OAN’s James Meyers
12:23 PM – Friday, April 12, 2024
A CNN contributor has landed herself in hot water after saying on Thursday that OJ Simpson “represented something for the black community… particularly because there were two White people who had been killed.”
CNN contributor Ashley Allison made the strange comment during the network’s coverage of the death of the disgraced former NFL player who was acquitted in 1995 of the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman.
Allison was also a former Obama administration official who worked on Joe Biden’s presidential campaign as well as his transition team. While Allison made her comments, she had been discussing the racial tensions that hit the country during the Simpson trial and its aftermath.
Additionally, she said that Simpson’s actions exemplified “how black Americans feel about policing.”
“He wasn’t a social justice leader, but he represented something for the black community in that moment, in that trial, particularly because there were two White people who had been killed,” Allison continued. “And the history around how Black people had been persecuted during slavery. There were just so many layers. And I guess I’ll just close with this. There was racial tension then, there is racial tension now. It might not be the backdrop of the Trump campaign, but until this country is ready to actually have an honest conversation about the racial dynamics from our origin story until today, we will always have moments like O.J. Simpson that manifest and our country will always be divided if we don’t actually deal with the issue of race.”
Simpson died on Wednesday night at the age of 76 from prostate cancer while surrounded by his four surviving children and grandchildren. The Heisman trophy winner was diagnosed with cancer in February.
Simpson was accused of murdering his ex-wife and Goldman after they were found dead from stab wounds on June 12th, 1994, outside of Brown’s Los Angeles home. Foregoing his surrender from police, Simpson, in a bizarre turn of events, fled from law enforcement in a June 17th, 1994, chase in a white Ford Bronco, which was broadcast across the nation.
During the trial, prosecutors argued that Simpson killed his ex-wife in a jealous rage while presenting hair, blood, and fiber tests to show that Simpson was present at the scene during the murders. However, the defense team accused authorities of racial targeting by framing Simpson.
The prosecution also made a serious mistake by asking Simpson to put on blood stained gloves found at the scene. When Simpson attempted to put the gloves on, there was a struggle to fit them on his hands.
However, in a civil lawsuit filed by the Goldman family, a jury found Simpson liable for Brown and Goldman’s deaths in 1997. It was ruled that he had to pay $33.5 million, an amount that has not yet been received by the families.
Goldman family attorney David Cook told the Daily Mail outlet that Simpson had never paid off the full amount over the past decades, prompting the amount to increase to more than $100 million.
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