The O.J. Simpson jurors were twelve Los Angeles residents — nine Black, two white, one Hispanic, ten women and two men — who acquitted Simpson of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman on October 3, 1995, after less than four hours of deliberation that followed 265 days of sequestration, the longest in American history. Only four of the original twelve seated jurors were still on the panel when deliberations began; the rest had been replaced by alternates after a cascade of dismissals during the nine-month trial.
Who Sat on the Jury
By race, the final panel was nine Black jurors, two white jurors, and one Hispanic juror. By gender, ten women and two men. Two held college degrees, nine had graduated high school, and one had no diploma. Their jobs were mostly blue-collar or lower middle-class: postal workers, a phone company technician, clerical staff.
That composition closely matched the ideal-juror profile the defense’s consultant, Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, had developed before selection began. Critics argued the defense had engineered a panel predisposed to distrust police. Supporters countered that it reflected the demographics of the downtown Los Angeles jury pool. Either way, the makeup of the panel became the single most analyzed feature of the trial’s outcome.
How They Were Chosen
Judge Lance Ito distributed a 79-page, 294-question document to the jury pool that probed attitudes on domestic violence, interracial marriage, and even whether a candidate had ever provided a urine sample.1Radford University. Jury Questionnaire – OJ Simpson Prospective jurors were overheard complaining about how personal the questions felt.
Both sides went in with blunt goals. The prosecution wanted white jurors. The defense wanted Black jurors. Dimitrius’s simulated jury exercises had indicated that Black women in particular were likely to be skeptical of Nicole Brown Simpson and hostile toward a hard-edged female prosecutor like Marcia Clark.
Clark went the other direction. She accepted a disproportionate number of women because she believed they responded well to her courtroom style, an instinct that ran directly against the defense’s data. Legal analysts have since called that read one of the most consequential strategic misjudgments in modern trial practice.
Peremptory challenges added another layer. Every time the prosecution moved to strike a Black juror, defense attorney Johnnie Cochran approached the bench to suggest the challenge was racially motivated. California law, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Batson v. Kentucky, forbids peremptory challenges based on race or sex, but proving a violation in real time is hard. The pressure likely discouraged the prosecution from removing some Black candidates it would otherwise have struck.
265 Days in a Hotel
Once seated, the jurors lived under sheriff’s-deputy supervision in a hotel for 265 days, the longest jury sequestration in U.S. history. Phone calls were unlimited but monitored. Books, CDs, movies, and radio all had to be screened by a deputy first, and any reference to Simpson or the case was removed. Newspapers were physically cut apart to strip out trial coverage. Jurors could not visit the courthouse snack bar and instead used a stocked lounge with a refrigerator, sodas, and, by popular demand, chocolate ice cream bars. Deputies were rarely more than a few feet away.
The isolation wore people down. At least one juror, Tracy Hampton, was dismissed after telling Judge Ito she “couldn’t take it anymore.” The monotony, loss of personal freedom, and constant surveillance colored the whole proceeding.
Jurors Who Didn’t Make It to the Verdict
Ten members of the original 24-person panel — twelve jurors and twelve alternates — were dismissed during the trial. Just four of the original twelve seated jurors remained when deliberations began. The reasons were varied:
- Jeanette Harris was removed after the prosecution learned she had failed to disclose a history of domestic violence during selection, a serious omission given the case’s focus on spousal abuse.
- Tracy Kennedy was dismissed after being caught with juror-related information on his laptop and accused of working on a book. He later co-authored Mistrial of the Century.
- Francine Florio-Bunten was dismissed after an anonymous letter, purportedly from a literary agent’s receptionist, accused her of contracting a book titled Standing Alone — A Vote For Nicole. Judge Ito said the primary reason was that she lied about reading a note another juror had written on a newspaper.
- Michael Knox was removed after allegations that he had offered to bet a week’s wages on Simpson’s innocence before being seated and behaved inappropriately during the jury’s visit to Simpson’s Rockingham estate. He later published The Private Diary of an O.J. Juror.
- Roland Cooper was dismissed once it emerged that he worked for Hertz, Simpson’s longtime corporate sponsor, and had allegedly met Simpson at a company function.
- Kathryn Murdoch was removed because she shared a doctor with Simpson, and that doctor was expected to testify for the defense.
- Tracy Hampton was dismissed for emotional distress.
The April 1995 Revolt
Tension inside the group boiled over in April 1995, when 13 of the 18 remaining panelists refused to come to court, halting the trial. The trigger was the reassignment of three sheriff’s deputies who had been guarding them. The deputies had been removed after allegations of favoritism toward white jurors, and several jurors told Judge Ito the deputies had gotten “a raw deal.” At least one alternate, a 72-year-old Black man, had earlier complained that deputies monitored Black jurors on walks while letting white jurors wander unsupervised. The standoff came close to triggering a mistrial.
Less Than Four Hours to Decide
After nine months of testimony on DNA analysis, blood evidence, timelines, and the conduct of the Los Angeles Police Department, the jury deliberated for under four hours before returning a unanimous not-guilty verdict on both murder counts.2California Legislative Information. California Code PEN 187 – Murder
They asked for one thing during deliberations: a read-back of testimony from limousine driver Allan Park. Park had told the court he arrived at Simpson’s Rockingham estate around 10:22 p.m. on the night of the murders, saw no white Bronco parked outside, and got no answer at the intercom for roughly half an hour. Around 10:55 p.m., he saw a tall figure in dark clothing enter the front door, after which Simpson finally responded and said he had overslept. The prosecution used that window as its murder timeline.
The initial vote was reportedly 10–2 for acquittal, with jurors Anise Aschenbach and Annie Backman casting the only guilty votes before the panel reached unanimity. For most of the twelve, the prosecution had not overcome reasonable doubt. The defense’s attack on LAPD evidence handling — Detective Mark Fuhrman’s documented use of racist language, and inconsistencies in how blood evidence was collected and stored — did the damage. The question most jurors answered was not whether Simpson might have committed the murders, but whether the prosecution had proven it with evidence they could trust.
What the Jurors Did Next
The panel did not disappear back into private life. Forewoman Armanda Cooley co-authored Madam Foreman: A Rush to Judgment? with fellow jurors Carrie Bess and Marsha Rubin-Jackson. Brenda Moran and Gina Rosborough worked on a separate book, Inside the Simpson Jury: The Parallel Universe. Michael Knox published his diary, Tracy Kennedy co-wrote his own account, and Tracy Hampton posed for Playboy.
One image from the courtroom outlasted the rest. As the verdict was read, juror Lionel Cryer gave Simpson a raised-fist salute. For many viewers, that gesture captured the racial split the case had exposed.
Not everyone who had served stood behind the outcome. Dismissed juror Francine Florio-Bunten later said she likely would have voted guilty. Alternate Reyko Butler said the same on television. Their comments kept alive a question the trial itself never answered: whether twelve different people, less exhausted and less divided, would have reached a different verdict.