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Johnnie Cochran Jr. Dies at Age of 67
Defense attorney Johnnie Cochran
speaks at a local prayer rally for prison journalist Wilbert Rideau
in 2003 in this file photo. —AP Photo/American Press, Ricky Hickman
By
Linda Deutsch
Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., who became a legal superstar after helping
clear O.J. Simpson during a sensational murder trial in which he uttered
the famous quote "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit," died.
He was 67.
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Cochran died Tuesday of an inoperable brain tumor at his
home in Los Angeles, his family said. Cochran,
who was diagnosed with the tumor
in December 2003, was surrounded by his wife, Dale, and two sisters
when he died.
"Certainly, Johnnie's career will be noted as one marked by 'celebrity'
cases and clientele," his 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 America's best-known lawyers.
The "if it doesn't fit" phrase 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 turned
actor not guilty of the 1994 slayings of his ex-wife Nicole Brown
Simpson and
her friend Ronald Goldman.
"Johnnie is what's good about the law," Simpson said in a telephone
interview from Florida. "I don't think I'd be home today without
Johnnie."
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,
actor Todd Bridges, rappers Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg and Sean "P. Diddy" Combs.
"He was a brilliant strategist who never lost touch with the common
man," said Sanford Rubinstein, an attorney who worked with him on
the case of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima, who was tortured by New
York police. "He took particular pride in standing up with those
who were wrongfully treated. He truly loved people and the public adored
him."
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."
Cochran was not universally praised for his work on the Simpson
case. His own co-counsel on the so-called "Dream Team," Robert Shapiro,
accused him of playing the "race card" to a largely black
jury. Cochran turned the trial into an indictment of the Los Angeles
Police Department,
suggesting officers planted evidence in an effort to frame the
former football star because he was a black celebrity.
"The charge that I could convince black jurors to vote to acquit a
man they believed to be guilty of two murders because he is black
is an insult to all African-Americans," Cochran wrote in his autobiography, "A
Lawyer's Life."
Simpson 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 did not represent him in that case.
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 4," 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 "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."
The Simpson verdict represented the pinnacle of success for a
respected attorney who had toiled in the Los Angeles legal profession
for
three decades.
Cochran was born Oct. 2, 1937 in Shreveport, Louisiana, the great-grandson
of slaves, grandson of a sharecropper and son of an insurance
salesman. He came to Los Angeles with his family in 1949, and became
one
of two dozen black students integrated into Los Angeles High
School in the 1950s.
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 Law School in Los Angeles. He spent two years in the Los Angeles
city attorney's office before establishing his own practice,
later building
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.
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