O.J. Simpson’s not guilty verdict stopped the world. Three decades later his death reopened deep, unhealed wounds.
Simpson died of cancer at 76. Nearly 30 years after the "trial of the century," it's clear that the 12 jurors' decision didn’t save anyone — Black, white, rich, poor, anyone — but Simpson.
There is little to say about O.J. Simpson and so much that has been said about what he came to represent.
He died of cancer Thursday at 76. He allegedly killed his former wife and a friend of hers. He was a famous person, a Heisman Trophy winner at USC, a Hall of Fame running back for the Buffalo Bills — the NFL’s single-season record-holder for rushing yards — a familiar television personality on NBC and on Monday Night Football and in Hertz commercials, a wannabe actor willing to be the butt of the Zucker Brothers’ slapstick in The Naked Gun. He also was the consummate example of a privileged and superficial star so spoiled and coddled and worshiped that he believed he could get away with anything. And did.
» READ MORE: How The Inquirer and Daily News covered the O.J. Simpson case
The world did seem to stop on Oct. 3, 1995, when the “not guilty” verdict in Simpson’s criminal trial was revealed, and when the world started again, it was a different place. An expulsion of racial tension and grievance, nonstop cable-news coverage, cameras in the courtroom, talking heads spouting nothing but speculation free of firsthand knowledge, the creation of a cottage industry of empty calories for the mind — something had shifted and would never shift back.
The trial reaffirmed and laid bare the racism within Los Angeles’ police department, and that infection, combined with prosecutorial incompetence, led to a breakdown within the judicial system. It gave 12 jurors a pretext for reasonable doubt, and the fact that Simpson was later found liable in a civil trial for the deaths of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman was a tiny bandage for a wide and deep wound that, nearly three decades on, still hasn’t healed.
The celebrations over the verdict were sickening validations of the vile yet oh-so-satisfying philosophy that two wrongs actually do make a right, that an injustice visited on someone in the present evens out or makes up for an injustice visited on someone else in the past. The verdict didn’t save anyone — Black, white, rich, poor, anyone — but O.J. Simpson. And the murders of two innocent people and the damage to their families were reduced to flotsam in an ocean of narratives about the power of celebrity and societal score-settling and an infinite number of CNN and Fox News segments.
» READ MORE: OJ Simpson, fallen football hero acquitted of murder in ‘trial of the century,’ dies at 76
If you’re unfamiliar with Simpson’s life or his career or the murders or the trial or its aftermath — if you’re over the age of 35, how could you be? — go watch Ezra Edelman’s marvelous documentary O.J.: Made in America or read Vincent Bugliosi’s Outrage. You won’t find any such rehashing of history here. A usual column runs at least 700 words. Better to stop now, after fewer than 500 on O.J. Simpson and the horror and heartache and chaos he wrought. It is more than he deserves.