THE charismatic lawyer Johnnie Cochran, famed for his successful defence of the American football star OJ Simpson on murder charges, has died from a brain tumour. He was 67.
Cochran was a crusader against police abuse, often in cases that involved black clients.
However, he is best known for his role in the "trial of the century". Simpson, a sports star-turned-actor, was charged with murder in 1995, accused of stabbi
ng to death his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman. Cochran presented the case against his client as a conspiracy led by a bigoted white policeman.
In his 2002 autobiography,
A Lawyer’s Life, Cochran said the trial "changed my life drastically and forever in ways impossible to even imagine. It obscured everything I had done previously".
A stylish dresser in court, he later became something of a pop-culture icon, appearing on television and films, often as himself.
Cochran began his career on the other side of the legal divide, as a prosecutor. A notable early target was the comedian Lenny Bruce, whom he prosecuted on obscenity charges in 1964.
His first big private case involved the 1966 shooting of a black man, Leonard Deadwyler, who had been racing to take his pregnant wife to hospital and was killed after being stopped by a Los Angeles policeman. The officer, who claimed self-defence, faced no charges and Cochran lost a civil lawsuit against the city, but the case established him as a major civil-rights lawyer.
His other famous clients included Michael Jackson, the Diff’rent Strokes actor Todd Bridges, and rappers Tupac Shakur and Snoop Doggy Dog.
The full article contains 302 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
