WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre offered condolences Thursday following the death of OJ Simpson — but made no mention of the two people he was accused, and sensationally acquitted, of killing nearly three decades ago.
“Our thoughts are with his families [sic] during this difficult time — obviously with his family and loved ones,” Jean-Pierre said at her regular briefing.
“And I’ll say this, I know that they have asked for some privacy. And so we’re going to respect that. And I’ll just leave it there.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre speaks during a press briefing at the White House, Thursday, April 11, 2024, in Washington. APSimpson’s family announced his death from prostate cancer Thursday morning on social media. He was 76.
A star running back at the University of Southern California, Simpson won the Heisman Trophy as the nation’s outstanding college player in 1968 before playing 11 NFL seasons with the Buffalo Bills and his hometown San Francisco 49ers.
However, Simpson is best remembered for being arrested and charged in the June 12, 1994, murder of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman.
The football superstar and Hollywood actor, who was acquitted of charges he killed his former wife and her friend but later found liable in a separate civil trial, has died. APBrown had repeatedly accused Simpson — by this time a popular actor, NFL analyst and TV pitchman — of physical abuse during their seven-year marriage, which ended in 1992.
After making arrangements to turn himself in five days after the murders, Simpson instead led police in a bizarre, slow-speed freeway chase, broadcast in primetime across the nation, that ended in his arrest in the driveway of his Brentwood, Calif. mansion.
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The proceedings that followed, dubbed the “Trial of the Century,” are best remembered for Simpson’s “Dream Team” of attorneys, led by Johnnie Cochran, arguing that the arrest and prosecution were fueled by racial animus on the part of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Despite overwhelming physical evidence linking him to the killings, Simpson was found not guilty on Oct. 3, 1995, by a jury made up of nine black panelists, one Hispanic citizen and two white Angelinos.
Following a civil lawsuit filed by Goldman’s family, a jury found Simpson liable for Brown and Goldman’s deaths in 1997 and ordered him to pay $33.5 million.
