Murder trial of O. J. Simpson

The People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson was a criminal trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court, in which former NFL player and actor O. J. Simpson was tried and acquitted for the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman, who were stabbed to death outside Brown's home in Los Angeles on June 12, 1994. The trial spanned eight months, from January 24 to October 3, 1995.

Though prosecutors argued that Simpson was implicated by a significant amount of forensic evidence, he was acquitted of both murders on October 3. Commentators agree that to convince the jury to acquit Simpson, the defense capitalized on anger among the city's African-American community toward the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), which had a history of racial bias and had inflamed racial tensions in the beating of Rodney King and subsequent riots two years prior. The trial was often characterized by the media as "the trial of the century" because of its international publicity and has been described as the "most publicized" criminal trial in history. Simpson was formally charged with the murders on June 17; when he did not turn himself in at the agreed time, he became the subject of a police pursuit. TV stations interrupted coverage of game 5 of the 1994 NBA Finals to broadcast live coverage of the pursuit, which was watched by around 95 million people. The pursuit and Simpson's arrest were very widely publicized events in the United States.

Simpson was represented by a high-profile defense team, referred to as the "Dream Team", initially led by Robert Shapiro and subsequently directed by Johnnie Cochran.