Johnnie Cochran - Legendary Advocate Will Be Missed

Johnnie Cochran, Jr. (October 2, 1937 – March 29, 2005) was an American attorney best known for his role in the "Dream Team" of legal defense for O. J. Simpson during his highly publicized murder trial. Johnnie Cochran was also known as an attorney in the defense of Sean "P. Diddy" Combs and, with regard to the 1993 allegation of child sexual abuse, of Michael Jackson. He also represented Reginald Oliver Denny, the white trucker beaten by a mob during the 1991 riots that followed the verdict of not guilty in the trial of police officers charged with assaulting Rodney King. An African-American, Johnnie Cochran was a masterful attorney who gained prominence as an early advocate for victims of police abuse before achieving worldwide fame for successfully defending Simpson.

Life of Johnnie Cochran

After graduating from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1959 with a bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Johnnie Cochran earned a law degree from Loyola Marymount University three years later, in 1962. Johnnie Cochran passed the California Bar in 1963, took a job in Los Angeles as a deputy city attorney in the criminal division. Two years later, Johnnie Cochran entered private practice and soon opened his own firm, Cochran, Atkins & Evans. By the late 1970s, he had made his name in the black community, and was litigating a number of high-profile police brutality and criminal cases. In 1978, he joined the Los Angeles County district attorney's office, but returned to private practice five years later.

In private practice, Johnnie Cochran was best known to the general public as a criminal defense lawyer. In most of his cases, however, he represented plaintiffs in tort actions. Johnnie Cochran founded The Cochran Firm, a law firm that expanded through internal growth and a series of mergers and regional partnerships. The firm, with offices in Alabama, California, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C, specialized in personal injury cases.

During closing arguments in the O.J. Simpson trial, Johnnie Cochran uttered the now famous enthymeme, "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit." The phrase derived from a dramatic moment during the trial, in which O.J. 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.

Johnnie Cochran in Popular Culture

Johnnie Cochran himself took these parodies in stride, discussing them in his autobiography, A Lawyer’s Life. After the O.J. Simpson trial, Cochran himself was a frequent commentator on law-related television shows.

Death of Johnnie Cochran

Johnnie Cochran died at his home in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles on Tuesday, March 29, 2005 at 12:30 PM (PST) of an inoperable brain tumor, according to his brother-in-law Bill Baker. His wife and his two sisters were with him at the time of his death.

Upon receiving the news of Johnnie Cochran's death, O.J. Simpson told CNN, "I loved him as a good Christian man; I look at Johnnie as a great Christian. I knew him as that. He was a great guy." O.J. Simpson said he last saw Johnnie Cochran at a Los Angeles Lakers basketball game a few months before his death and found the flamboyant lawyer to be in good spirits. "We were praying for him then, and I still am," O.J. Simpson said.

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