It’s been 30 years since the so-called “trial of the century” began on Jan. 24, 1995. The Black football star O.J. Simpson was tried for the 1994 murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson—who was white—and her friend Ron Goldman—also white—outside of her Los Angeles home.
Simpson was acquitted in that criminal trial in October because jurors found reasonable doubt, for his defense lawyers successfully made the case that certain pieces of evidence were manipulated and planted. But Simpson was found to be liable for their deaths in a civil trial in 1997 because the burden of proof was different in that case. He was ordered to pay more than $33 million to the families and spent nearly a decade in prison.
There have been many O.J. Simpson documentaries over the last three decades—like O.J.: Made in America, which aired on ESPN in 2016—but a new Netflix docu-series, American Manhunt: O.J. Simpson, aims to reintroduce the trial and its impact on conversations over domestic violence and racism to a younger audience that has grown up in the era of the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements. It also comes out less than a year after O.J. Simpson’s death in 2024.
Director Floyd Russ says Simpson was invited to participate in the Netflix documentary, but wanted to be paid for telling his side of the story—which the filmmakers considered unethical—and he wanted a certain level of control over the production that filmmakers could not allow.
Over four episodes, the docu-series unfolds like a timeline, featuring interviews with the lawyers involved, detectives, people who knew Simpson and some people who were not called to testify, but who say they saw Simpson on the run.
Russ says the goal of the docu-series is to allow the audience to be the jurors and decide for themselves whether or not Simpson killed his ex-wife and her friend. But he adds: “I think it’s pretty clear that he did it.”
People Russ spoke to for the docu-series appear to think the…
