Orenthal James Simpson aka O.J. Simpson, a former NFL star and broadcaster whose athletic achievements and fame were eclipsed by his 1995 acquitta
Orenthal James Simpson aka O.J. Simpson, a former NFL star and broadcaster whose athletic achievements and fame were eclipsed by his 1995 acquittal in the brutal killings of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman, is dead.
He died on Wednesday at his home in Las Vegas surrounded by his children and grandchildren.
He was aged 76.
The cause of his death was prostrate cancer.
While Simpson was a highly decorated athlete, winning the 1968 Heisman Trophy as a senior running back at the University of Southern California before playing for the NFL’s Buffalo Bills and later the San Francisco 49ers, he became perhaps one of the most controversial figures of the late 20th century after he was charged with the murders of his former wife and her friend.
A jury found him not guilty in a trial that saw America’s fascination with celebrity collide with its centuries long struggle with race, as well as issues of class, policing and criminal justice.
Those themes and the judge’s decision to allow the trial to be televised – coalesced in what many called a “Trial of the Century” that held the country’s attention in a vise grip for nearly nine months before evolving into a cultural touchstone.
In 1997, another jury unanimously deemed Simpson liable for Brown Simpson’s and Goldman’s wrongful deaths in a civil lawsuit brought by Goldman’s family and ordered him to pay $33.5 million in damages.
Simpson maintained his innocence. But by 2016, polling showed most Americans believed he was guilty.
Simpson eventually ended up behind bars in an unrelated case, serving 9 years of a sentence of up to 33 years following his conviction on charges related to a 2007-armed robbery in Las Vegas in which he and others tried to steal at gunpoint of what Simpson said were pieces of his own sports memorabilia.
He was granted parole in 2017.
More recently, Simpson had revived his idol-scale notoriety on Twitter, where he frequently posted videos with his thoughts on football and politics for his nearly 900,000 followers.
