Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog with some 4.5 million views on Google Plus alone.Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, and who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview, CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S
By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief
LAS VEGAS, Nevada-Legendary former pro football Hall of Famer O.J. Simpson was released from prison on parole early Sunday morning after serving nine years of a nine -to-33-year sentence for kidnapping and robbery, a sentenced handed down in 2008 and viewed by some, mainly Blacks, as excessive and pay back for his acquittal as a Black man in 1995 on charges he gruesomely murdered White ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, 35, and her associate, Ronald Goldman, 25, who was Jewish but could pass for White.
According to public records, Simpson will reside in a gated community at a friend's home in Las Vegas.
The robbery and kidnapping case was far different than the football legend's infamous trial in the 90s when he was 48, and still good looking, and accused of stabbing Brown Simpson and Goldman to death in 1994 at her Brentwood, Los Angeles home.
Simpson, 70, won his celebrated capital murder case, which further divided America along racial lines, in a California courtroom, a not guilty verdict rendered by a majority Black jury after then Los Angeles detective Mark Furhman was called out on the stand for tainting evidence and using the N-word.
He won with the late Johnny Cochran as his lawyer, and via a legal team, led by Cochran, that was famously dubbed "the dream team."
The brilliant Cochran, famous for winning record breaking excessive force and police brutality lawsuits against Los Angeles police and the city, died of of a brain tumor in 2005.
The motive for the killings, said prosecutors at trial, was jealousy.
Simpson claimed he was innocent, and the jury agreed.
With a pair of gloves that Simpson was accused by the prosecution of wearing to commit the murders as the focal point, gloves that would not fit Simpson's hands during a defense demonstration at trial during testimony by Simpson, coupled with Cochran's famous words to the jury that "if it don't fit acquit," Cochran won Simpson's freedom from conviction on double murder charges with penalties that carried a death sentence.
Hardly could he imagine, though, that his famous client would later score nine years in prison, in part because of backlash relative to an unrelated criminal case that he helped him win decades earlier.
What a difference a lawyer makes.
Following his acquittal, Simpson lost a $33 million wrongful death civil judgment to the families of Brown Simpson and Goldman,
Some pundits say the once arrogant Simpson could never overcome the stigma of charges he murdered his White ex-wife and Goldman, Simpson adding fuel to the fire by continuing to date White women after his 1995 acquittal, which became his undoing in a racially divided country where racism is still alive and and bi-racial marriage is not yet as acceptable as one might expect.
And Cochran was dead and long gone when Simpson met his fate nine years ago before a majority White and largely female 12-member jury in a Las Vegas courtroom on the robbery and kidnapping charges, charges stemming from a 2007 confrontation with a memorabilia dealer that Simpson said was scamming him, Simpson the ring leader but not the one with the gun used for intimidation, the other defendants, all part of his entourage the day the crimes were committed, taking plea deals to avoid prison in exchange for turning evidence for the state against Simpson.
Though he did not testify in that case he said at a later hearing that he went to "go get his stuff," and that his defense attorney, Yale Galanter, allegedly did not tell him of a plea deal.
Simpson won the Heisman Trophy as a ballplayer at college at USC.
He played most of his 10-year NFL career with the Buffalo Bills after being drafted in the first round in 1969 and was traded to the San Francisco 49ers in his hometown toward the end of his career, where he played for two more years.
He went to the Pro Bowl five times, and was the NFL's most valuable player in 1973.
When he retired from the pro-football league in 1979 he was second on the NFL's all time rushing list, and is now at 22, behind 21 others, including Emmett Smith, who holds first place, and Walter, who follows in second place.
His good looks brought him lucrative post-NFL advertising contracts with companies such Hertz Rent a Car, and stunts as a C-list actor.
Simpson has four grown children, two of them, Arnelle and Jason, with first wife Marguerite Simpson, who was Black and his high school sweetheart, and two, Sydneey and Justin, with Brown Simpson, whom he met when she was a waitress.
A fifth child, Aaren, whom he had with Marguerite, died in 1979 at two-years-old in the family's swimming pool.
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog with some 4.5 million views on Google Plus alone.Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, and who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview, CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.
