A new poll revealed how most Americans will remember the late OJ Simpson – and, spoiler: it’s not his running yards.
About 66% of US adults associate Simpson — who died battling prostate cancer on Wednesday at age 76 — with the infamous 1995 murder trial in which he was acquitted for the killing of his ex-wife and her friend, according to a survey from YouGov.
A paltry 17% said they will remember the Heisman Trophy winner for his record-setting, 11-season career with the NFL, the poll showed.
OJ Simpson was acquitted of murdering his wife and her friend during a sensational murder trial in 1995. AFP via Getty Images
Even fewer people — only 6% — said they immediately associated Simpson with his B-movie career, which peaked with a guest spot in “Naked Gun” in 1988.
About 11% of the 3,841 respondents said they were not sure exactly what to make of the disgraced celebrity.
Simpson’s death this week drew a litany of responses across the country — most notably from those who were directly impacted by the 1994 murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman.
“The news of Ron’s killer passing away is a mixed bag of complicated emotions and reminds us that the journey through grief is not linear,” Goldman’s father and sister said in a statement Thursday.
After retiring from football, Simpson became a minor film actor. Bettmann Archive
“For three decades we tirelessly pursued justice for Ron and Nicole, and despite a civil judgment and his confession in ‘If I Did It,’ the hope for true accountability has ended,” they added, hours after his father, Fred, scathingly described his death as “no great loss.”
Though Simpson was found not guilty of stabbing Brown, 35, and Goldman, 25, to death outside the former’s Brentwood home, the families of the victims always insisted on his guilt.
Simpson was ordered to pay the loved ones of both victims $33 million total in a civil judgment in 1997 — though the unpaid amount had ballooned to a staggering $100 million at the time of his death, the Goldmans’ attorney claimed.
Simpson made a name for himself as a star running back for the USC Trojans in the late 1960s. NCAA Photos via Getty Images
Nearly 30 years after Brown and Goldman were killed, the truth about their deaths still divided some Americans.
As of 2024, about 61% of US adults believed that Simpson — who subjected Brown to years of abuse that continued even after their 1992 divorce — was the real killer, a YouGov poll revealed.
Twenty-eight percent of respondents, however, were unconvinced, while 11% insisted that he was not guilty.
OJ Simpson and Nicole Brown Simpson, who had two kids together, divorced in 1992. Bei/Shutterstock
Alan Dershowitz, the firebrand attorney who rounded out Simpson’s “Dream Team” of defense lawyers during the during his murder trial, told NBC that he was saddened by the former NFL player’s death.
“I knew he was very sick, so I’m upset that he died,” Dershowitz, 85, said.
“I got to know him fairly well during the trial. It was one of the most divisive trials in American history along racial lines,” the former Harvard Law professor added.
Simpson’s acquittal is still one of the most controversial moments in American legal history. Getty Images
In another conversation with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Dershowitz said that he would have represented the Brown or Goldman families if they “called [him] first.”
“I’m very sympathetic with the Goldmans and the Brown family and I wish I could have been on their side, but I wasn’t, and in the end, I think history will remember OJ Simpson as someone who possibly did it, but who the police tried to frame,” he shrugged.
Source link: https://nypost.com/2024/04/12/us-news/poll-reveals-how-most-americans-will-remember-oj-simpson/