January 24

January 24 is the 24th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 341 days remaining until the end of the year (342 in leap years).

Events

2016

2016 (MMXVI) is the current year, and is a leap year starting on Friday (dominical letter CB) of the Gregorian calendar, the 2016th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 16th year of the 3rd millennium, the 16th year of the 21st century, and the 7th year of the 2010s decade.

2016 has been designated as:

Events

January

O. J. Simpson

Orenthal James "O. J." Simpson (born July 9, 1947), nicknamed "the Juice", is a retired American football player, broadcaster, actor, and convicted felon currently incarcerated at the Lovelock Correctional Center in Nevada. Simpson played college football at the University of Southern California (USC), where he won the Heisman Trophy in 1968. He then played professionally in the National Football League (NFL) as a running back for 11 seasons, with the Buffalo Bills from 1969 to 1977 and with the San Francisco 49ers from 1978 to 1979.

Simpson was the first NFL player to rush for more than 2,000 yards in a season, a mark he set in 1973. While six other players have passed the 2,000-rush yard mark, he stands alone as the only player to rush for more than 2,000 yards in a 14-game season; the NFL changed to a 16-game season in 1978. He holds the record for the single season yards-per-game average, which stands at 143.1. Simpson was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1983 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985. After retiring from professional football, he had a career as a football broadcaster and actor.

O. J. Simpson murder case

The O. J. Simpson murder case (officially the People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson) was a criminal trial held at the Los Angeles County Superior Court in California. The trial spanned from the jury's swearing-in on November 9, 1994, to opening statements on January 24, 1995, to a verdict on October 3, 1995. The former professional football star and actor O. J. Simpson was tried on two counts of murder after the deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and waiter Ronald Lyle Goldman, in June 1994. The case has been described as the most publicized criminal trial in American history. Simpson was acquitted after a trial that lasted more than eight months.

Simpson hired a high-profile defense team, initially led by Robert Shapiro and subsequently led by Johnnie Cochran, and which also included F. Lee Bailey, Alan Dershowitz, Robert Kardashian, Gerald Uelmen, John Yahoe, and Carl E. Douglas, with two more attorneys specializing in DNA evidence: Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld. Los Angeles County believed it had a strong prosecution case, but Cochran was able to persuade the jurors that there was reasonable doubt about the DNA evidence (a relatively new form of evidence in trials at the time) – including that the blood-sample evidence had allegedly been mishandled by lab scientists and technicians – and about the circumstances surrounding other court exhibits. Cochran and the defense team also alleged other misconduct by the Los Angeles Police Department. Simpson's celebrity and the lengthy televised trial riveted national attention on the so-called "trial of the century". By the end of the criminal trial, national surveys showed dramatic differences in the assessment of Simpson's guilt or innocence between most black and white Americans.