Los Angeles has renamed a public school after Johnnie Cochran, the late criminal defense lawyer who helped clear “Trial of the Century” murder defendant O.J. Simpson.
School district officials voted unanimously for the name change Tuesday, saying Cochran, who attended the former Mt. Vernon Middle School as a boy, was an “extraordinary, superb lawyer with movie-star celebrity status.”
But the sister of Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, whom the former star football player and actor was charged with stabbing and slashing to death, said she was stunned by the move.
“It’s in bad taste,” Denise Brown told Reuters. “Yeah, he was a great defense attorney. But what about your moral obligation to children and society?”
‘If it doesn't fit, you must acquit’
Cochran, who died last year of a brain tumor at age 67, was the lead attorney for Simpson. He accused Los Angeles police of framing his client because he was black and famously told the jury, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit,” in reference to a bloody glove found at Simpson’s house.
Simpson was charged with the 1994 killing of his ex-wife and her friend, Ron Goldman, in a court case dubbed the “Trial of the Century” by U.S. media.
He was acquitted for the murders in 1995 in a verdict that deeply split the country along racial lines. In 1997 a civil court jury held Simpson liable for the deaths and ordered him to pay $33.5 million in damages to the families of the victims.
Cochran also represented Michael Jackson when the pop star was accused of child molestation in the mid-1990s.
