+

Cookies on the Business Insider India website

Business Insider India has updated its Privacy and Cookie policy. We use cookies to ensure that we give you the better experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we\'ll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies on the Business Insider India website. However, you can change your cookie setting at any time by clicking on our Cookie Policy at any time. You can also see our Privacy Policy.

Close
HomeQuizzoneWhatsappShare Flash Reads
 

O.J. Simpson's lawyer Alan Dershowitz told us the most lasting impact of the trial

Feb 3, 2016, 20:57 IST

Defense attorney Alan Dershowitz (L) confers with defendant OJ Simpson,as lead attorney Robert Shapiro listens, during a pretrial hearing on evidence suppression in the Simpson murder case.Reuters

While people may call the O.J. Simpson case "the trial of the century," one of his lawyers doesn't think it ranks as one of the most important cases of the 20th century.

Advertisement

"It was a highly publicized trial that established no real important legal principles," his former lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, told Business Insider.

As an appellate adviser for Simpson's defense, Dershowitz helped get Simpson acquitted of the killing of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend, Ron Goldman, in 1995.

But despite his opinion that the case didn't introduce any novel legal principle, Dershowitz still believes the trial helped change the way police behaved in Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) was widely perceived as rife with corruption, police brutality, and racism during the 1990s.

Advertisement

The high-profile case against O.J. Simpson - which was broadcast into many Americans' living rooms - may have contributed to the LAPD's bad reputation. Simpson's team accused police in Los Angeles of mishandling evidence and even planting a notorious bloody glove at Simpson's estate.

"I think it was the first time the LA Police Department was caught doing what it had been doing for years and that is framing 'guilty' people," Dershowitz said. "In their minds O.J. was guilty, and therefore it was OK to frame him."

Johnni CochranAP Photo/Vince Bucci

In one of the more dramatic moments from the trial, the defense team had Simpson try on the glove. It appeared too small for his hand, leading to the suggestion that police may have planted it.

In perhaps the most quotable line of the trial, lead attorney Johnnie Cochran famously exclaimed, "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."

Advertisement

The defense argued similarly that police had smeared some of Simpson's blood on a sock collected at the crime scene to prove he committed the murders.

"I think it was a very common modus operandi in Los Angeles for police to frame people they thought were guilty; to drop drugs near drug dealers, to put guns on people who they thought probably had guns," Dershowitz said.

Cochran agreed, calling the LAPD lab "cesspool of contamination" during the trial.

Dershowitz asserts that claims during the O.J. Simpson trial that the LAPD lied and planted evidence were pivotal to the department's improvement over the past two decades.

Video tape shot by George Holliday earlier this month from his apartment in a suburb of Los Angeles shows what appears to be a group of police officers beating a man with nightsticks and kicking him as other officers look on, March 3, 1991.AP Photo/George Holliday/Courtesy of KTLA Los Angeles

The LAPD had already gotten some bad press by the time Simpson was tried. Just a few years earlier, in 1991, the beating of Rodney King ignited the fury of many LA citizens.

Advertisement

King was a taxi driver who was beaten by four police officers following a high-speed chase. The beating was caught on camera by a local witness and sent to the media. The video footage shocked and horrified people around the world, and further inflamed racial tensions in LA.

All that tension gave way to federal oversight of the LAPD in 2000, when the US Department of Justice entered into a consent decree that allowed for a five-year oversight of the department's reform process.

The Justice Department said the LAPD was "engaging in a pattern or practice of excessive force, false arrests, and unreasonable searches and seizures in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution."

"I think LAPD is a lot cleaner today than it was back then," Dershowitz said.

NOW WATCH: The doctor who inspired the movie 'Concussion' is convinced OJ Simpson has a brain disease

Please enable Javascript to watch this video
You are subscribed to notifications!
Looks like you've blocked notifications!
Next Article