicopters were hovering overhead, and one helicopter even ran out of fuel during the chase.
[00:05:44] This was all broadcast live, on national TV, with 95 million people watching, more people than had watched the Super Bowl that year.
[00:05:56] O.J. Simpson was eventually persuaded to surrender, and at 8 o'clock he arrived home, sat in the car for 45 minutes, and then surrendered to the police.
[00:06:08] One of the country’s most famous and loved athletes was in custody, accused of a brutal murder.
[00:06:16] But that was only the start of a murder case that would take almost a year and a half to be resolved, and many would argue, was never really solved.
[00:06:28] So, what actually happened?
[00:06:31] Well, let me first present to you the evidence, what O.J. Simpson stood accused of doing.
[00:06:39] 4 days before this, on June the 12th, at her house in a wealthy suburb of Los Angeles, O.J.’s ex-wife had been found brutally murdered.
[00:06:52] Neighbours had been led to the property by her barking dog.
[00:06:57] When they arrived outside, they were greeted by a gruesome sight.
[00:07:03] A woman in a small black dress lay lifeless at the bottom of a flight of stairs, her blood spilled all over the tiles.
[00:07:14] Nearby was a man in blue jeans, also lying lifeless, his white shirt covered in blood.
[00:07:23] The woman was Nicole Brown Simpson, O.J.’s ex-wife, and the man was Ronald Goldman, a waiter at a nearby restaurant.
[00:07:33] A woman was dead, and one of the country’s most famous athletes was soon declared the main suspect.
[00:07:42] Just as the police chase was played out on national TV, so was the trial, which started in January the following year, 7 months after the murders.
[00:07:53] Now, rather than me giving you the detailed breakdown of exactly what happened during the trial, let me present you the evidence for, the evidence that suggested that O.J. Simpson was guilty of murder and the evidence against, the evidence that suggested that he was innocent.
[00:08:14] You may already know what the jury decided, but let me give you the evidence again and you can decide whether you agree with them or not.
[00:08:23] So, what evidence was there to suggest that O.J. Simpson was the knife-wielding murderer?
[00:08:30] Well, let me first fill in a few gaps from the evening of the murder, so you have a more complete picture.
[00:08:39] O.J. and Nicole had been married for seven years, from 1985 to 1992, and the pair had two children together. So, they had been separated for a couple of years before the murder.
[00:08:55] On the afternoon of the murder, they had both gone to one of their children’s dance rehearsals.
[00:09:03] After the dance rehearsal, Nicole Brown and her family went to a nearby restaurant called Mezzaluna. They went without O.J.; he wasn’t invited.
[00:09:15] Working at this restaurant was a waiter called Ron Goldman, who had apparently grown close to Nicole Brown in the previous few weeks. It’s not clear whether they were anything more than friends though.
[00:09:28] Anyway, the family had a meal, then went to Ben & Jerry’s for ice cream before returning home.
[00:09:37] At exactly 9.37pm, Nicole Brown’s mother phoned the restaurant to say that she had left her glasses, the restaurant manager found them, put them in a white envelope and asked Ron Goldman to take them to Nicole Brown’s house when he finished his shift, which was going to be at 9.50pm.
[00:09:59] While this was all happening, O.J. Simpson had gone to McDonald’s with a friend who was staying with him.
[00:10:07] The pair went to McDonald’s to get their food, then returned to O.J’s home to eat. They ate their dinner together, then O.J left his friend. This was at around 9:36 pm.
[00:10:21] O.J’s home, by the way, was just around the corner from Nicole’s, it was about a 5 minute drive away.
[00:10:29] The next thing we know is that Nicole Brown’s dog started barking incessantly at around 10.15pm.
[00:10:39] At 10.55pm the dog was discovered by a dog walker, with its paws covered in blood.
[00:10:47] And shortly afterwards, after being led to the house by this dog, there was the gruesome discovery of the bodies of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.
[00:10:59] There was no sign of a break in, which suggested that the person who had committed the murder had a key, or had been let in by the owner of the house.
[00:11:09] So, where was O.J. Simpson while all this was happening? What was his alibi?
[00:11:16] Well, that evening he was scheduled to take a flight from Los Angeles to Chicago, the “red eye”, which would leave Los Angeles at 11:45 pm and arrive in Chicago the following morning.
[00:11:31] A limousine driver arrived at O.J. Simpson’s house at around 1025pm, drove around the block to check which driveway to use, and then started ringing the doorbell at 10:40 pm. But, there was no answer, and it seemed like all the lights were out.
[00:11:52] The driver waited, and then started to get a little concerned.
[00:11:57] O.J. would miss his flight, and he would miss his meetings the following day.
[00:12:03] The driver called around to see if he could get a home number for O.J.
[00:12:08] He was looking for signs of activity in the house, and at one point he saw a tall shadowy figure going in through a side doorway.
[00:12:19] Eventually, the friend who was staying with O.J., called Kato Kaelin, saw the limousine outside and he let the driver in.
[00:12:30] This friend, Kato Kaelin had also seen some suspicious activity around the house.
[00:12:38] At approximately 10:40 pm, he had heard three large thumps, three bangs, that were so loud that he thought there was an earthquake. He went outside to investigate, but didn’t see anything.
[00:12:54] It was then that he let in the limousine driver.
[00:12:59] Shortly afterwards, O.J. emerged, saying that he had overslept. He got into the limo and he and the driver headed off to the airport to catch his flight.
[00:13:12] Now, O.J. had four bags with him when he left his house.
[00:13:17] His driver had started to pick them up to put them in the boot of the limo, but when he tried to pick one of them up, O.J shouted at him and told him to leave that one; O.J. would handle it himself.
[00:13:33] And, interestingly enough, O.J. only checked in three bags for his flight; this mystery fourth bag never made it to Chicago.
[00:13:44] Both the limousine driver and Kato Kaelin would later testify that O.J. seemed nervous, tense, when he emerged from the house. And the driver would add that O.J. continually complained about how hot it was in the limousine; he seemed flustered.
[00:14:04] So, to conclude, the murders happened between 10pm and 10:30pm.
[00:14:12] O.J had no witnesses for where he was from between 9:36 pm and 10:54 pm, when he came out of the house again.
[00:14:22] He told the court that he was at home at that time, sleeping.
[00:14:27] His house was only a five minute drive away from Nicole Brown’s, the site of the murder, so there was plenty of time for him to be at the house at the time of the murders and then return to his house by 10:45pm.
[00:14:44] But, to state the obvious, the fact that he could have done it from a timing perspective does not mean that he did it, it is, as his defence would put it, circumstantial.
[00:14:57] Unfortunately for O.J. Simpson, there was plenty of evidence that was harder to explain.
[00:15:04] Firstly, there was the physical evidence.
[00:15:07] At the murder scene, police found a blue hat and a leather glove. They also found footprints in the blood that did not match either of the victims.
[00:15:20] When these pieces of evidence were examined, well, they did find a match.
[00:15:27] The blue hat contained O.J. Simpson’s hair.
[00:15:30] When police searched O.J. Simpson’s home, they found a single glove that completed the pair of bloody gloves found at the murder scene. And on that glove they found DNA matches for both murder victims and the dog.
[00:15:49] And it gets worse. They found blue fibres on both murder victims. O.J. Simpson had been wearing a blue shirt at the dance recital that afternoon, but had removed it to go on the flight.
[00:16:04] And it was never found again.
[00:16:08] And fibres from a Ford Bronco, O.J. Simpson’s car, were found on both murder victims.
[00:16:16] And the bloody footprint at the murder scene was a match for a very expensive and rare pair of shoes that O.J. had been pictured wearing 9 months before the murders.
[00:16:29] Now, all of this evidence came out at the trial, but I must give you some more information about the events of that evening, as this also doesn’t scream “innocent”.
[00:16:42] O.J. Simpson made his flight, just in time.
[00:16:45] An airport employee would later testify that he saw Simpson throwing a bag into a rubbish bin, which would explain where the mystery “fourth bag” got to.
[00:16:57] The flight time from LA to Chicago is just over four hours.
[00:17:03] During this time, the time that O.J. was on the plane, the police had been called to the crime scene, they had gone to O.J. Simpson’s house to notify him and ask him to collect his children, who had been asleep at their mother’s house while she was murdered.
[00:17:19] But, of course, O.J. was nowhere to be found.
[00:17:23] O.J.’s friend, Kato Kaeilin, told the police about the three thumps he had heard, and when a police officer went to look, he found a bloodied glove, the one that was a match of the other bloody glove found at the murder scene.
[00:17:42] When O.J.'s flight touched down, the police called him to notify him. The officer who spoke to him would later testify that O.J did sound agitated, but he didn’t ask any questions about the circumstances of the murder: when, who did it, how, really, the typical questions that people usually ask if they are presented with the news that someone close to them has been murdered.
[00:18:11] O.J. returned to Los Angeles that day, gave a blood sample to the police, and was released.
[00:18:19] And this brings us to June 17th, the day of the car chase, the suicide note read out by Kim Kardashian’s father, Rob, and his eventual surrender to the police. Again, as the prosecution would point out, not the typical behaviour of an innocent man, and certainly not the behaviour of someone who knew nothing about the murders.
[00:18:45] What’s more, at the trial the jury learned that O.J. Simpson had a history of violent behaviour towards his wife, and she had called 911 multiple times saying “he’s going to kill me”.
[00:18:59] So, to wrap up the prosecution’s argument, O.J didn’t have a viable alibi for what he was doing at the time of the murder, there was plenty of evidence linking him to the murder scene, and he had a history of violence towards his wife.
[00:19:17] It wasn’t looking good.
[00:19:20] But, Simpson retained a so-called “Dream Team” of lawyers, the best lawyers in the country, to his defence.
[00:19:29] His defence rested not on the fact that there was other evidence that he was somewhere else at the time of the murder or that there was another clear suspect, but on the fact that the forensic evidence that was found at the scene was either contaminated or had been planted by the police.
[00:19:48] For almost every piece of evidence, the defence claimed that it had been planted at a later stage by corrupt police officers in a bid to frame O.J. Simpson.
[00:20:00] And why would the police officers have done that, why would they have tried to frame O.J?
[00:20:07] In a word, racism.
[00:20:09] And in two words, racism and corruption.
[00:20:14] One of the lead detectives on the case, a man called Mark Furhman, was accused of being a racist, and having deliberately falsified evidence to make it look like O.J. Simpson, an African American, had killed his white ex-wife.
[00:20:32] Furhman denied this, but during the trial there was a tape played where Furhman could clearly be heard using racist slurs 41 times in a single recording.
[00:20:46] Now, we haven’t properly addressed this yet, but the entire case was permeated by racial tensions.
[00:20:54] O.J. Simpson was black. The murder victims, his ex-wife Nicole and the waiter, Ron, were both white.
[00:21:04] What’s more, the early 1990s was a period of particularly high racial tensions in the US. In 1992 there had been riots in Los Angeles after four police officers had been found not guilty of the beating of an African American man called Rodney King despite clear evidence that they had done it.
[00:21:28] By many, especially in the African American community, the police were seen as corrupt and racist, which was exactly the argument that O.J.’s defence put forward.
[00:21:40] So, this was the background to the trial, which took place at the start of 1995.
[00:21:48] Now, as you may know, the way in which criminal trials work in the United States is that the prosecution and the defence seek to fill the jury with members who they believe will be sympathetic to their arguments.
[00:22:05] Of course, members of the jury are meant to be completely impartial and unbiased, but they are human after all. We all have inherent biases that we may or may not be aware of.
[00:22:19] From an initial pool of over 300 potential jurors, the final jury was made up of ten women and two men.
[00:22:29] And in terms of the racial makeup, there were 9 black jurors, two white, and one Hispanic.
[00:22:38] In the afternoon of October 2nd, 1995, an estimated 100 million people tuned in to hear the verdict.
[00:22:49] After eight months of listening to the evidence, the jury had decided.
[00:22:55] O.J. Simpson was declared not guilty of murder, and he would walk free that very afternoon.
[00:23:05] It was a hugely divisive event in US race relations, and there was a clear split between white and black Americans in terms of whether they felt O.J. was guilty or not.
[00:23:19] At the time of the trial, approximately 75% of white Americans thought O.J. Simpson was guilty while 70% of black Americans thought he was innocent.
[00:23:31] These were people who had heard exactly the same evidence, as it had all been broadcast on national television and written up in the newspaper, but had come to radically different conclusions.
[00:23:45] Now, this balance has shifted slightly, which was not helped by a bizarre event in 2007 when O.J. Simpson was involved in an armed robbery in a hotel in Las Vegas.
[00:23:58] In this trial he was found guilty and sentenced to 33 years in prison.
[00:24:04] The number of people who now believe that O.J. was the knife-wielding murderer of his ex-wife has increased, with 83% of white Americans and 57% of black Americans believing that he was guilty.
[00:24:19] And indeed, O.J. was found guilty in a civil case of something called “wrongful death”.
[00:24:27] This was a civil case not a criminal one, so it meant that he wasn’t faced with any jail time, but he was ordered to pay 33.5 million dollars in damages to the families of Nicole Brown and Ron Goodman, which he has apparently still not done.
[00:24:45] So, was justice done?
[00:24:48] You have heard the evidence, and perhaps you have come to your own conclusions about his innocence or guilt.
[00:24:55] If you believe that O.J. Simpson was innocent all along, then his good name has been dragged through the mud and the real killer is still walking free.
[00:25:07] If you believe that O.J. Simpson was guilty, then the real killer is still walking free.
[00:25:14] Indeed, O.J Simpson was released from his 33-year prison sentence for armed robbery in 2017, and he is now a completely free man.
[00:25:26] Whatever side you come down on, the trial of O.J Simpson will go down in history as not just a captivating legal drama but a complex story that involves race relations, the cult of celebrity, the media and the police.
[00:25:42] And ultimately, it leaves us with plenty of interesting questions about the judicial system and the inherently human biases that might make two people who hear exactly the same thing come to completely different conclusions.
[00:25:59] OK then, that is it for today's episode on The Trial of O.J. Simpson.
[00:26:05] I know it was quite a long one, but there was a lot to go through. After all, the trial did take 8 months!
[00:26:11] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:26:14] The most obvious question is…did he or didn’t he?
[00:26:18] And if he didn’t, who did? This is actually an interesting question and there are some fascinating theories about this, which unfortunately we didn’t have time to go into today.
[00:26:29] So, let’s get this discussion started.
[00:26:32] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:26:40] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:26:45] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the trial of O.J. Simpson.
[00:00:28] It has been called the trial of the century and the most solved unsolved murder mystery of all time.
[00:00:36] It was also played out on live TV, and, albeit indirectly, bears some responsibility for the worldwide fame of the Kardashians.
[00:00:46] So, in this episode we’ll tell the story of what happened on one fateful night in Beverly Hills, the evidence for and against O.J. Simpson, the outcome of the trial, and the legacy this left on America.
[00:01:01] I should add that this episode does contain references to violence and to a murder scene, so if that isn’t your cup of tea, you should press pause now.
[00:01:12] OK then, the trial of O.J. Simpson.
[00:01:17] If you ask an American what they were doing on June 17th, 1994, you might be surprised to find out that many people over a certain age will be able to tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing.
[00:01:33] To be precise, 95 million Americans, or 37% of the entire population, tuned in to watch perhaps the most surreal piece of reality TV in history.
[00:01:48] Earlier that day, at 11am to be precise, a man called O.J. Simpson had failed to hand himself in to the Los Angeles Police.
[00:02:00] His ex-wife had been found brutally murdered, the police wanted to question him about it, but he hadn’t turned up to the police station when he was supposed to.
[00:02:11] And nobody knew where he was. The police had gone to his home; he wasn’t there, nor was his car.
[00:02:20] At 1.50pm he was officially declared a fugitive, on the run from the law.
[00:02:27] This man, O.J. Simpson, wasn’t just any Joe Bloggs; he was a household name, a hugely popular American football player.
[00:02:39] By 4.45pm, there was a warrant out for his arrest, and the District Attorney declared that anyone helping O.J. Simpson would be prosecuted too.
[00:02:52] Just 15 minutes later, at 5pm, there was a news conference chaired by O.J. Simpson’s close friend and lawyer, Robert Kardashian.
[00:03:03] If you are wondering whether Robert Kardashian is any relative of The Kardashians, yes, he is their father.
[00:03:12] Anyway, Robert Kardashian read out a letter from O.J. Simpson.
[00:03:18] It read: “I have nothing to do with Nicole's murder. I loved her; always have and always will. If we had a problem, it's because I loved her so much. Don’t feel sorry for me, I’ve had a great life, great friends. Please think of the real O.J., not this lost person. Thanks for making my life special. I hope I helped yours. Peace and love. O.J.”
[00:03:46] It sounded like a suicide note, the words of a man who was about to end his life.
[00:03:54] But less than an hour later, a police responder received a call, someone had dialled 911.
[00:04:02] It was O.J. Simpson. And he was calling from a payphone, so it was relatively simple to see where he was.
[00:04:11] The police headed to the area where the call had been made, and then a member of the public spotted O.J. sitting in the passenger seat of a driving car.
[00:04:22] A police car pulled up beside O.J.’s car, but the driver of the car shouted to the police officer that O.J. was in the back seat and had a loaded gun pointed at his head. “Please, back off”, he told her.
[00:04:39] Back up was called for, 20 more police cars were in hot pursuit, and a cable news helicopter was soon flying overhead.
[00:04:49] Now, when you think of police chases on TV or in films, you probably think of hugely dramatic scenes with the driver swerving to avoid oncoming traffic, crashing into the side of the highway, and everything taking place at 150 kilometres an hour.
[00:05:10] This police chase, which has gone down as one of the most famous police chases in history, was nothing like that.
[00:05:18] It did take quite a long time, almost an hour in total.
[00:05:22] But the entire thing happened very slowly, with the “chase” all happening at 60 kilometres an hour. It was so slow and so long that more than 9 different news helicopters were hovering overhead, and one helicopter even ran out of fuel during the chase.
[00:05:44] This was all broadcast live, on national TV, with 95 million people watching, more people than had watched the Super Bowl that year.
[00:05:56] O.J. Simpson was eventually persuaded to surrender, and at 8 o'clock he arrived home, sat in the car for 45 minutes, and then surrendered to the police.
[00:06:08] One of the country’s most famous and loved athletes was in custody, accused of a brutal murder.
[00:06:16] But that was only the start of a murder case that would take almost a year and a half to be resolved, and many would argue, was never really solved.
[00:06:28] So, what actually happened?
[00:06:31] Well, let me first present to you the evidence, what O.J. Simpson stood accused of doing.
[00:06:39] 4 days before this, on June the 12th, at her house in a wealthy suburb of Los Angeles, O.J.’s ex-wife had been found brutally murdered.
[00:06:52] Neighbours had been led to the property by her barking dog.
[00:06:57] When they arrived outside, they were greeted by a gruesome sight.
[00:07:03] A woman in a small black dress lay lifeless at the bottom of a flight of stairs, her blood spilled all over the tiles.
[00:07:14] Nearby was a man in blue jeans, also lying lifeless, his white shirt covered in blood.
[00:07:23] The woman was Nicole Brown Simpson, O.J.’s ex-wife, and the man was Ronald Goldman, a waiter at a nearby restaurant.
[00:07:33] A woman was dead, and one of the country’s most famous athletes was soon declared the main suspect.
[00:07:42] Just as the police chase was played out on national TV, so was the trial, which started in January the following year, 7 months after the murders.
[00:07:53] Now, rather than me giving you the detailed breakdown of exactly what happened during the trial, let me present you the evidence for, the evidence that suggested that O.J. Simpson was guilty of murder and the evidence against, the evidence that suggested that he was innocent.
[00:08:14] You may already know what the jury decided, but let me give you the evidence again and you can decide whether you agree with them or not.
[00:08:23] So, what evidence was there to suggest that O.J. Simpson was the knife-wielding murderer?
[00:08:30] Well, let me first fill in a few gaps from the evening of the murder, so you have a more complete picture.
[00:08:39] O.J. and Nicole had been married for seven years, from 1985 to 1992, and the pair had two children together. So, they had been separated for a couple of years before the murder.
[00:08:55] On the afternoon of the murder, they had both gone to one of their children’s dance rehearsals.
[00:09:03] After the dance rehearsal, Nicole Brown and her family went to a nearby restaurant called Mezzaluna. They went without O.J.; he wasn’t invited.
[00:09:15] Working at this restaurant was a waiter called Ron Goldman, who had apparently grown close to Nicole Brown in the previous few weeks. It’s not clear whether they were anything more than friends though.
[00:09:28] Anyway, the family had a meal, then went to Ben & Jerry’s for ice cream before returning home.
[00:09:37] At exactly 9.37pm, Nicole Brown’s mother phoned the restaurant to say that she had left her glasses, the restaurant manager found them, put them in a white envelope and asked Ron Goldman to take them to Nicole Brown’s house when he finished his shift, which was going to be at 9.50pm.
[00:09:59] While this was all happening, O.J. Simpson had gone to McDonald’s with a friend who was staying with him.
[00:10:07] The pair went to McDonald’s to get their food, then returned to O.J’s home to eat. They ate their dinner together, then O.J left his friend. This was at around 9:36 pm.
[00:10:21] O.J’s home, by the way, was just around the corner from Nicole’s, it was about a 5 minute drive away.
[00:10:29] The next thing we know is that Nicole Brown’s dog started barking incessantly at around 10.15pm.
[00:10:39] At 10.55pm the dog was discovered by a dog walker, with its paws covered in blood.
[00:10:47] And shortly afterwards, after being led to the house by this dog, there was the gruesome discovery of the bodies of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.
[00:10:59] There was no sign of a break in, which suggested that the person who had committed the murder had a key, or had been let in by the owner of the house.
[00:11:09] So, where was O.J. Simpson while all this was happening? What was his alibi?
[00:11:16] Well, that evening he was scheduled to take a flight from Los Angeles to Chicago, the “red eye”, which would leave Los Angeles at 11:45 pm and arrive in Chicago the following morning.
[00:11:31] A limousine driver arrived at O.J. Simpson’s house at around 1025pm, drove around the block to check which driveway to use, and then started ringing the doorbell at 10:40 pm. But, there was no answer, and it seemed like all the lights were out.
[00:11:52] The driver waited, and then started to get a little concerned.
[00:11:57] O.J. would miss his flight, and he would miss his meetings the following day.
[00:12:03] The driver called around to see if he could get a home number for O.J.
[00:12:08] He was looking for signs of activity in the house, and at one point he saw a tall shadowy figure going in through a side doorway.
[00:12:19] Eventually, the friend who was staying with O.J., called Kato Kaelin, saw the limousine outside and he let the driver in.
[00:12:30] This friend, Kato Kaelin had also seen some suspicious activity around the house.
[00:12:38] At approximately 10:40 pm, he had heard three large thumps, three bangs, that were so loud that he thought there was an earthquake. He went outside to investigate, but didn’t see anything.
[00:12:54] It was then that he let in the limousine driver.
[00:12:59] Shortly afterwards, O.J. emerged, saying that he had overslept. He got into the limo and he and the driver headed off to the airport to catch his flight.
[00:13:12] Now, O.J. had four bags with him when he left his house.
[00:13:17] His driver had started to pick them up to put them in the boot of the limo, but when he tried to pick one of them up, O.J shouted at him and told him to leave that one; O.J. would handle it himself.
[00:13:33] And, interestingly enough, O.J. only checked in three bags for his flight; this mystery fourth bag never made it to Chicago.
[00:13:44] Both the limousine driver and Kato Kaelin would later testify that O.J. seemed nervous, tense, when he emerged from the house. And the driver would add that O.J. continually complained about how hot it was in the limousine; he seemed flustered.
[00:14:04] So, to conclude, the murders happened between 10pm and 10:30pm.
[00:14:12] O.J had no witnesses for where he was from between 9:36 pm and 10:54 pm, when he came out of the house again.
[00:14:22] He told the court that he was at home at that time, sleeping.
[00:14:27] His house was only a five minute drive away from Nicole Brown’s, the site of the murder, so there was plenty of time for him to be at the house at the time of the murders and then return to his house by 10:45pm.
[00:14:44] But, to state the obvious, the fact that he could have done it from a timing perspective does not mean that he did it, it is, as his defence would put it, circumstantial.
[00:14:57] Unfortunately for O.J. Simpson, there was plenty of evidence that was harder to explain.
[00:15:04] Firstly, there was the physical evidence.
[00:15:07] At the murder scene, police found a blue hat and a leather glove. They also found footprints in the blood that did not match either of the victims.
[00:15:20] When these pieces of evidence were examined, well, they did find a match.
[00:15:27] The blue hat contained O.J. Simpson’s hair.
[00:15:30] When police searched O.J. Simpson’s home, they found a single glove that completed the pair of bloody gloves found at the murder scene. And on that glove they found DNA matches for both murder victims and the dog.
[00:15:49] And it gets worse. They found blue fibres on both murder victims. O.J. Simpson had been wearing a blue shirt at the dance recital that afternoon, but had removed it to go on the flight.
[00:16:04] And it was never found again.
[00:16:08] And fibres from a Ford Bronco, O.J. Simpson’s car, were found on both murder victims.
[00:16:16] And the bloody footprint at the murder scene was a match for a very expensive and rare pair of shoes that O.J. had been pictured wearing 9 months before the murders.
[00:16:29] Now, all of this evidence came out at the trial, but I must give you some more information about the events of that evening, as this also doesn’t scream “innocent”.
[00:16:42] O.J. Simpson made his flight, just in time.
[00:16:45] An airport employee would later testify that he saw Simpson throwing a bag into a rubbish bin, which would explain where the mystery “fourth bag” got to.
[00:16:57] The flight time from LA to Chicago is just over four hours.
[00:17:03] During this time, the time that O.J. was on the plane, the police had been called to the crime scene, they had gone to O.J. Simpson’s house to notify him and ask him to collect his children, who had been asleep at their mother’s house while she was murdered.
[00:17:19] But, of course, O.J. was nowhere to be found.
[00:17:23] O.J.’s friend, Kato Kaeilin, told the police about the three thumps he had heard, and when a police officer went to look, he found a bloodied glove, the one that was a match of the other bloody glove found at the murder scene.
[00:17:42] When O.J.'s flight touched down, the police called him to notify him. The officer who spoke to him would later testify that O.J did sound agitated, but he didn’t ask any questions about the circumstances of the murder: when, who did it, how, really, the typical questions that people usually ask if they are presented with the news that someone close to them has been murdered.
[00:18:11] O.J. returned to Los Angeles that day, gave a blood sample to the police, and was released.
[00:18:19] And this brings us to June 17th, the day of the car chase, the suicide note read out by Kim Kardashian’s father, Rob, and his eventual surrender to the police. Again, as the prosecution would point out, not the typical behaviour of an innocent man, and certainly not the behaviour of someone who knew nothing about the murders.
[00:18:45] What’s more, at the trial the jury learned that O.J. Simpson had a history of violent behaviour towards his wife, and she had called 911 multiple times saying “he’s going to kill me”.
[00:18:59] So, to wrap up the prosecution’s argument, O.J didn’t have a viable alibi for what he was doing at the time of the murder, there was plenty of evidence linking him to the murder scene, and he had a history of violence towards his wife.
[00:19:17] It wasn’t looking good.
[00:19:20] But, Simpson retained a so-called “Dream Team” of lawyers, the best lawyers in the country, to his defence.
[00:19:29] His defence rested not on the fact that there was other evidence that he was somewhere else at the time of the murder or that there was another clear suspect, but on the fact that the forensic evidence that was found at the scene was either contaminated or had been planted by the police.
[00:19:48] For almost every piece of evidence, the defence claimed that it had been planted at a later stage by corrupt police officers in a bid to frame O.J. Simpson.
[00:20:00] And why would the police officers have done that, why would they have tried to frame O.J?
[00:20:07] In a word, racism.
[00:20:09] And in two words, racism and corruption.
[00:20:14] One of the lead detectives on the case, a man called Mark Furhman, was accused of being a racist, and having deliberately falsified evidence to make it look like O.J. Simpson, an African American, had killed his white ex-wife.
[00:20:32] Furhman denied this, but during the trial there was a tape played where Furhman could clearly be heard using racist slurs 41 times in a single recording.
[00:20:46] Now, we haven’t properly addressed this yet, but the entire case was permeated by racial tensions.
[00:20:54] O.J. Simpson was black. The murder victims, his ex-wife Nicole and the waiter, Ron, were both white.
[00:21:04] What’s more, the early 1990s was a period of particularly high racial tensions in the US. In 1992 there had been riots in Los Angeles after four police officers had been found not guilty of the beating of an African American man called Rodney King despite clear evidence that they had done it.
[00:21:28] By many, especially in the African American community, the police were seen as corrupt and racist, which was exactly the argument that O.J.’s defence put forward.
[00:21:40] So, this was the background to the trial, which took place at the start of 1995.
[00:21:48] Now, as you may know, the way in which criminal trials work in the United States is that the prosecution and the defence seek to fill the jury with members who they believe will be sympathetic to their arguments.
[00:22:05] Of course, members of the jury are meant to be completely impartial and unbiased, but they are human after all. We all have inherent biases that we may or may not be aware of.
[00:22:19] From an initial pool of over 300 potential jurors, the final jury was made up of ten women and two men.
[00:22:29] And in terms of the racial makeup, there were 9 black jurors, two white, and one Hispanic.
[00:22:38] In the afternoon of October 2nd, 1995, an estimated 100 million people tuned in to hear the verdict.
[00:22:49] After eight months of listening to the evidence, the jury had decided.
[00:22:55] O.J. Simpson was declared not guilty of murder, and he would walk free that very afternoon.
[00:23:05] It was a hugely divisive event in US race relations, and there was a clear split between white and black Americans in terms of whether they felt O.J. was guilty or not.
[00:23:19] At the time of the trial, approximately 75% of white Americans thought O.J. Simpson was guilty while 70% of black Americans thought he was innocent.
[00:23:31] These were people who had heard exactly the same evidence, as it had all been broadcast on national television and written up in the newspaper, but had come to radically different conclusions.
[00:23:45] Now, this balance has shifted slightly, which was not helped by a bizarre event in 2007 when O.J. Simpson was involved in an armed robbery in a hotel in Las Vegas.
[00:23:58] In this trial he was found guilty and sentenced to 33 years in prison.
[00:24:04] The number of people who now believe that O.J. was the knife-wielding murderer of his ex-wife has increased, with 83% of white Americans and 57% of black Americans believing that he was guilty.
[00:24:19] And indeed, O.J. was found guilty in a civil case of something called “wrongful death”.
[00:24:27] This was a civil case not a criminal one, so it meant that he wasn’t faced with any jail time, but he was ordered to pay 33.5 million dollars in damages to the families of Nicole Brown and Ron Goodman, which he has apparently still not done.
[00:24:45] So, was justice done?
[00:24:48] You have heard the evidence, and perhaps you have come to your own conclusions about his innocence or guilt.
[00:24:55] If you believe that O.J. Simpson was innocent all along, then his good name has been dragged through the mud and the real killer is still walking free.
[00:25:07] If you believe that O.J. Simpson was guilty, then the real killer is still walking free.
[00:25:14] Indeed, O.J Simpson was released from his 33-year prison sentence for armed robbery in 2017, and he is now a completely free man.
[00:25:26] Whatever side you come down on, the trial of O.J Simpson will go down in history as not just a captivating legal drama but a complex story that involves race relations, the cult of celebrity, the media and the police.
[00:25:42] And ultimately, it leaves us with plenty of interesting questions about the judicial system and the inherently human biases that might make two people who hear exactly the same thing come to completely different conclusions.
[00:25:59] OK then, that is it for today's episode on The Trial of O.J. Simpson.
[00:26:05] I know it was quite a long one, but there was a lot to go through. After all, the trial did take 8 months!
[00:26:11] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:26:14] The most obvious question is…did he or didn’t he?
[00:26:18] And if he didn’t, who did? This is actually an interesting question and there are some fascinating theories about this, which unfortunately we didn’t have time to go into today.
[00:26:29] So, let’s get this discussion started.
[00:26:32] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:26:40] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:26:45] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the trial of O.J. Simpson.
[00:00:28] It has been called the trial of the century and the most solved unsolved murder mystery of all time.
[00:00:36] It was also played out on live TV, and, albeit indirectly, bears some responsibility for the worldwide fame of the Kardashians.
[00:00:46] So, in this episode we’ll tell the story of what happened on one fateful night in Beverly Hills, the evidence for and against O.J. Simpson, the outcome of the trial, and the legacy this left on America.
[00:01:01] I should add that this episode does contain references to violence and to a murder scene, so if that isn’t your cup of tea, you should press pause now.
[00:01:12] OK then, the trial of O.J. Simpson.
[00:01:17] If you ask an American what they were doing on June 17th, 1994, you might be surprised to find out that many people over a certain age will be able to tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing.
[00:01:33] To be precise, 95 million Americans, or 37% of the entire population, tuned in to watch perhaps the most surreal piece of reality TV in history.
[00:01:48] Earlier that day, at 11am to be precise, a man called O.J. Simpson had failed to hand himself in to the Los Angeles Police.
[00:02:00] His ex-wife had been found brutally murdered, the police wanted to question him about it, but he hadn’t turned up to the police station when he was supposed to.
[00:02:11] And nobody knew where he was. The police had gone to his home; he wasn’t there, nor was his car.
[00:02:20] At 1.50pm he was officially declared a fugitive, on the run from the law.
[00:02:27] This man, O.J. Simpson, wasn’t just any Joe Bloggs; he was a household name, a hugely popular American football player.
[00:02:39] By 4.45pm, there was a warrant out for his arrest, and the District Attorney declared that anyone helping O.J. Simpson would be prosecuted too.
[00:02:52] Just 15 minutes later, at 5pm, there was a news conference chaired by O.J. Simpson’s close friend and lawyer, Robert Kardashian.
[00:03:03] If you are wondering whether Robert Kardashian is any relative of The Kardashians, yes, he is their father.
[00:03:12] Anyway, Robert Kardashian read out a letter from O.J. Simpson.
[00:03:18] It read: “I have nothing to do with Nicole's murder. I loved her; always have and always will. If we had a problem, it's because I loved her so much. Don’t feel sorry for me, I’ve had a great life, great friends. Please think of the real O.J., not this lost person. Thanks for making my life special. I hope I helped yours. Peace and love. O.J.”
[00:03:46] It sounded like a suicide note, the words of a man who was about to end his life.
[00:03:54] But less than an hour later, a police responder received a call, someone had dialled 911.
[00:04:02] It was O.J. Simpson. And he was calling from a payphone, so it was relatively simple to see where he was.
[00:04:11] The police headed to the area where the call had been made, and then a member of the public spotted O.J. sitting in the passenger seat of a driving car.
[00:04:22] A police car pulled up beside O.J.’s car, but the driver of the car shouted to the police officer that O.J. was in the back seat and had a loaded gun pointed at his head. “Please, back off”, he told her.
[00:04:39] Back up was called for, 20 more police cars were in hot pursuit, and a cable news helicopter was soon flying overhead.
[00:04:49] Now, when you think of police chases on TV or in films, you probably think of hugely dramatic scenes with the driver swerving to avoid oncoming traffic, crashing into the side of the highway, and everything taking place at 150 kilometres an hour.
[00:05:10] This police chase, which has gone down as one of the most famous police chases in history, was nothing like that.
[00:05:18] It did take quite a long time, almost an hour in total.
[00:05:22] But the entire thing happened very slowly, with the “chase” all happening at 60 kilometres an hour. It was so slow and so long that more than 9 different news helicopters were hovering overhead, and one helicopter even ran out of fuel during the chase.
[00:05:44] This was all broadcast live, on national TV, with 95 million people watching, more people than had watched the Super Bowl that year.
[00:05:56] O.J. Simpson was eventually persuaded to surrender, and at 8 o'clock he arrived home, sat in the car for 45 minutes, and then surrendered to the police.
[00:06:08] One of the country’s most famous and loved athletes was in custody, accused of a brutal murder.
[00:06:16] But that was only the start of a murder case that would take almost a year and a half to be resolved, and many would argue, was never really solved.
[00:06:28] So, what actually happened?
[00:06:31] Well, let me first present to you the evidence, what O.J. Simpson stood accused of doing.
[00:06:39] 4 days before this, on June the 12th, at her house in a wealthy suburb of Los Angeles, O.J.’s ex-wife had been found brutally murdered.
[00:06:52] Neighbours had been led to the property by her barking dog.
[00:06:57] When they arrived outside, they were greeted by a gruesome sight.
[00:07:03] A woman in a small black dress lay lifeless at the bottom of a flight of stairs, her blood spilled all over the tiles.
[00:07:14] Nearby was a man in blue jeans, also lying lifeless, his white shirt covered in blood.
[00:07:23] The woman was Nicole Brown Simpson, O.J.’s ex-wife, and the man was Ronald Goldman, a waiter at a nearby restaurant.
[00:07:33] A woman was dead, and one of the country’s most famous athletes was soon declared the main suspect.
[00:07:42] Just as the police chase was played out on national TV, so was the trial, which started in January the following year, 7 months after the murders.
[00:07:53] Now, rather than me giving you the detailed breakdown of exactly what happened during the trial, let me present you the evidence for, the evidence that suggested that O.J. Simpson was guilty of murder and the evidence against, the evidence that suggested that he was innocent.
[00:08:14] You may already know what the jury decided, but let me give you the evidence again and you can decide whether you agree with them or not.
[00:08:23] So, what evidence was there to suggest that O.J. Simpson was the knife-wielding murderer?
[00:08:30] Well, let me first fill in a few gaps from the evening of the murder, so you have a more complete picture.
[00:08:39] O.J. and Nicole had been married for seven years, from 1985 to 1992, and the pair had two children together. So, they had been separated for a couple of years before the murder.
[00:08:55] On the afternoon of the murder, they had both gone to one of their children’s dance rehearsals.
[00:09:03] After the dance rehearsal, Nicole Brown and her family went to a nearby restaurant called Mezzaluna. They went without O.J.; he wasn’t invited.
[00:09:15] Working at this restaurant was a waiter called Ron Goldman, who had apparently grown close to Nicole Brown in the previous few weeks. It’s not clear whether they were anything more than friends though.
[00:09:28] Anyway, the family had a meal, then went to Ben & Jerry’s for ice cream before returning home.
[00:09:37] At exactly 9.37pm, Nicole Brown’s mother phoned the restaurant to say that she had left her glasses, the restaurant manager found them, put them in a white envelope and asked Ron Goldman to take them to Nicole Brown’s house when he finished his shift, which was going to be at 9.50pm.
[00:09:59] While this was all happening, O.J. Simpson had gone to McDonald’s with a friend who was staying with him.
[00:10:07] The pair went to McDonald’s to get their food, then returned to O.J’s home to eat. They ate their dinner together, then O.J left his friend. This was at around 9:36 pm.
[00:10:21] O.J’s home, by the way, was just around the corner from Nicole’s, it was about a 5 minute drive away.
[00:10:29] The next thing we know is that Nicole Brown’s dog started barking incessantly at around 10.15pm.
[00:10:39] At 10.55pm the dog was discovered by a dog walker, with its paws covered in blood.
[00:10:47] And shortly afterwards, after being led to the house by this dog, there was the gruesome discovery of the bodies of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.
[00:10:59] There was no sign of a break in, which suggested that the person who had committed the murder had a key, or had been let in by the owner of the house.
[00:11:09] So, where was O.J. Simpson while all this was happening? What was his alibi?
[00:11:16] Well, that evening he was scheduled to take a flight from Los Angeles to Chicago, the “red eye”, which would leave Los Angeles at 11:45 pm and arrive in Chicago the following morning.
[00:11:31] A limousine driver arrived at O.J. Simpson’s house at around 1025pm, drove around the block to check which driveway to use, and then started ringing the doorbell at 10:40 pm. But, there was no answer, and it seemed like all the lights were out.
[00:11:52] The driver waited, and then started to get a little concerned.
[00:11:57] O.J. would miss his flight, and he would miss his meetings the following day.
[00:12:03] The driver called around to see if he could get a home number for O.J.
[00:12:08] He was looking for signs of activity in the house, and at one point he saw a tall shadowy figure going in through a side doorway.
[00:12:19] Eventually, the friend who was staying with O.J., called Kato Kaelin, saw the limousine outside and he let the driver in.
[00:12:30] This friend, Kato Kaelin had also seen some suspicious activity around the house.
[00:12:38] At approximately 10:40 pm, he had heard three large thumps, three bangs, that were so loud that he thought there was an earthquake. He went outside to investigate, but didn’t see anything.
[00:12:54] It was then that he let in the limousine driver.
[00:12:59] Shortly afterwards, O.J. emerged, saying that he had overslept. He got into the limo and he and the driver headed off to the airport to catch his flight.
[00:13:12] Now, O.J. had four bags with him when he left his house.
[00:13:17] His driver had started to pick them up to put them in the boot of the limo, but when he tried to pick one of them up, O.J shouted at him and told him to leave that one; O.J. would handle it himself.
[00:13:33] And, interestingly enough, O.J. only checked in three bags for his flight; this mystery fourth bag never made it to Chicago.
[00:13:44] Both the limousine driver and Kato Kaelin would later testify that O.J. seemed nervous, tense, when he emerged from the house. And the driver would add that O.J. continually complained about how hot it was in the limousine; he seemed flustered.
[00:14:04] So, to conclude, the murders happened between 10pm and 10:30pm.
[00:14:12] O.J had no witnesses for where he was from between 9:36 pm and 10:54 pm, when he came out of the house again.
[00:14:22] He told the court that he was at home at that time, sleeping.
[00:14:27] His house was only a five minute drive away from Nicole Brown’s, the site of the murder, so there was plenty of time for him to be at the house at the time of the murders and then return to his house by 10:45pm.
[00:14:44] But, to state the obvious, the fact that he could have done it from a timing perspective does not mean that he did it, it is, as his defence would put it, circumstantial.
[00:14:57] Unfortunately for O.J. Simpson, there was plenty of evidence that was harder to explain.
[00:15:04] Firstly, there was the physical evidence.
[00:15:07] At the murder scene, police found a blue hat and a leather glove. They also found footprints in the blood that did not match either of the victims.
[00:15:20] When these pieces of evidence were examined, well, they did find a match.
[00:15:27] The blue hat contained O.J. Simpson’s hair.
[00:15:30] When police searched O.J. Simpson’s home, they found a single glove that completed the pair of bloody gloves found at the murder scene. And on that glove they found DNA matches for both murder victims and the dog.
[00:15:49] And it gets worse. They found blue fibres on both murder victims. O.J. Simpson had been wearing a blue shirt at the dance recital that afternoon, but had removed it to go on the flight.
[00:16:04] And it was never found again.
[00:16:08] And fibres from a Ford Bronco, O.J. Simpson’s car, were found on both murder victims.
[00:16:16] And the bloody footprint at the murder scene was a match for a very expensive and rare pair of shoes that O.J. had been pictured wearing 9 months before the murders.
[00:16:29] Now, all of this evidence came out at the trial, but I must give you some more information about the events of that evening, as this also doesn’t scream “innocent”.
[00:16:42] O.J. Simpson made his flight, just in time.
[00:16:45] An airport employee would later testify that he saw Simpson throwing a bag into a rubbish bin, which would explain where the mystery “fourth bag” got to.
[00:16:57] The flight time from LA to Chicago is just over four hours.
[00:17:03] During this time, the time that O.J. was on the plane, the police had been called to the crime scene, they had gone to O.J. Simpson’s house to notify him and ask him to collect his children, who had been asleep at their mother’s house while she was murdered.
[00:17:19] But, of course, O.J. was nowhere to be found.
[00:17:23] O.J.’s friend, Kato Kaeilin, told the police about the three thumps he had heard, and when a police officer went to look, he found a bloodied glove, the one that was a match of the other bloody glove found at the murder scene.
[00:17:42] When O.J.'s flight touched down, the police called him to notify him. The officer who spoke to him would later testify that O.J did sound agitated, but he didn’t ask any questions about the circumstances of the murder: when, who did it, how, really, the typical questions that people usually ask if they are presented with the news that someone close to them has been murdered.
[00:18:11] O.J. returned to Los Angeles that day, gave a blood sample to the police, and was released.
[00:18:19] And this brings us to June 17th, the day of the car chase, the suicide note read out by Kim Kardashian’s father, Rob, and his eventual surrender to the police. Again, as the prosecution would point out, not the typical behaviour of an innocent man, and certainly not the behaviour of someone who knew nothing about the murders.
[00:18:45] What’s more, at the trial the jury learned that O.J. Simpson had a history of violent behaviour towards his wife, and she had called 911 multiple times saying “he’s going to kill me”.
[00:18:59] So, to wrap up the prosecution’s argument, O.J didn’t have a viable alibi for what he was doing at the time of the murder, there was plenty of evidence linking him to the murder scene, and he had a history of violence towards his wife.
[00:19:17] It wasn’t looking good.
[00:19:20] But, Simpson retained a so-called “Dream Team” of lawyers, the best lawyers in the country, to his defence.
[00:19:29] His defence rested not on the fact that there was other evidence that he was somewhere else at the time of the murder or that there was another clear suspect, but on the fact that the forensic evidence that was found at the scene was either contaminated or had been planted by the police.
[00:19:48] For almost every piece of evidence, the defence claimed that it had been planted at a later stage by corrupt police officers in a bid to frame O.J. Simpson.
[00:20:00] And why would the police officers have done that, why would they have tried to frame O.J?
[00:20:07] In a word, racism.
[00:20:09] And in two words, racism and corruption.
[00:20:14] One of the lead detectives on the case, a man called Mark Furhman, was accused of being a racist, and having deliberately falsified evidence to make it look like O.J. Simpson, an African American, had killed his white ex-wife.
[00:20:32] Furhman denied this, but during the trial there was a tape played where Furhman could clearly be heard using racist slurs 41 times in a single recording.
[00:20:46] Now, we haven’t properly addressed this yet, but the entire case was permeated by racial tensions.
[00:20:54] O.J. Simpson was black. The murder victims, his ex-wife Nicole and the waiter, Ron, were both white.
[00:21:04] What’s more, the early 1990s was a period of particularly high racial tensions in the US. In 1992 there had been riots in Los Angeles after four police officers had been found not guilty of the beating of an African American man called Rodney King despite clear evidence that they had done it.
[00:21:28] By many, especially in the African American community, the police were seen as corrupt and racist, which was exactly the argument that O.J.’s defence put forward.
[00:21:40] So, this was the background to the trial, which took place at the start of 1995.
[00:21:48] Now, as you may know, the way in which criminal trials work in the United States is that the prosecution and the defence seek to fill the jury with members who they believe will be sympathetic to their arguments.
[00:22:05] Of course, members of the jury are meant to be completely impartial and unbiased, but they are human after all. We all have inherent biases that we may or may not be aware of.
[00:22:19] From an initial pool of over 300 potential jurors, the final jury was made up of ten women and two men.
[00:22:29] And in terms of the racial makeup, there were 9 black jurors, two white, and one Hispanic.
[00:22:38] In the afternoon of October 2nd, 1995, an estimated 100 million people tuned in to hear the verdict.
[00:22:49] After eight months of listening to the evidence, the jury had decided.
[00:22:55] O.J. Simpson was declared not guilty of murder, and he would walk free that very afternoon.
[00:23:05] It was a hugely divisive event in US race relations, and there was a clear split between white and black Americans in terms of whether they felt O.J. was guilty or not.
[00:23:19] At the time of the trial, approximately 75% of white Americans thought O.J. Simpson was guilty while 70% of black Americans thought he was innocent.
[00:23:31] These were people who had heard exactly the same evidence, as it had all been broadcast on national television and written up in the newspaper, but had come to radically different conclusions.
[00:23:45] Now, this balance has shifted slightly, which was not helped by a bizarre event in 2007 when O.J. Simpson was involved in an armed robbery in a hotel in Las Vegas.
[00:23:58] In this trial he was found guilty and sentenced to 33 years in prison.
[00:24:04] The number of people who now believe that O.J. was the knife-wielding murderer of his ex-wife has increased, with 83% of white Americans and 57% of black Americans believing that he was guilty.
[00:24:19] And indeed, O.J. was found guilty in a civil case of something called “wrongful death”.
[00:24:27] This was a civil case not a criminal one, so it meant that he wasn’t faced with any jail time, but he was ordered to pay 33.5 million dollars in damages to the families of Nicole Brown and Ron Goodman, which he has apparently still not done.
[00:24:45] So, was justice done?
[00:24:48] You have heard the evidence, and perhaps you have come to your own conclusions about his innocence or guilt.
[00:24:55] If you believe that O.J. Simpson was innocent all along, then his good name has been dragged through the mud and the real killer is still walking free.
[00:25:07] If you believe that O.J. Simpson was guilty, then the real killer is still walking free.
[00:25:14] Indeed, O.J Simpson was released from his 33-year prison sentence for armed robbery in 2017, and he is now a completely free man.
[00:25:26] Whatever side you come down on, the trial of O.J Simpson will go down in history as not just a captivating legal drama but a complex story that involves race relations, the cult of celebrity, the media and the police.
[00:25:42] And ultimately, it leaves us with plenty of interesting questions about the judicial system and the inherently human biases that might make two people who hear exactly the same thing come to completely different conclusions.
[00:25:59] OK then, that is it for today's episode on The Trial of O.J. Simpson.
[00:26:05] I know it was quite a long one, but there was a lot to go through. After all, the trial did take 8 months!
[00:26:11] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:26:14] The most obvious question is…did he or didn’t he?
[00:26:18] And if he didn’t, who did? This is actually an interesting question and there are some fascinating theories about this, which unfortunately we didn’t have time to go into today.
[00:26:29] So, let’s get this discussion started.
[00:26:32] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:26:40] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:26:45] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
