High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The O. J. Simpson murder case has been described as the most publicized criminal trial in American history, in which O. J. Simpson, a former American football star and actor, was brought to trial for the 1994 murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. Simpson was acquitted in 1995 after a lengthy trial the longest jury trial in California history. Simpson hired a high-profile defense team initially led by Robert Shapiro and subsequently led by Johnnie Cochran and F. Lee Bailey. Los Angeles County believed it had a solid prosecution case, but Cochran was able to persuade the jurors that there was reasonable doubt about the DNA evidence (then a relatively new type of evidence in trials) - including that the blood-sample evidence had allegedly been mishandled by lab scientists and technicians - and about the circumstances surrounding other exhibits.