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O.J. Simpson: Former Los Angeles DA Gil Garcetti? Discovered Shocking Detail About Murder Trial From New ESPN Documentary

By Ny MaGee
Published on: 17:45 PST, Jun 10, 2016

Gil Garcetti is the Los Angeles district attorney who served during the O.J. Simpson murder trial, and he recently revealed to Good Morning America that he learned a critical detail about the infamous black leather gloves while watching the upcoming ESPN documentary O.J.: Made in America. The doc traces 68-year-old Simpson’s stardom in the NFL and crossover success as an actor to his racially-charged murder trial and 2008 convictions for robbery and kidnapping.

The O. J. Simpson murder case is considered the most publicized criminal trial in American history. The trial spanned from January 24, 1995, to October 3, 1995, when Simpson was acquitted for the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman. Dark leather gloves were found at the crime scene, and according to the prosecution, both gloves contained DNA evidence from Simpson, Brown and Goldman. The prosecution’s request to have Simpson try on the gloves marked a key moment in the case and spawned one of the most memorable phrases. O.J. struggled to get the gloves past his knuckles, leading his defense attorney Johnnie Cochran to utter the defining line of the trial, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”

“It was never supposed to happen,” Gil Garcetti said on Good Morning America, referring to the moment the prosecution asked Simpson to try on one of the gloves. “Chris Darden and Marcia Clarke were never supposed to ask O.J. to try on the glove. He had probably been working out his hand, developing muscle in his hand, and we knew that the glove would shrink. It’d been in the elements. It’s leather.”

“What we didn’t know until I saw it on this film was that O.J. Simpson was taking arthritic medication for his hands and he was told, ‘If you stop taking this arthritic medication, your hands will swell. Your joints will stiffen.’ My God,” Garcetti said. He served as the Los Angeles district attorney from 1992 to 2000. Gil’s appearance in the ESPN documentary is his first broadcast interview about the Simpson case since 2001.

Simpson’s legal team was led by Cochran, along with Robert Kardashian and Robert Shapiro. During the murder trial, Darden told Judge Lance Ito of his concerns about Simpson’s arthritis and how the former NFL player stopped taking his anti-inflammatory medication, causing “swelling in the joints and inflammation in his hands.” Garcetti believes the defense team may have “baited” Clarke and Darden into asking Simpson to try on the glove.

“Did it tick me off? And I would use a different word. Yes, it did,” Garcetti said. “But I can’t say it’s really crossing the line. They did everything in their power. They got away with a lot, but we were baited into perhaps even having him try on the glove in the first place.”

The Brown and Goldman families subsequently filed a civil lawsuit against Simpson, and on February 4, 1997, the jury found the once beloved football player liable for the deaths and awarded compensatory and punitive damages totaling $33.5 million.

“We knew we’d win the case,” Garcetti told GMA of Simpson’s criminal trial. “Once we had the jury we had, we knew we weren’t going to get a guilty verdict in the first case. We expected a hung jury and then the sympathy towards O.J. Simpson would dissipate and we knew we’d find more evidence, specifically the Bruno Magli shoes that he claimed he never owned.”

O.J.: Made in America is directed by Peabody and Emmy Award winner Ezra Edelman, and Gil said it was his son, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who persuaded him to speak with Edelman for the project. The A.V. Club called the documentary “essential viewing.”

“Ezra, the director, had contacted me and had a number of conversations with me, and I continued to say no, as I had for 21 years,” Gil said. “It was my son who said, ‘Dad, it’s time for you to speak. No one knows the facts that you know, and I think you can really trust Ezra to do a professional job.'”

The documentary also examines the racial tensions in Los Angeles that served as a backdrop at the time of the trial. “It was much deeper and hit a vibrant chord, especially in the black community, than I expected,” Garcetti said of the trial’s impact.

O.J. Simpson was arrested in 2007 for breaking into a Las Vegas hotel room at gunpoint with a group of men to retrieve his sports memorabilia. He is now serving 33 years for armed robbery. O.J.: Made in America is a five-part series, with part one premiering Saturday, June 11, at 9 p.m. ET on ABC. The full documentary will also air on several dates from June 14 to 18 on ESPN.

[Photo by Vince Bucci/AP Images]

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