OJ Simpson, 1947-2024

Orenthal James (OJ) Simpson died yesterday at the age of 76.

Those of us of an age still remember Simpson as a football Hall of Famer and a sometime actor, perhaps known best for rôles in the Naked Gun series and the conspiracy thriller Capricorn One. But for everyone alive today, all that was upstaged in June 1994.

On the evening of June 12, Simpson's ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ron Goldman were found dead in her condominium. I was awakened the next morning by the TV news announcing that OJ was a person of interest in the murder. Then, on the following Friday, I joined my floormates in my residence's common room to watch Simpson's slow-speed chase down a LA freeway in a Ford Bronco with a gun to his own head, pursued by several police cruisers. (I wrote a little more about that experience on the 20th anniversary of the chase.)

I again joined my roommates at the TV on October 3, 1995, to see a jury declare Simpson "not guilty"—one of the most-watched events in TV history. It's been said that nearly half a billion dollars of productivity was lost that afternoon. The Simpson trial was an absolute media circus, and if not for the fame achieved by his defence attorney, we may have been spared of ever hearing the name "Kardashian."

Simpson was acquitted in criminal court, but subsequently lost a wrongful-death lawsuit brought against him by Nicole Brown Simpson's and Ron Goldman's families. He was also later convicted of robbery and spent nine years in prison from 2008–17. The majority opinion, though by no means the consensus (especially amongst blacks) is that OJ got away with murder. I've always sat in the majority. Once his trial was over, he said he was devoting himself to finding the "real murderer." Not surprisingly, he never found him. In 2007, HarperCollins was set to publish a book supposedly written by Simpson, titled If I Did It, purportedly a hypothetical description of the murders. The resulting scandal led to the cancellation of the book, the rights to which were acquired by the Goldman family as part of their civil judgment. They had it published with a cover design that suggested, instead, "I Did It." If Simpson was indeed the author, it seems to me he was rubbing our noses in the truth.

OJ Simpson was a murderer. Now that he has passed on, we can finally call him what he was, without dancing around defamation laws. You can't defame the dead. Simpson may have escaped justice in this life, but now he will have to explain himself to his Maker.