The O.J. Case 10 Years Later

First came the sounds - a dog howling in the night, police sirens and then newscasts spreading the word: O.J. Simpson's ex-wife and a man had been slain outside her condo, their bodies left in a puddle of blood.

What followed was one of the most watched trials in history and one that continues to prompt debate.

"I think the O.J. Simpson case is the ultimate reality TV show," University of Southern California's Dr. Todd Boyd told The Early Show National Correspondent Hattie Kaufman.

"It's a case that had everything. There's multiple murders. There's a famous former football player, who had become and actor. You know, there are drugs, there's sex, there's violence," said Boyd.

Ten years later, the questions remain. Do the killings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman 10 years ago Saturday remain an unsolved mystery? Or did Simpson get away with murder?

"I wasn't there. I can't add anything," the football Hall of Famer, who now lives in Miami with his two teenage children, said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. In

Crier told The Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm that Simpson said he has never discussed Nicole Simpson's murder with their two children. He also said that he tried to convince Nicole to stop their divorce proceedings, until Nicole told him she was interested in another man.

Others involved in the trial continue to lament the jury's not-guilty verdict.

"I think this case was a tragic injustice and the jury verdicts were wrong," said Deputy District Attorney William Hodgman, who coordinated the prosecution.

A decade later, it is apparent the trial hasn't had one legacy, but many. It prompted debate over the role of the media in court cases and raised difficult questions about race relations, domestic violence and the role of money and celebrity in the legal system.

"We had a disharmonic convergence of forces," said Hodgman, the only member of the prosecution team still working for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office. "Overly extensive media coverage, the racial climate, the aspect of celebrity, and the defense had Simpson's wealth to draw on and used it to test police procedures in an unprecedented way."

It began the night of June 12, 1994, a misty evening in Los Angeles' rich Brentwood neighborhood.

The howling of Nicole Brown Simpson's Akita dog led passers-by to a gruesome scene - the bodies of Simpson, 35, and Ronald Goldman, 25, outside the front door of her condominium.

Nicole Simpson, a blond beauty who had been married to the former football star for seven years before they divorced, had been nearly decapitated. She and Goldman, a waiter at a trendy restaurant who had stopped by to return a pair of eyeglasses, had been stabbed repeatedly.

The Simpson children, Sydney, 8, and Justin, 5, were asleep inside when police arrived. O.J. Simpson had flown to Chicago on a business trip.

The role of television was evident from the outset. Days later, when Simpson led police on a 60-mile, slow-speed chase along Southern California freeways in his white Bronco, TV helicopters followed and fans turned out to cheer him on. "Go, Juice!" they shouted as his friend A.C. Cowlings drove by with Simpson in the back seat.

Was he running from arrest or just trying to visit his wife's gravesite? Even that question remains unsettled.

Simpson's murder prosecution, dubbed "The Trial of the Century," ushered in the era of live television coverage of the courts.

With its vivid cast of characters - wily defense attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr., the slacker Kato Kaelin, the much-mocked Judge Lance Ito, the seething prosecutor Marcia Clark - the trial became a national obsession, eclipsing daytime soap operas and the Gulf War in the ratings.

Robert Shapiro, the lawyer who put together the famous defense "dream team" of lawyers, sees the case as "one of the great tragedies of the 20th century with no winners."

He points to Ito, who was prevented by judicial ethics from responding to his critics. To this day, Ito will not talk about the Simpson case or how it affected him.

"I think the public already knows everything about me," he said recently. "I've been as scrutinized as much as anyone in the world."

He said little has changed about his life. He continues to preside over criminal cases - 200 of them since the Simpson trial ended - and has sat on temporary assignment at the appellate court.

"I drive the same car, am married to the same woman, play in the same poker games, have the same dog and live in the same neighborhood," he said.

In the past decade, the case spawned a cottage industry of TV shows featuring legal experts debating the innocence or guilt of high-profile defendants, courtroom dramas "ripped from the headlines" and shows dissecting the grisly world of forensic evidence.

"If there's a negative legacy I have, it's all of those damned court shows on TV," said Simpson, 56.

Laurie Levenson, a Loyola University Law School professor who attended Simpson's trial, said the outcome made some people cynical about the law but bolstered others in their belief in a fair judicial system.

"The legacy of the case depends on what you thought of the verdict," she said. "It didn't cause an upheaval in the law. It proved that our judicial system is not fragile. It can survive anything, even an O.J. Simpson case."

Simpson's former sister-in-law, Denise Brown, is outspoken in her hatred for Simpson and her belief that he is the killer.

"I'm not angry because I can't do anything about it," she told The Associated Press. "You can't go back and retry the person."

After Simpson's acquittal, the victims' families sued Simpson in civil court. That jury, using a lesser standard of proof than required at a criminal trial, found him liable for the murders and ordered him to pay $33.5 million.

The judgment remains unpaid by Simpson; because he lives in Florida, his pension cannot be touched. He said he feels no obligation to pay because he did not commit the murders.

"Honestly, what would you expect different from a liar, a wife-beater and a murderer?" said Ron Goldman's father, Fred. "Would you expect him to be honorable? He's never going to do ... the manly, honest thing.

"As long as he's alive is another day and another month and another year that a murderer walks unpunished."

Simpson brushes aside such comments and said he feels no animosity toward his critics.

"You can't live with anger and hate. My mother taught me that," he said.

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