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Orenthal James Simpson

[simp-suhn]

(born July 9, 1947, San Francisco, Calif., U.S.) U.S. football player. At the University of Southern California as a running back (1965–68), he set rushing records, was named All-American, and won the Heisman Trophy (1968). He joined the Buffalo Bills in 1969, with whom he continued to set records, and he became a great box-office draw. Knee injuries led to his being traded in 1978 to the San Francisco 49ers; he retired after the 1979 season. Handsome and genial, he became a popular film and television actor. In 1994 he was charged with the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. The resulting trial and acquittal generated unprecedented media coverage and public debate. A separate civil trial in 1997 found Simpson guilty in a wrongful-death suit. He later collaborated on If I Did It, a hypothetical confession to the murders. Public outrage prevented its initial publication in 2006, but a bankruptcy court subsequently awarded the book's rights to the Goldman family, who released the work in 2007. Later that year, Simpson was arrested after he and several other men entered a Las Vegas hotel room and took memorabilia items that Simpson claimed had been stolen from him. In 2008 he was convicted of a number of crimes related to the incident, including armed robbery and kidnapping, and sentenced to a minimum of nine years in prison.

Learn more about Simpson, O(renthal) J(ames) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

Frank Schmalleger

Frank Schmalleger is the director of the Justice Research Association. In 1974, he received a Ph.D. in sociology (with a special emphasis in criminology) from Ohio State University. He is a professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. He has also been affiliated with Webster University and was part of the online faculty of Connected Education.

Schmalleger is a member of the Advisory Board of APB News Online. and is founder and co-director of the Criminal Justice Distance Learning Consortium. He is also the founding editor of The Justice Professional, and serves as editor for Criminal Justice in the Twenty-first Century, as well as Imprint Advisor for the Criminal Justice Reference Series.

Quotes

"In order to communicate knowledge we must first catch, then hold, a person’s interest—be it student, colleague, or policymaker. Our writing, our speaking, our teaching, and our research must be relevant to the problems facing people today, and they must—in some way—help solve those problems."
"It is my hope that the technological and publishing revolutions will combine with growing social awareness to facilitate needed changes in our system; and will supplant self-serving system-perpetuated injustices with new standards of equity, compassion, understanding, fairness, and justice for all."