Headcanon: Scott Hunter’s Roman Empire - The OJ Simpson Murder Trial
I’ve only read one fic that addresses this and though the fandom be younger, I was reminded of the OJ Simpson references in popular media on TikTok when someone posted about that scene from Shrek 2 that referenced “the white bronco heading east into the forest,” as a reference to OJ Simpson’s white vehicle.
And it got me thinking because many of my Gen Xer and Millennial Friends have this specific trial as their Roman Empire.
For those confused, a Roman Empire is an obsession and given that we know Scott Hunter is obsessed with true crime and serial killers, I have a good reason to think that based on the time frame of TV! Scott Hunter actor, Francois Arnaud, being born in 1985, and being around 9 years of age when this occurred which was the biggest media story of the year (you literally could not escape the broadcasts or the trial), as being something he would have become obsessed with this case and trial later in his rookie years.
I had the opportunity to watch some of the trial coverage in college during my business law classes, and again in my media ethics course.
For those unfamiliar, I’m copy+Ving from Wikipedia regarding this case to explain it:
The People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson was a criminal trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court, in which former NFL player and actor O. J. Simpson was tried and acquitted for the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman, who were stabbed to death outside Brown's home in Los Angeles on June 12, 1994. The subsequent murder trial spanned eight months, from January 24 to October 3, 1995.
The trial was often characterized by the media as "the trial of the century" because of its international publicity and has been described as the "most publicized" criminal trial in history. It exacerbated racial divisions in the U.S.; Simpson, a black man, was accused of killing two white people, while his defense team claimed that the L.A. Police Department had tried to frame him for the crime in an act of racist corruption.
Commentators agree that to convince the jury to acquit Simpson, the defense capitalized on anger among the city's African-American community toward the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), which had a history of racial bias and had inflamed racial tensions in the beating of Rodney King and subsequent LA riots two years prior.
The case was a seminal event in the history of reality television, helping to revive the genre of court shows like Judge Judy. The Los Angeles Times covered the case on its front page for more than 300 days after the murders. The nightly news broadcasts from the Big Three television networks gave more airtime to the case than to the Bosnian War and the Oklahoma City bombing combined. They served an enthusiastic audience; one company put the loss of national productivity from employees following the case instead of working at $40 billion.
As I remember it, the trial has many problems with it, racial prejudice as well as distrust in law enforcement, police mishandling of evidence and incompetence, tampered or mishandled evidence, jury prejudice, irrelevant witnesses on the stand, a dream team of lawyers serving as the defense attorneys for OJ Simpson (including Kim Kardashian’s Pa, Robert Kardashian), and just a whole host of fuckery that lead to a Not Guilty verdict.
In the early 2000s/2010s there was a flurry of DVDs, documentaries, books and think pieces about this murder trial along with so many cultural changes that become part of society.
Part of this trial impacted the way domestic violence was viewed amongst the general public, (chiefly because it was simply a private and familiar affair, and carried so much stigma). A potential witness for this trial was an advocate for victims of domestic violence, Lenore Walker who published a report on spousal abuse and domestic violence. She asked the question: "of the murdered spouses who were also victims of abuse, what percentage of them were murdered by their current or ex-husband?" She then reported that number was about 80.3 percent. She was dropped as a credible person to bring onto the stand however the prosecution was able to present more evidence of past domestic violence incidents between OJ and Nicole Brown.
The revelation of Simpson's abuse of Brown is partly credited with turning later public opinion against him. The public shock at the reason why Walker was dropped from the defense witness list is credited with transforming public opinion on spousal abuse from a private familial matter to a serious public health issue.
Fears grew that race riots, similar to the riots in 1992, would erupt across Los Angeles and the rest of the country if Simpson were convicted of the murders. As a result, all Los Angeles police officers were put on 12-hour shifts. The police arranged for more than 100 police officers on horseback to surround the Los Angeles County courthouse on the day the verdict was announced, in case of rioting by the crowd.
At 10:07 a.m. on October 3, 1995, Simpson was acquitted on both counts of murder. An estimated 100 million people worldwide watched or listened to the verdict's announcement.
After the verdict, polling showed that 75 percent of White Americans thought Simpson was guilty while 70 percent of Black Americans thought he was innocent. Scholarly consensus is that the trial damaged race relations in America and point to polling which shows that belief in Simpson's guilt depended on the race of the individual and not on the evidence against him. Analysis of the "racial gap" in polling shows that it did not cross the political spectrum.
All in all, this murder trial and criminal case is an absolute flip from beginning to end to OJ Simpson’s subsequent arrest on a civic matter and later death.
Its ramifications can be felt in popular culture still, and in business and legal and even athletics as many still reference this trial.
I firmly believe that Scott Hunter, once older, maybe in his early 20s would have sat down at some point and watched the reran coverage of the murder trial and subsequently deep dived into the lore, the investigation and motivations of this case. It would have hit deeper as a professional athlete not to mention so many of the entertainment and professional sports attorney’s still hold Simpson’s defense team as the gold standard for getting their clients off the hook for horrible crimes and awful behavior. 100% he would have believed OJ Simpson was guilty based on the evidence collected and the murky timelines and trial discussions.
If there is probably one thing that Scott Hunter could speak on and give a lecture about without hesitation for an hour, it would be this trial.
TV! Scott Hunter would have been around the right age (at 9) to faintly remember his parents gathered around the television with friends watching the ongoing coverage and references to NFL Player OJ Simpson, who was inducted to the College Football Hall of Fame and Pro Football Hall of Fame. And he acted in film and television—notably, in the Naked Gun film franchise—and was also a sportscaster for NBC and ABC, and a celebrity spokesman for various brands, notably Hertz. OJ would have been Scott Hunter’s father’s main point of reference in terms of professional athletic success.
The subsequent media obsession in the early 2000s and books about the case would have caught Scott Hunter’s eye and added to his ever growing true crime obsession. There were actual CDs of the court transcripts being read aloud that were available in libraries for people.
It just would have been one of those popular culture zeitgeist things for Scott Hunter growing up that he would have had many feeling about and opinion to talk about.
Links to Read More:
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_trial_of_O._J._Simpson
Murder trial of O. J. Simpson - Wikipedia
Trial Transcripts Full: simpson.walraven.org
Jack Walraven's Simpson trial transcripts
Summary: cogsci.uwaterloo.ca/Articles/Pages/oj.html
Vanity Fair: 5 Reasons Why We’ll Never See Anything Like the O.J. Simpson Verdict Again
