Today is Thursday, October third, the 277th day of 2024. There are 89 days left within the yr.

Today in history:

On October 3, 1995, the jury within the OJ Simpson murder trial in Los Angeles found the previous football star not guilty of the 1994 murders of his former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

Also on this date:

In 1944, during World War II, U.S. Army troops broke through the Siegfried Line north of Aachen, Germany.

In 1974, Frank Robinson was named the American League's first black manager after being hired by the Cleveland Indians.

In 1990, West Germany and East Germany ended 45 years of postwar division and declared the creation of a reunified country.

In 1993, 18 U.S. soldiers and lots of of Somalis were killed within the Battle of Mogadishu – the deadliest battle for U.S. troops for the reason that Vietnam War, which inspired the film “Black Hawk Down.”

In 2008, OJ Simpson was convicted of robbing two sports memorabilia dealers at gunpoint in a Las Vegas hotel room. (Simpson was later sentenced to nine to 33 years in prison; he was granted parole in July 2017 and released from prison in October of that yr.)

In 2011, an Italian appeals court released Amanda Knox of Seattle after 4 years in prison and convicted Knox and an ex-boyfriend of murder for the stabbing attack on her British roommate Meredith Kercher.

In 2013, a smuggling ship loaded with African migrants sank off the coast of a southern Italian island, killing greater than 365 people.

In 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to question House Speaker Kevin McCarthy – the primary time in U.S. history that a speaker was faraway from office.

Today's birthdays:

• The composer Steve Reich is 88.
• Rock 'n' roll star Chubby Checker is 83.
• The musician Lindsey Buckingham (Fleetwood Mac) is 75.
• Blues musician Keb' Mo' is 73.
• Baseball Hall of Famer Dave Winfield is 73.
• Baseball Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley is 70.
• Golf Hall of Famer Fred Couples is 65.
• Rock drummer Tommy Lee is 62.
• Actor Clive Owen is 60.
• Film director Denis Villeneuve is 57.
• Singer and TV personality Gwen Stefani is 55.
• Pop singer Kevin Richardson (Backstreet Boys) is 53.
• Actor Neve Campbell is 51.
• Actress Lena Headey is 51.
• Singer India.Arie is 49.
• Rapper Talib Kweli is 49.
• Actor Seann William Scott is 48.
• Soccer player Zlatan Ibrahimović is 43.
• Actress Tessa Thompson is 41.
• Actress and singer Ashlee Simpson is 40.
• Actress Alicia Vikander is 36.
• Rapper A$AP Rocky is 36.
• Actor Ayo Edebiri is 29.
• Actor Noah Schnapp (TV: “Stranger Things”) is 20.

With the death of OJ SimpsonI’m wondering if the media has learned any lessons from the coverage of his trial, through which the ex-football star was acquitted of charges of murdering his ex-wife and her friend.

In some ways, the “Trial of the century” brought out a few of the media’s worst impulses.

As criminologist Gregg Barak explainedThe OJ Simpson case was a veritable “spectacle” – essentially a nine-month live news cycle. At the identical time, the case was followed on account of Simpson's fame in popular culture.

Of course, crime has at all times sparked morbid interest, captured media attention, and inspired true crime narratives.

But for the reason that late twentieth century this has happened more continuously – sometimes even before the tip of the trial. The boundaries between news and entertainment have gotten increasingly blurred – what criminologist Ray Surette calls “Infotainment” – Race, class and the pursuit of rankings influence what crimes are covered and the way they’re portrayed.

Process through the media

Whenever I teach the OJ Simpson trial in my criminal justice courses, I bring up a late nineteenth century murder case involving an upper-class white woman named Lizzie Borden.

Both Simpson and Borden were charged with double murder – and each trials became a media frenzy.

In August 1892, Andrew Borden, a wealthy businessman, and Abby, his second wife, were bludgeoned to death of their home in Fall River, Massachusetts. Her 32-year-old daughter Lizzie was accused of killing her father and hated stepmother and have become the topic of in depth media coverage.

A century before OJ Simpson hired what the media called a lawyer.Dream Team“Borden had a star defense team that included a former governor and the Borden family attorney. As within the Simpson case, the legal strategies of the prosecutor and the Borden defense team were subject to intense media scrutiny.

Most of the evidence against Borden was circumstantial; In the tip, she was acquitted by an all-male jury that would hardly imagine that a decent spinster could commit such a terrible crime.

Still, Borden was never capable of escape the stigma of being charged with murder. After her release, she was ostracized by former friends. For years, newspaper coverage documented Borden's life after her acquittal. Since her death, the countless books, articles, a television movie – even a recent television series about Borden's life after the trial – reveal the endurance of the high-profile trial within the nineteenth century.

Like Borden, Simpson was capable of use his class and wealth to his advantage. But he was also sore during and after his trial.

Celebrity crimes make good television

Of course, there was no television in Borden's time.

On October 3, 1995 an estimated 150 million Americans tuned in to listen to the jury's verdict within the OJ Simpson trial. It was the culmination of 16 months of in depth prime-time television coverage.

On the evening of June 12, 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and her boyfriend Ronald Lyle Goldman were stabbed to death outside Nicole Simpson's exclusive condo in Los Angeles, California. After police followed OJ Simpson's white Bronco in a slow speed chase that fascinated television viewersOJ Simpson was arrested and charged with the murders.

For the printed networks and their fledgling cable news counterparts, it was a recipe for giant drama — and high rankings.

As a captivated nation glued to its televisions, radios and newspapers, the media fielded a series of trial experts to supply every day commentary. This bill would grow to be the norm for future celebrity trials cottage industry of legal experts would seem on the airwaves to comment on cases of Tom Brady’s “Deflategate” lawsuit To the costs against former President Donald Trump since leaving office in 2021.

Post-trial investigations have revealed that the audience's perception of guilt or innocence within the Simpson trial was shaped by the quantity – and kind – of media consumed. The more involved someone was within the day-to-day goings-on of the trial, the more likely they were to grow to be emotionally invested in OJ's life. By developing a so-called parasocial bond, they increasingly believed in his innocence.

How the media highlights crime and race

When the jury found Simpson innocent, the response largely fell along racial lines. Crowds of white Americans reacted with shock, dismay — even anger — while droves of black Americans responded with elation.

Survey And Survey It later emerged that individuals's reactions to the decision reflected not only their opinions about Simpson's guilt or innocence, but in addition their beliefs about race and the fairness of the country's criminal justice system.

Scholars today also recognize that the media often relies on tropes and stereotypes to construct narratives about crime and justice.

These constructs, shaped and reinforced by the media, influence the perception of perpetrators and victims. For example, a 2004 study found that newspaper reporting tends to depersonalize female victims of violent crime. And a 2018 study found that a mass perpetrator's race influences how the media covers the crime and the defendants, portraying white criminals' violent acts as unlucky anomalies of circumstance and mental illness.

Simpson's own relationship with race has at all times been complicated.

In a 1970 New York Times article titled “New progress for the black athlete“Reporter Robert Lipsyte quoted Simpson describing how he heard a racial slur while attending a marriage with predominantly white guests. Lipsyte wrote that race relations would need to improve dramatically for Simpson to be “able to overcome the blackness in his public image.”

In the Nineteen Nineties, Simpson looked as if it would have done just that. A middle-aged OJ had achieved celebrity status, and he looked as if it would have overcome that blackness by distancing himself from poor and working-class black people while gaining the acceptance of whites who saw him as a star who went against the trimmings was resistant to racist stereotypes.

Despite a couple of incidents of domestic violence, Simpson was able to keep up this good popularity – until he was accused of murdering his white ex-wife and her friend.

Simpson's fall from grace was symbolized by a controversial 1994 Time magazine cover photo. what some claim was altered to make Simpson's skin appear darker.

By 2014, the gap between how blacks and whites viewed Simpson's verdict had narrowed: Black people were rather more more likely to be believed that Simpson was guilty.

Simpson's fragile public image, nonetheless, served as a reminder of the boundaries of his ability to transcend race. And there isn’t a indication that they’re black Americans have more confidence within the U.S. criminal justice system today as 1995.

OJ Simpson's body is predicted to be cremated in Las Vegas on Tuesday, together with his family responding to requests from scientists who want to check his brain to search out out whether the previous football star and accused double murderer was affected by chronic trauma “Hard no” denies encephalopathy (CTE) – as he himself suspected.

Several years before his death from cancer last week, Simpson, 76, expressed fears that he was affected by CTE, a degenerative brain disease, from multiple concussions he suffered during his lauded NFL profession.

“I’m worried,” Simpson said in a 2018 interview with the Buffalo News. The running back spent nine of his 11 years within the NFL playing for the Buffalo Bills. “I realize it probably has more of an impact on short-term memory than long-term memory. I know I have days when I can't find the words. I literally can't find the words or the name of anyone I know. This is going to be a little scary.”

While Simpson struggled to recollect some details about an NFL player in the course of the Buffalo News interview, he said, “That's my CTE coming into play.”

Memory loss and confusion are symptoms of CTE, in keeping with the CTE Center at Boston University. There are also mood swings, impulse control problems, depression and aggression. A longtime friend of Simpson's also wondered whether the illness could explain Simpson's alleged involvement within the 1994 murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.

“If it turned out he had CTE, that would give us a medical explanation for the violent behavior that was attributed to him after his football career,” described Buffalo businessman Michael R. Militello, one in all Simpson's closest friends , told the Buffalo News in an interview following Simpson's death last Wednesday. “That is, violent behavior that made absolutely no sense to those of us who knew and loved OJ as a gentle, kind and fun-loving person.”

But as much as Militello said he hoped Simpson's family would allow a brain autopsy to verify whether he had CTE – to “truly do something good for his fellow athletes” – that apparently isn't going to occur.

Malcolm LaVergne, Simpson's longtime attorney and estate executor, told the New York Post that on Tuesday he signed all of the paperwork for Simpson's cremation and confirmed that his family didn’t want his brain examined. This position is different from families of other deceased football stars – including Frank Gifford, Mike Webster and Ken Stabler – who agreed to have their brains postmortem examined to verify CTE.

“Everything is wild with OJ, but I get calls from medical centers doing CTE tests asking me about OJ’s brain. . . That’s not happening,” LaVergne told The Post.

“Maybe I’ll consult with the kids about it, but I haven’t heard anything about it, so it’s just not going to happen,” LaVergne said. “OJ wants his entire body cremated.”

People like Militello, who knew Simpson as “gentle” and “fun-loving,” in addition to Americans who saw him as a handsome, charming actor, sportscaster and TV pitcher, were shocked in 1994 when Los Angeles police arrested him involved within the stabbing murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, The Buffalo News reported.

During Simpson's trial, the general public also learned that he was an abusive husband. because the Los Angeles Times reported. He was accused of repeatedly abusing his ex-wife, leaving her in fear for her life, and was convicted of spousal abuse after what she described as a “crazy New Year's Eve brawl” in 1989.

Militello, who became one in all Simpson's best friends within the early Nineteen Seventies when he owned a preferred nightclub in Buffalo, said the football star often told him that he suffered from severe headaches after colliding with tacklers during games , the Buffalo News reported. Simpson said the headaches were so bad he could barely function and selected to lie in bed recovering a lot of the day after games, Militello told the Buffalo News.

“Do I know if OJ had CTE? No, I don’t,” Militello told the Buffalo News. “I think it's possible.” Militello had long defended Simpson's innocence within the murders of his ex-wife and Goldman, however the CTE possibility is one in all the explanations he expressed doubts to the Buffalo News.

Boston University's CTE Center will open in 2023 announced that it had diagnosed CTE in 345 former NFL players, out of 376 players the scientists were hired to check. The prevalence of CTE amongst NFL players is unknown because CTE can’t be definitively diagnosed until after death, the middle said. But repeated head injuries seem like the most important risk factor for CTE.

Others around Simpson also wondered whether he had been living with CTE, including a retired guard who worked on the Nevada prison where he was serving a sentence for robbery. reported the New York Post.

“He woke up in the morning wondering what tee time he had for golf, and he’s in jail,” Jeffrey Felix, who worked at Lovelock Correctional Facility in Nevada during Simpson’s time there, told The Post.

Simpson was “very forgetful,” Felix said, adding that the player, generally known as “The Juice,” was often preoccupied with taking his medication and recurrently suffered from headaches.

Norman Pardo, Simpson's former manager, also wondered that CTE was a think about his client's “crazy rants,” The Post said.

“OJ wasn’t right in the head,” Pardo said. “He was talking to himself within the automotive after which he was arguing with himself within the automotive. . . Sometimes he talked like he was talking within the third person.”