Attorney John Q. Kelly, who represented Nicole Brown Simpson's family in the civil lawsuit against O.J. Simpson, told Newsmax on Thursday the former NFL player bought every argument made by his defense team in his criminal trial so much that he convinced himself he didn't murder his ex-wife and her friend Ron Goldman.
Simpson, 76, who died Wednesday after a battle with prostate cancer, was acquitted in 1995 in the criminal case. But in February 1997, he was found liable for the deaths of his ex-wife and Goldman in the civil trial and ordered to pay $33.5 million.
"He drank the Kool-Aid of his defense team that everything was framed, everything was plotted against him," Kelly told "The Record With Greta Van Susteren." "It was LA cops — the white LA cops — trying to bring another Black man down ,and he was innocent all along; and, you know, the jury [in the criminal trial] proved it."
Kelly said the civil trial turned against Simpson due to evidence showing him wearing Bruno Magli shoes. A bloody size 12 Bruno Magli shoe print was found at the crime scene, and Simpson wore size 12 shoes. Simpson, though, denied ever owning that brand of shoe. But in the civil trial, Kelly's team found a photo of him wearing the shoe brand at a Buffalo Bills game honoring his 1973 season, in which he rushed for 2,003 yards.
"The whole tenor in the courtroom changed that Monday morning after the photos came into evidence," Kelly said. "Simpson's attorneys sort of turned their backs on each other. They knew the end game was there. And I'm sure Simpson had told his attorneys he'd never had a pair of shoes like that [and didn't think] that photo of him in those shoes would ever show up. And when [it] did, it was just the nail in the coffin, so to speak."
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Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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