OJ Simpson’s “Dream Team” defense attorney Alan Dershowitz said the acquitted double-murder suspect will “always have a mixed legacy.”
Dershowitz was one of nine attorneys — along with Robert Blasier, Carl Douglas, Johnnie Cochran, Robert Shapiro, F. Lee Bailey, Barry Scheck, Robert Kardashian, Peter Neufeld, Gerald F. Uelmen and Shawn Holley — when Simpson, who died at 76 from cancer on April 10, was put on trial for the killing of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994.
“He will always have a mixed legacy. But, he’ll always be remembered as the defendant in the very important trial of 1995,” Dershowitz said.
“He was very smart. He didn’t always listen to his lawyers’ advice. [I)[ told [Simpson] once he got acquitted to assume a low profile. [He] did not,” the lawyer recalled.
“He did some foolish things writing a book [If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer], or he went on a lot of television shows. [He] did not do himself very much good,” Dershowitz told People.
The lawyer, who is also an author and legal pundit, stressed Simpson’s “Trial of the Century” — which went on for 11 months from 1994 to 1995 — “had a big impact on the American justice system, on media coverage of trials, on corruption.”
“He had a big impact on racial divisions … he left a mark,” Dershowitz added.
Simpson was arrested in 1994 in connection with the death of Goldman and Brown Simpson, who was stabbed so fiercely that medical examiners said her head was almost decapitated.
The victims were stabbed to death outside Brown Simpson’s Los Angeles home on June 12, 1994. Despite his acquittal in his criminal trial, Simpson was later found liable for the murders in a civil case and ordered to pay $33.5 million in compensation.
It’s been reported Simpson paid $50,000 a day for his huge defense team in the criminal trial, funded by memorabilia he signed while behind bars.
