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On Tuesday, October 3, 1995, the verdict in the O. J. Simpson murder case was announced and Simpson was acquitted on both counts of murder. Although the nation observed the same evidence presented at trial, a division along racial lines emerged in observers opinion of the verdict, which the media dubbed the "racial gap". Immediately following the trial, polling showed that most African Americans believed Simpson was innocent and justice had been served, while most White Americans felt he was guilty and the verdict was a racially motivated jury nullification by a mostly African-American jury. Current polling shows the gap has narrowed since the trial, with the majority of black respondents in 2016 stating they believed Simpson was guilty. The narrowing racial gap is primarily attributed to several factors: Daniel Petrocelli disproving all of the blood planting claims at the wrongful death civil trial, defense witness Henry Lee published a peer review study in 1996 that effectively refuted the contamination claim that disputed the validity of the states DNA evidence, and the fading of Simpson's celebrity status since the trial. Most African Americans believed Simpson was innocent, but that changed one year later after the civil trial when Barry Scheck's contamination claim and all of his blood planting claims were disproven. Without either of them, defending Simpson's innocence became increasingly untenable as there was no justification for doubting the DNA evidence against him. The television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation popularized the reliability of DNA matching with the public as well. Simpson's celebrity status faded among African Americans after he relocated to Florida and disappeared from the public eye. His arrest and conviction in 2008 for armed robbery brought him back into the public spot light, especially after he received a disproportionately higher prison sentence than his co-conspirators, which generated controversy even from his detractors, but the response from African Americans was relatively muted, and pundits opined this demonstrated how much the conscience of Black America has evolved since the time the verdict was announced. The trial and verdict had an historic impact on American culture. It is credited with transforming public opinion about domestic abuse from being considered a private familial matter to a serious crime. The trial is also credited with raising awareness about the stigma that interracial couples still face from both white and African Americans. The passage of California Proposition 209 in 1996 that ended affirmative action in the state is also attributed to the verdict as well because it resulted in declining empathy towards issues of racial discrimination and civil rights among White Americans. A historic drop in diversity in the University of California and California State University education systems followed which later led to a similar lack of diversity seen in the state's White-collar job market, particularly the high tech area of Silicon Valley since most of the early pioneers of the Dot.com boom of the late 1990s were graduates from the UC and CSU systems. In The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse, African American Stanford Law Professor Richard Thompson Ford wrote that the two most important race trials of the 20th century were that of Emmett Till and O.J. Simpson. These national trials are often seen as a test of the nation's conscience. The outcome is often disappointing and that is what motivates positive change. The murder of Till shocked the nation for its brutality, which then turned into outrage after the defendants were speedily acquitted by an all white jury, despite overwhelming evidence of guilt. The outrage then mobilized into the civil rights movement of the 1960s after the defendants' brazen admission one year later. The event was a watershed moment as many white Americans acknowledged the realities of racial injustice in the United States as the admitted murderers of Till, protected by double jeopardy, remained free for the rest of their lives. Ford believes the racial polarization from the Simpson trial left a similar legacy for African Americans. The fact that belief in Simpson's guilt depended on the race of the individual being polled (which should be irrelevant) and not on the evidence against him, demonstrates that the justice system is still compromised by race but the narrowing racial gap demonstrates just the opposite as well because both sides are seeing the same evidence and reaching the same conclusion concerning Simpson's guilt regardless of race. Journalists opined that the killing of Trayvon Martin and murder of George Floyd has revived empathy for racial injustice among white Americans since the trial and point to the strong support for the Black Lives Matter movement, and the attempt, though unsuccessful, to repeal Proposition 209 in 2020. Criticism of the jury Jurors Armanda Cooley, Carrie Bess and Marsha Rubin-Jackson published Madam Foreman: A Rush to Judgement? in January 1996. They describe why they felt there was reasonable doubt despite personally believing Simpson might be guilty. Because it was published only a few months after the verdict and before the other attorneys and detectives published their books, it is considered an accurate picture of what the jury believed when they acquitted Simpson. Critics panned the book, and it became a source of embarrassment for the authors as critics claim it proves many of their claims about the jury. Misunderstanding of DNA evidence Jeffrey Toobin, M. L. Rantala, and Vincent Bugliosi all claim the jurors misunderstood the DNA evidence in the case. Rantala based this on the claims they made in Madam Foreman. Bess wrote she thought the blood at the crime scene belonged to Simpson's children while Cooley wrote she thought the blood actually belonged to criminalist Andrea Mazzola. In Outrage, Bugliosi opined they misunderstood the defense's argument because "contamination cannot change someone's DNA into someone else's" which is what the jurors apparently believed. Toobin wrote they misunderstood the facts of the case regarding the DNA evidence. Jackson wrote she thought Simpson's blood at the crime scene was there before the murders happened. Bess also admitted to not knowing that Simpson's blood was on the glove found at his home that Fuhrman allegedly planted. Cooley admitted to discarding blood evidence without any justification at all. The Juror Beatrice Wilson admitted that "I didn't understand the DNA stuff at all. To me, it was a waste of time. It was way out there and carried absolutely no weight with me." The jurors stopped claiming there was reasonable doubt about the DNA evidence after learning that both of the forensic DNA experts for the defense, Henry Lee and Edward Blake, had rejected the contamination claim that Scheck and Neufeld argued. Blake also admitted that was the reason why he wa.... Discover the Robert A Whitley Steve Darden popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Robert A Whitley Steve Darden books.