A left-wing professor at City University of New York (CUNY) said the acquittal of OJ Simpson was “correct and necessary” because of the alleged “racist criminal legal system.”
Simpson died from prostate cancer at the age of 76 Wednesday night surrounded by his four surviving children and grandchildren. He infamously was acquitted on Oct. 3, 1995, after he stood trial for the alleged double-murder of his late wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman.
The professor, Marc Lamont Hill, adamantly expressed his belief that Simpson “killed two people in cold blood,” but had to be acquitted because the criminal justice system is racist.
“O.J. Simpson was an abusive liar who abandoned his community long before he killed two people in cold blood,” Hill wrote on Twitter Thursday. “His acquittal for murder was the correct and necessary result of a racist criminal legal system. But he’s still a monster, not a martyr.”
O.J. Simpson was an abusive liar who abandoned his community long before he killed two people in cold blood. His acquittal for murder was the correct and necessary result of a racist criminal legal system. But he’s still a monster, not a martyr.
— Marc Lamont Hill (@marclamonthill) April 11, 2024
Simpson met his now-deceased second wife while she worked at a Beverly Hills nightclub when she was 18 years old, according to Today. The couple tied the knot in 1985 and had two children, Sydney and Justin. Brown Simpson and Goldman were found dead by stabbing wounds outside of her Los Angeles home on June 12, 1994.
Though Simpson was acquitted of committing the double murder, a civil court found him liable for their deaths and ordered him to pay $33 million in damages in February 1997, according to The New York Times.
The Simpson trial caused a racial divide throughout the U.S. at the time, with many black Americans not trusting the American criminal justice system and believing it would not properly provide substantial evidence against Simpson, according to USA Today. Many were distrustful of the Los Angeles criminal court system in particular after footage caught police beating Rodney King three years prior.