On June 17, 1994 celebrity and NFL player OJ Simpson had failed turn himself in to the LAPD in connection with the killing of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.
He was spotted on the 5 Freeway in the back seat of his friend Al Cowlings’ Ford Bronco, sobbing and holding a .357 revolver to Cowlings’ head as he drove.
Simpson’s former football coach John McKay pleaded on the radio for Simpson to surrender. While watching the events unfold, Tom Lange realized he had Simpson’s cell phone number and managed to connect to him. Eventually Simpson was talked into surrendering.
The chase ended at 8:00 pm at his Brentwood estate, where 27 SWAT officers awaited. After remaining in the Bronco for about 45 minutes, Simpson exited and went inside for about an hour; a police spokesman stated that he spoke to his mother and drank a glass of orange juice.
Inside the Bronco, police found $8,000 in cash, a change of clothing, a loaded .357 Magnum, a United States passport, family pictures, and a disguise kit with a fake goatee and mustache.
I’m sure people will downvote me for this, but…
I remember my parents glued to the TV at the time and I, at 16, said, “who gives a shit? It’s just a football player.” And then there was the trial and my parents watched it every day and laughed at the Dancing Judge Itos on Leno and I said, “who gives a shit? It’s just a football player.” I mean yes, it’s a miscarriage of justice that he got let off when he was so obviously guilty, but that’s what happens when you can afford really expensive lawyers.
I have never understood why people are so obsessed with it. The only time I ever even think of it is when someone claims that “X is innocent because the court found him innocent” and I ask the person if that means OJ is innocent.
I lived in a mostly black neighborhood during this time, this was being looked at as Rodney king 2.0 and if he was guilty there were going to be riots, kinda hard to conceptionilize what it was like during that time period.
From the BBC (2016):
I’d like to read the whole thing, because I would say the first two were more brought into the American consciousness by the L.A. riots. The other two- I can see domestic violence and I already mentioned the effects of money on the justice system.
In fact, I would say the fact that he was able to buy his way out of it says very little about the plight of the average black person in the justice system.