Hinge moment at the O.J. ‘Trial of the Century’

Simpson: Center stage

O.J. Simpson never testified at his sensational double-murder trial in 1995.

Even so, a consistent feature of the often-absorbing, often-repellant case was that Simpson was never far from center stage — especially so at key moments in the proceedings, which stretched from late January to early October and ended in his acquittal.

One of the trial’s most memorable and decisive moments came 20 years ago this week, when an assistant prosecutor surprised the courtroom, and his colleagues, by asking Simpson to try on a pair of blood-stained brown leather gloves believed worn in the fatal attack on Nicole Simpson and Ronald L. Goldman.

One glove had been found at the murder scene, outside Nicole Simpson’s condominium in west Los Angeles. Its mate was found by a police detective outside of O.J. Simpson’s mansion a few miles away.

The gloves-wearing demonstration in the Los Angeles courtroom took place June 15, 1995. It was a memorable, theatrical, and even farcical moment in what widely was often called the “Trial of the Century.”

The demonstration brought Simpson squarely to center stage and he milked the moment, standing before the jury box as he appeared to struggle mightily to tug on the gloves over latex gloves he was obliged to wear, to avoid contaminating evidence.

He grimaced repeatedly. and said so that jurors could hear, “Too tight.”

And he smirked faintly, in apparent triumph.

As I note in my book, 1995: The Year the Future Began, the gloves did seem small for Simpson’s hands. But they likely had shrunk in the testing that they had been exposed to.

In any case, “the ill-advised demonstration had allowed Simpson to testify in effect, without having to face cross-examination.” I write.

The prosecution’s bungled move also inspired a rallying cry for Simpson’s defense lawyers — an idiom that remains familiar despite the passage of 20 years. In closing remarks at the trial, Simpson’s lead lawyer, Johnnie Cochran, recalled how Simpson struggled to pull on the gloves, advising jurors:

“[R]emember these words; if it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”

Cochran described the gloves gambit as “perhaps the single most defining moment in this trial,” adding:

“We may all live to be 100 years old, and I hope we do, but you’ll always remember that those gloves, when Darden asked him to try them on, didn’t fit.”

WJC

More from The 1995 Blog:

• The inevitability of O.J. Simpson’s acquittal in 1995
• 20 years on: Recalling O.J.’s wretched bestseller
• So. Africa case like the O.J. Simpson trial in 1995? Only marginally
• Clinton, his portrait, and the persistent shadow of scandal
• When Secret Service agents wore gloves to greet gay officials
• Recalling the ’95 case against lecherous Bob Packwood, whom Biden praised
• Recalling the ‘coolness’ of the early Web
• Anniversaries, controversies for Amazon.com
• What did the ’90s mean?
• The ’90s deserve better
• Why 1995?