The O.J. Simpson trial was a criminal trial of former college and professional gridiron football star O.J. Simpson, who was acquitted in 1995 of the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. It was one of the most notorious criminal trials in American history.
On the night of June 12, 1994, Simpson’s ex-wife and Goldman were stabbed to death outside her condominium in Los Angeles, and Simpson quickly became the prime suspect. Rather than surrender to police after being notified of impending charges, on June 17 Simpson hid in the back of a sport-utility vehicle driven by his friend A.C. Cowlings. After being told that Simpson had a gun to his own head, law-enforcement officers followed the vehicle at low speeds for more than an hour. The attempted “escape” was televised live nationally—seen by an estimated 95 million viewers—and hundreds of Simpson’s fans lined the streets in support of him. It ended at Simpson’s home in Brentwood, California, where he was placed under arrest and taken into police custody. Continue reading from Encyclopedia Britannica
