Johnnie Cochran’s most famous cases include the O.J. Simpson murder acquittal, the exoneration of Black Panther Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt after nearly 27 years in prison, the record-setting Abner Louima police brutality settlement in New York, the Ron Settles death-in-custody case in Signal Hill, California, and the acquittal of Sean “Puffy” Combs on gun and bribery charges. Together they trace a career built on celebrity criminal defense and on forcing police departments and prosecutors to answer for misconduct. Cochran died of a brain tumor on March 29, 2005.
The O.J. Simpson Murder Trial
The 1995 trial of O.J. Simpson is the case most people associate with Cochran. Simpson, a former football star and actor, was charged with the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. Cochran took over as lead counsel from Robert Shapiro, who had assembled the defense roster the media called the “Dream Team.”
Cochran’s strategy centered on dismantling the prosecution’s forensic evidence. The defense argued that blood samples had been mishandled, that the chain of custody for key evidence was broken, and that the investigation itself was tainted by sloppy police work. The narrative Cochran shaped for the jury was simple: if the people collecting and storing the evidence couldn’t be trusted, nothing built on that evidence could be trusted either.
The most iconic moment came when prosecutor Christopher Darden asked Simpson to try on a pair of bloody gloves recovered from the crime scene and Simpson’s property. The gloves appeared too tight. Cochran seized on it in closing argument with a line that entered the American lexicon: “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”
On October 3, 1995, after less than four hours of deliberation following months of testimony and more than 120 witnesses, the jury returned a not guilty verdict on both murder counts. An estimated 150 million people watched the verdict live.
The Civil Trial Aftermath
The acquittal did not end the legal fallout. In 1997, the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman sued Simpson for wrongful death in civil court, where the burden of proof is lower. A jury found Simpson liable and awarded $8.5 million in compensatory damages along with $25 million in punitive damages, roughly $33.5 million in total. Cochran was not part of the civil defense team.
The Geronimo Pratt Exoneration
Cochran called the Pratt case the most personally important of his career. Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt, a decorated Vietnam veteran and Black Panther Party leader, was convicted of murder in 1972 for a robbery and shooting on a Santa Monica tennis court. Cochran believed Pratt was innocent and spent the next quarter century trying to prove it.
The prosecution’s star witness, Julius Butler, testified that Pratt had confessed to the killing. What the jury never learned was that Butler was a paid informant working simultaneously for the FBI, the Los Angeles Police Department, and the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office. Butler denied being an informant under oath, and the prosecution said nothing.
FBI files obtained by the defense after 1979 added a second layer. Pratt had been personally targeted for “neutralization” under COINTELPRO, the bureau’s counter-intelligence program against domestic political organizations. The FBI had surveillance evidence suggesting Pratt was in the San Francisco Bay Area at the time of the murder, roughly 350 miles from the crime scene, but suppressed it. Information about a possible second suspect was also withheld.
In May 1997, an Orange County Superior Court judge vacated Pratt’s conviction, ruling that the failure to disclose Butler’s informant status had denied him a fair trial. Pratt had spent nearly 27 years in prison. In 2000, the City of Los Angeles and the federal government settled his false imprisonment and civil rights lawsuit for $4.5 million.
The Abner Louima Police Brutality Case
On August 9, 1997, Abner Louima, a 30-year-old Haitian immigrant, was arrested during a scuffle outside a Brooklyn nightclub. At the 70th Precinct station house, Officer Justin Volpe sodomized Louima with a broken broomstick handle in the precinct bathroom, rupturing his bladder and tearing his colon. Louima required emergency surgery and months of recovery.
Cochran joined the legal team representing Louima in a federal civil rights lawsuit filed under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which allows individuals to sue government actors who violate their constitutional rights while acting under authority of law. The suit named the City of New York, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, and individual officers, and alleged a widespread conspiracy to cover up the incident, enabled by a code of silence within the department.
Volpe pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison. On the civil side, Cochran and his co-counsel secured an $8.75 million settlement, the largest police brutality settlement in New York City history at the time. The city paid $7.125 million and the police union contributed $1.625 million, believed to be the first time a police union anywhere in the country had paid money to settle a brutality claim.
The Ron Settles Death-in-Custody Case
In June 1981, Ron Settles, a 21-year-old football star at California State University, Long Beach, was pulled over for speeding by Signal Hill police. He died in a jail cell that same night. The police department ruled it a suicide by hanging.
Representing the Settles family, Cochran pushed for an independent autopsy. The physical evidence, including injuries to Settles’ body, was inconsistent with suicide and pointed to a violent confrontation. The findings contradicted the official narrative and gave the family the leverage to pursue a wrongful death lawsuit against the city, which settled for $760,000. The case helped galvanize a police reform movement in Signal Hill and became an early template for the police accountability work that would define much of Cochran’s career.
The Sean “Puffy” Combs Trial
On December 27, 1999, a shooting broke out at Club New York in Manhattan, injuring three bystanders. Sean Combs, then known as “Puff Daddy,” was arrested along with his protégé Jamal “Shyne” Barrow and bodyguard Anthony “Wolf” Jones. Combs faced four counts of illegal gun possession and one count of bribery, the bribery charge stemming from an allegation that he tried to persuade his driver to claim ownership of the weapon.
Cochran’s defense focused on the absence of direct evidence connecting Combs to the gun found in the vehicle, and he kept the jury’s attention on the prosecution’s evidentiary gaps rather than the tabloid narrative around the trial. After three days of deliberations, the jury acquitted Combs of all charges on March 16, 2001. Barrow was convicted of assault and illegal weapons possession in the same trial and sentenced to ten years in prison.
Other Notable Clients
Cochran’s caseload extended well beyond the headline trials. In 1990, he successfully defended actor Todd Bridges, best known for the television show “Diff’rent Strokes,” against charges of assault stemming from a shooting at a South Central Los Angeles drug house. Cochran portrayed Bridges as a victim of addiction rather than a perpetrator of violence, and the jury acquitted.
In 1993, Cochran represented Michael Jackson when the singer faced allegations of child molestation brought by Evan Chandler. That case was settled out of court. When Jackson faced new criminal charges on similar allegations in 2004, his family consulted Cochran, who recommended defense attorney Thomas Mesereau rather than taking the case himself. Cochran also represented rapper Tupac Shakur on a weapons charge.