June 17: On This Day in World History … briefly
Following a televised low-speed highway chase, OJ Simpson is arrested for the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.
1994: World watches as OJ Simpson avoids the long arm of the law
Orenthal James Simpson, nicknamed The Juice, is a former American football running back, broadcaster, actor, advertising spokesman and convicted robber and kidnapper.
Simpson attended the University of Southern California (USC), where he played football for the USC Trojans and won the Heisman Trophy in 1968. He played professionally as a running back in the NFL for 11 seasons, primarily with the Buffalo Bills from 1969 to 1977. He also played for the San Francisco 49ers from 1978 to 1979. In 1973, he became the first NFL player to rush for more than 2 000 yards in a season.
He holds the record for the single season yards-per-game average, which stands at 143.1. He was the only player to ever rush for over 2 000 yards in the 14-game regular season NFL format. Simpson was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1983 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985. After retiring from football, he began new careers in acting and football broadcasting.
He was tried on two counts of murder for the slashing deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman. On the morning of June 13, 1994, the couple was found stabbed to death outside Brown’s condominium in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Simpson was a person of interest in their murders. He did not turn himself in.
On June 17 he became the object of a low-speed pursuit in a white 1993 Ford Bronco SUV owned and driven by his friend Al Cowlings. TV stations interrupted coverage of the 1994 NBA Finals to broadcast the incident. The pursuit was watched live by an estimated 95 million people. The pursuit, arrest and trial were among the most widely publicised events in American history.
The trial – often characterised as the trial of the century because of its international publicity – spanned eleven months, from the jury’s swearing-in on November 9, 1994. Opening statements were made on January 24, 1995, and the verdict was announced on October 3, 1995, when Simpson was acquitted on two counts of murder.
The families of the victims subsequently filed a civil suit against him, and in 1997 a civil court awarded a $33.5 million judgment against him for the victims’ wrongful deaths. In 2000, he moved to Florida to avoid paying any more of the liability judgment, settling in Miami. In 2007, Simpson was arrested in Las Vegas, Nevada, and charged with the felonies of armed robbery and kidnapping. In 2008, he was convicted and sentenced to 33 years imprisonment, with a minimum of nine years without parole. He served his sentence at the Lovelock Correctional Center near Lovelock, Nevada. Simpson was granted parole on July 20, 2017. He was eligible for release from prison on October 1, 2017, and released on the same day. Following his acquittal, no additional arrests related to the murders have been made, and the crime remains unsolved to this day.
Most notable historic snippets or facts extracted from the book ‘On This Day’ first published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London, as well as additional supplementary information extracted from Wikipedia.
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