O.J. Simpson
July 9, 1947 — April 10, 2024
O.J. Simpson was one of the greatest running backs in the history of American football, a Heisman Trophy winner, a Pro Football Hall of Famer, and a television personality — and then, in 1994, the defendant in a murder trial so culturally consuming that it effectively split the United States in two along lines of race, wealth, and the meaning of the justice system.
The Juice
Born Orenthal James Simpson on July 9, 1947, in San Francisco, he grew up in the Potrero Hill neighborhood and played football at San Francisco City College before transferring to the University of Southern California. At USC, he won the Heisman Trophy in 1968 with one of the most celebrated seasons in college football history. He was drafted by the Buffalo Bills and became the first player in NFL history to rush for 2,000 yards in a single season (2,003 in 1973). He was named the league MVP that year, made the Pro Bowl five times, and retired in 1979. By that point he had also appeared in films including The Towering Inferno (1974) and the Naked Gun comedy series, becoming a genial television personality and pitchman for Hertz Rent-A-Car.
The Trial of the Century
On June 12, 1994, Simpson's ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman were found stabbed to death outside her Los Angeles home. Simpson was charged with their murders. On June 17, 1994, he was a passenger in a white Ford Bronco on an LA freeway in a slow-speed chase broadcast live on television, watched by an estimated 95 million Americans. The subsequent criminal trial, which ran from January to October 1995, became a nine-month national obsession: 150 million Americans tuned in to hear the verdict. The jury acquitted Simpson after less than four hours of deliberation. Two years later, a civil jury found him liable for their deaths and ordered him to pay $33.5 million in damages.
Did You Know?
In 2007, Simpson was arrested in Las Vegas after he and a group of men entered a hotel room and held two sports memorabilia dealers at gunpoint, claiming they were taking back his stolen memorabilia. He was convicted of armed robbery and kidnapping and sentenced to 33 years in prison, with the possibility of parole. Many observed that the sentence number seemed eerily similar to the $33.5 million civil judgment. He was granted parole in 2017 and released after serving nine years. He settled in Las Vegas and occasionally posted commentary to social media until his death from prostate cancer on April 10, 2024.
A Life That Became a Mirror
O.J. Simpson died of prostate cancer on April 10, 2024, in Las Vegas at age 76. His life had become, decades before his death, something larger than one man — a story about race in America, the gap between celebrity and accountability, and the way a courtroom can become a stage for everything a country argues with itself about. The FX series The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story (2016) introduced the trial to a new generation and won multiple Emmy Awards. He will be remembered simultaneously for a football career of extraordinary brilliance and a cultural moment of equally extraordinary weight.