Johnnie Cochran Dies...

[SkinsChic]

Johnnie Cochran died today of a brain tumor. He was 67 years old. Go to cnn.com for more info.

[1niksder]

LOS ANGELES – Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., the dynamic, eminently quotable attorney whose televised murder defense of O.J. Simpson made him a legal superstar died Tuesday. He was 67.

Cochran died of a brain disorder in Los Angeles, said law partner Randy McMurray,

"Certainly, Johnnie's career will be noted as one marked by celebrity cases and clientele," the family said in a statement. "But he and his family were most proud of the work he did on behalf of those in the community."

With his colorful suits and ties, his gift for courtroom oratory and a knack for coining memorable phrases, Cochran was a vivid addition to the pantheon of great American barristers.

His catch phrase in the Simpson trial, "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit," would be quoted and parodied for years afterward. It derived from a dramatic moment during which Simpson tried on a pair of bloodstained "murder gloves" to show jurors they did not fit. Some legal experts called it the turning point in the trial.

Soon after, jurors found the Hall of Fame football star not guilty of the 1994 slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.

For Cochran, Simpson's acquittal was the crowning achievement in a career notable for victories, often in cases with racial themes. He was a black man known for championing the causes of black defendants. Some of them, like Simpson, were famous, but more often than not they were unknowns.

"The clients I've cared about the most are the No Js, the ones who nobody knows," said Cochran, who proudly displayed copies in his office of the multimillion-dollar checks he won for ordinary citizens who said they were abused by police.

"People in New York and Los Angeles, especially mothers in the African-American community, are more afraid of the police injuring or killing their children than they are of muggers on the corner," he once said.

By the time Simpson called, the byword in the black community for defendants facing serious charges was: "Get Johnnie."

Over the years, Cochran represented football great Jim Brown on rape and assault charges, actor Todd Bridges on attempted murder charges, rapper Tupac Shakur on a weapons charge and rapper Snoop Dogg on a murder charge.

He also represented former Black Panther Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, who spent 27 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit. When Cochran helped Pratt win his freedom in 1997 he called the moment "the happiest day of my life practicing law."

He won a $760,000 award in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Ron Settles, a black college football star who died in police custody in 1981. Cochran challenged police claims that Settles hanged himself in jail after a speeding arrest. The player's body was exhumed, an autopsy performed and it revealed Settles had been choked.

His clients also included Haitian immigrant Abner Louima, who was tortured by New York police, and Tyisha Miller, a 19-year-old black woman shot to death by Riverside police who said she reached for a gun on her lap when they broke her car window in an effort to disarm her.

But the attention he received from all of those cases didn't come remotely close to the fame the Simpson case brought him.

After Simpson's acquittal, Cochran appeared on countless TV talk shows, was awarded his own Court TV show, traveled the world over giving speeches, and was endlessly parodied in films and on such TV shows as "Seinfeld" and "South Park."

In "Lethal Weapon 3," comedian Chris Rock plays a policeman who advises a criminal suspect he has a right to an attorney, then warns him: "If you get Johnnie Cochran, I'll kill you."

The flamboyant Cochran enjoyed that parody so much he even quoted it in his autobiography, "A Lawyer's Life."

"It was fun. At times it was a lot of fun," he said of the lampooning he received. "And I knew that accepting it good-naturedly, even participating in it, helped soothe some of the angry feelings from the Simpson case."

Indeed, the verdict had done more than just divide the country along racial lines, with most blacks believing Simpson was innocent and most whites certain he was guilty. It also left many of those certain of Simpson's guilt furious at Cochran, the leader of a so-called "Dream Team" of expensive celebrity lawyers that included F. Lee Bailey, Robert Shapiro, Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld.

But in legal circles, the verdict represented the pinnacle of success for a respected attorney who had toiled in the Los Angeles legal profession for three decades.

Born in Shreveport, La., the great-grandson of slaves, grandson of a sharecropper and son of an insurance salesman, Cochran came to Los Angeles with his family in 1949. In the 1950s, he became one of two dozen black students integrated into Los Angeles High School.

Even as a child, he had loved to argue, and in high school he excelled in debate.

He came to idolize Thurgood Marshall, the attorney who persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court to outlaw school segregation in the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision and who would eventually become the Supreme Court's first black justice.

"I didn't know too much about what a lawyer did, or how he worked, but I knew that if one man could cause this great stir, then the law must be a wondrous thing," Cochran said in his book. "I read everything I could find about Thurgood Marshall and confirmed that a single dedicated man could use the law to change society."

After graduating from UCLA, Cochran earned a law degree from Loyola University. He spent two years in the Los Angeles city attorney's office before establishing his own practice.

He briefly became a special assistant to the Los Angeles County district attorney in the 1970s, setting up a unit to prosecute domestic violence cases.

After returning to private practice, Cochran built his firm into a personal injury giant with more than 100 lawyers and offices around the country.

Flamboyant in public, he kept his private life shrouded in secrecy, and when some of those secrets became public following a 1978 divorce, they were startling.

His first marriage, to his college sweetheart, Barbara Berry, produced two daughters, Melodie and Tiffany. During their divorce, it came to light that for 10 years Cochran had secretly maintained a "second family," which included a son.

When that relationship soured, his mistress, Patricia Sikora, sued him for palimony and the case was settled privately in 2004.

Although he frequently took police departments on in court, Cochran denied being anti-police and supported the decision of his only son, Jonathan, to join the California Highway Patrol.

He counted among his closest friends Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks, the city's former police chief, and the late Mayor Tom Bradley, who had been a Los Angeles police lieutenant before going into politics.

But in the Simpson case, Cochran turned the murder trial into an indictment of the Police Department, suggesting officers planted evidence in an effort to frame the former football star because he was a black celebrity.

By the time Simpson was acquitted, Cochran and co-counsel Shapiro were on the outs. Shapiro, who is white, had accused Cochran of playing the race card and of dealing it "from the bottom of the deck."

Simpson, meanwhile, was held liable for the killings following a 1997 civil trial and ordered to pay the Brown and Goldman families $33.5 million in restitution. Cochran didn't represent him in that case.

After Simpson, Cochran stepped out of the criminal trial arena, concentrating instead on civil matters. For a time, he represented high-profile athletes and music stars in contract matters.

He remained a beloved figure in the black community, admired as a lawyer who was relentless in his pursuit of justice and as a philanthropist who helped fund a UCLA scholarship, a low-income housing complex and a New Jersey legal academy, among other charitable endeavors.


http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/stat ... chran.html

R.I.P. Johnnie

[air_hog]

He was one convincing man.

When I watched that Pete Rose trial, man he was good.

RIP

[tcwest10]

Huh.
I didn't even know he was ill. Heck, I didn't know he was nearly 70, either.
I have no feelings about his passing, one way or another...but if really was a champion for the underpriviledged, then it's a sad thing.
Almost.

[redskincity]

RIP Johnnie

[skinsfan1]

Huh.
I didn't even know he was ill. Heck, I didn't know he was nearly 70, either.
I have no feelings about his passing, one way or another...but if really was a champion for the underpriviledged, then it's a sad thing.
Almost.

I didn't know either...oh well...RIP johnny....

[The Hogster]

Huh.
I didn't even know he was ill. Heck, I didn't know he was nearly 70, either.
I have no feelings about his passing, one way or another...but if really was a champion for the underpriviledged, then it's a sad thing.
Almost.

No almost about it. He was a great lawyer. Whether or not we all agree with the decision in his 'most famous case' he was a lawyer who did his job very well.

R.I.P Johnnie Cochran

[washington53]

R.I.P Johnnie
you were a great lawyer

[BringThePain!]

...you guys act like he was Abraham Lincoln

[redskindave]

R.I.P. Johnnie

[ejay183]

...you guys act like he was Abraham Lincoln

Well he was a great lawyer, like Lincoln in his early days.

[tcwest10]

...you guys act like he was Abraham Lincoln

I doubt Johnnie could say "Emancipation Proclamation" without tripping over his tongue, BTP. His bag was, as far as I could tell, getting the rich and famous off on charges that would have any other person on Death Row in three weeks.
Remember the glove ? I still do that at work. I take one of my work gloves, straighten my hand out rigid and try to force it on while wearing a pained expression, as if a too-tight glove were akin to a hot poker pressed where the the sun don't shine. That was vintage Johnnie, and it work.
"If it doesn't fit, you must aquit."
Genius. Evil, but genius. He must've known what really went on, as did the rest of the world, but he was just that damned good.

[BossHog]

Good or bad... there was no doubt of his prowess in the court room. He proved it time and time again.

[BringThePain!]

I'm just saying... a couple of days ago... a bunch of kids got shot up in Minnesota... I think one maybe two people said pray for them, or RIP in that thread..

Now, Johnny dies... and all of a sudden it's like the pope died....

[BossHog]

shhhhh.... 'many a true word is spoken in gest'.

Now the pope's going to kick before the weekend.

But I bet ya if JPII ever needed a lawyer up there...

[BringThePain!]

Oops!... I guess the pope was a bad analogy... :-"

I should have said Jesus H. Christ..

[The Hogster]

...you guys act like he was Abraham Lincoln

I doubt Johnnie could say "Emancipation Proclamation" without tripping over his tongue, BTP. His bag was, as far as I could tell, getting the rich and famous off on charges that would have any other person on Death Row in three weeks.
Remember the glove ? I still do that at work. I take one of my work gloves, straighten my hand out rigid and try to force it on while wearing a pained expression, as if a too-tight glove were akin to a hot poker pressed where the the sun don't shine. That was vintage Johnnie, and it work.
"If it doesn't fit, you must aquit."
Genius. Evil, but genius. He must've known what really went on, as did the rest of the world, but he was just that damned good.

Let's have class about a person's death. Johnnie Cochran was the lead attorney on a team of lawyers...among them Robert Shapiro, F. Lee Bailey, Barry Sheck, Peter Neufeld...don't down play his life and career, just because you (and most of America ) think he defended a guilty man.

The adversarial system allows each side to make their arguments, and the jury decide how to administer justice. Don't downplay the man in death simply because he did his job well.

By the way....He also won Prosecutor of the year in Los Angeles, which means he sent plenty of guilty people to jail in his day. The man was not evil...he did good work for poor people. He helped start the Innocence project, now run by Sheck and Neufeld, and they have exonerated over 160 people who were sentenced to Death before DNA evidence was available that has since proven them innocent.

Without people like that, those people would be killed for something we now know they didn't do. So, regardless of how you feel about O.J., his work went beyond that case and helped a lot more people.

[tcwest10]

I wish the Pope would have the classiness to just come to the balcony, make the sign of the cross ("Spectacles-Testicles-Money-Cigars...yep, all there") and jump.
The suspense is killing me.

[tcwest10]

Let's have class about a person's death.

Nah. I'll cut that class. Thanks anyway.

[Justice Hog]

I give the dude credit. He was an excellent litigator.

[The Hogster]

Let's have class about a person's death.

Nah. I'll cut that class. Thanks anyway.

It was once said "Its better to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

Now that you have opened your mouth, I now see there is no need to respond to you.

[tcwest10]

You'll both note, Hogster and JH...I don't dispute that he was good at his job.
I'm reminded of the film "The Devil's Advocate" when it comes to Johnnie, though. He knew. He HAD to know. EVERYBODY knew. He just did his job so well that you couldn't see straight, sitting on that jury.

[tcwest10]

Let's have class about a person's death.

Nah. I'll cut that class. Thanks anyway.

It was once said "Its better to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

Now that you have opened your mouth, I now see there is no need to respond to you.

Ummmm, I think that qualifies as a response there, newbie.

[The Hogster]

--Stay in school kids--

[Chris Luva Luva]

in a related story

Domestic Violence and murder has gone down in the NFL.


R.I.P JC