Word: cochrans
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...Simpson's pleading 911 calls to police. While a screen flashed pictures of Nicole's bruised face, followed by her and Ronald Goldman in death, the families of the victims wept. But what may make more of a difference to the verdict is what happened when defense attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr. gave his summation a day earlier. When he reminded the mostly black jury of how often African Americans have been mistreated by racist police, one of the black jurors seemed on the verge of tears...
That gave Cochran the opening to put at the center of his case Mark Fuhrman, the Los Angeles police detective who played a critical role in collecting evidence at the crime scenes--and whose mind, judging from the taped monologues he made for a would-be screenwriter, is a storm of racial fury. But Cochran set off his own kind of racial tempest when he used his closing arguments to call Fuhrman and another Los Angeles officer, Philip Vannatter, "twin devils" and to compare Fuhrman to Adolf Hitler. More than that, he urged the jurors to see a not-guilty...
Even before the verdict, it was plain just how passionately the Simpson case pressed upon the sore spots of the American racial psyche. On Thursday Bill Clinton said he was "concerned" about Cochran's play to racial feeling in his final arguments: "I hope the American people will not let this become some symbol of the larger racial issue in our country...
Some were angered by the tone of defense attorney Johnnie L. Cochran's closing argument and the impact it may have had on the jury's decision...
...doesn't fit, acquit." --Media celebrity and attorney Johnnie Cochran, challenging the reliability of prosecution's evidence in the closing arguments of a double-murder trial in Los Angeles...