The Juice
Orenthal James Simpson (July 9, 1947 – April 10, 2024), nicknamed "the Juice", was an American football player, actor, and media personality. He played in the National Football League (NFL) for 11 seasons—nine with the Buffalo Bills—and is regarded as one of the greatest running backs of all time. His success is widely considered to be overshadowed by his two criminal charges for the 1994 murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman, and the contentious criminal trial in which he was acquitted on both counts.
Simpson played college football for the USC Trojans, winning the 1968 Heisman Trophy as a senior. He was selected first overall by the Bills in the 1969 NFL/AFL draft. With the Bills, he received five consecutive Pro Bowl and first-team All-Pro selections from 1972 to 1976. He led the league in rushing yards four times, in rushing touchdowns twice, and in points scored in 1975. Simpson became the first NFL player to rush for more than 2,000 yards in a season—earning him 1973's NFL Most Valuable Player (MVP) award—and he is the only player to do so in a 14-game regular season. He also holds the record for the single-season yards-per-game average, at 143.1.
After retiring with the San Francisco 49ers in 1979, Simpson was inducted to the College Football Hall of Fame and Pro Football Hall of Fame. He acted in film and television—notably, in the Naked Gun film franchise—and was also a sportscaster for NBC and ABC, and a celebrity spokesman for various brands, notably Hertz.
On June 12, 1994, Brown and Goldman were fatally stabbed at Brown's home in Los Angeles. On the 17th, Simpson was issued an arrest warrant for the murders; within hours, he and his friend Al Cowlings had gone missing, as Cowlings drove him away from public view in a now-iconic white Ford Bronco. Authorities found the car, then chased it across L.A. County as Simpson threatened suicide with a gun. Aerial telecopter footage of the chase was broadcast live to ~95 million concurrent viewers.
Simpson's murder trial from January to October 1995 was also televised, and received international publicity. It exacerbated racial divisions in the U.S.; Simpson, a black man, was accused of killing two white people, while his defense team claimed that the L.A. Police Department had tried to frame him for the crime in an act of racist corruption. Simpson's acquittal was viewed on television by approximately 100–150 million people. In 1997, he was found liable for the murders in a civil case brought on by the victims' families; he ultimately paid little of the resulting $33.5 million judgment. A 2007 nonfiction book that Simpson co-authored detailed a hypothetical scenario in which he committed both murders and then escaped punishment; he still claimed that in reality, he was innocent.
In 2007, Simpson was arrested in Las Vegas and charged with armed robbery and kidnapping. He was convicted in 2008, and sentenced to 33 years' imprisonment, with a minimum of nine years without parole. He was incarcerated at Lovelock Correctional Center in Nevada until 2017, when he was released on parole. He then lived in Florida and Nevada until his death in 2024 from cancer.
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