NewsNation’s Dan Abrams said he feels “guilty” for getting his big break in journalism by reporting on the O.J. Simpson trial and “the deaths of two completely innocent people.”
“O.J. Simpson passed away today. It’s actually an incredibly strange day for me, because I covered both his criminal and civil cases every day from inside the courtroom. But we didn’t have a lot of people,” Abrams said at the beginning of “Dun Dun.” Abrams Live” Thursday show.
“The reality is that his case sparked my career, but he was still a murderer. That’s kind of the troubling reality that I always have to live with,” Abrams added. , mediaite Previously reported.
Abrams went on to say that she covered the high-profile case as a court reporter for CourtTV at the age of 27, less than two years after graduating law school.
Mediaite said Abrams, 57, was assigned only the Simpson case because the station’s two main court reporters were busy with other assignments.
“When they sent me to cover the first case, I had no idea that I was about to dedicate the next two years of my life to covering the trial of a generation.” Abrams recalled working with Court TV. legal drama.
“It was a trove of evidence unlike anything I’ve ever seen in a case that went to trial. Ever,” he added.
Simpson was infamously arrested on June 17, 1994, for killing his ex-wife Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman after a low-speed car chase in a white Bronco.
During the trial, prosecutors had trouble trying on bloodstained gloves that they said were linked to the crime scene, and defense attorney Johnnie Cochran said, “If they don’t fit, we have to acquit them.” No,” he insisted.
Simson’s “dream team” of lawyers (including Cochran, Alan Dershowitz, Robert Kardashian and Robert Shapiro) told the jury that the evidence against Simpson was “tainted, compromised, and ultimately corrupt.” I was proud of it to my colleagues.
Prosecutors say on June 12, 1994, Simpson drove up to try to reconcile with Brown, then 35, with whom he had been violent for years before breaking up two years ago, but she He reportedly refused. In “her final act of control,” he stabbed her to death in the hallway leading to her Brentwood condominium.
Goldman, 25, works as a waiter at Mezzaluna restaurant and is believed to have stopped by Brown’s house after work to return his mother’s reading glasses.
The two were found stabbed to death just after midnight.
“But nevertheless, those of us who were in the courtroom every day were not surprised by the verdict,” Abrams said.
Simpson was acquitted of double murder in October 1995.
“The bottom line is that while the state – rightly so in my view – was convinced that the murderer had been acquitted, on a certain personal level his legal issues, and more importantly the Abrams added, “I’m convinced that the deaths of two people, the murders of these people, changed my life.” “It’s a little different to make peace.”
Reuters
“I was doing my job, and I think I did a good enough job,” Abrams continued, according to Mediaite. “But at the end of the day, it’s also true that the deaths of two completely innocent people helped build my career, and I feel guilty about that. I always have.”
He concluded the segment, which aired following the news that Simpson died Thursday of prostate cancer at the age of 76, with the following: We are thinking of the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown. It pains me that their loved ones were killed by O.J. Simpson, which greatly benefited their careers. ”
After five years at CourtTV, Abrams worked at media giants MSNBC and ABC before starting his own media company, Abrams Media.
He started Mediaite in 2009 and has hosted “Dan Abrams Live” on NewsNation since 2021, according to his LinkedIn profile.
