Johnnie Cochran, the charismatic lawyer famed for his successful defence of football star OJ Simpson on murder charges, died yesterday in Los Angeles of a brain tumor, a representative said.
Cochran (67) was a longtime crusader against police abuses, often in cases involving black clients.
He is best known for the "trial of the century" that won a controversial acquittal for Simpson on murder charges in 1995.
Simpson was accused in the June 12th, 1994, stabbing deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.
He was acquitted despite what prosecutors called a "mountain of evidence" against him. Nicole Brown Simpson and Goldman were killed outside her condominium. Prosecutors used DNA evidence to show Simpson's blood was at the crime scene and the victims' blood was on a glove at his Brentwood home.
Cochran cast the case against his client as a conspiracy led by a bigoted white cop. He struck a nerve in a city still divided after 1992 race riots.
Cochran exhorted the mostly black jury to strike a blow against racism and police corruption by setting Simpson free.
When prosecutors asked Simpson to try on the gloves in front of the jury, they appeared to be too small, leading to Cochran's famous line: "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."
The Simpson verdict divided Americans along racial lines, with polls showing most blacks deemed the verdict just while a majority of whites felt Simpson had gotten away with murder.
Simpson was later found liable for the deaths of his ex-wife and Ronald Goldman in a civil suit brought by their families, but Cochran had no role in that trial.