SANTA MONICA, Calif. - In a stunning financial punishment that exceeded even the plaintiffs' expectations, the civil trial jury that last week blamed O.J. Simpson for the murders of his ex-wife and her friend yesterday ordered him to pay the victims' families $25 million in punitive damages.
That award, bringing the combined total of compensatory and punitive damages to $33.5 million, could leave the fallen football star, sportscaster and television pitchman with a lifetime of debt unless it is reduced or thrown out on appeal.
The six-man, six-woman, mostly white jury deliberated for more than five hours before reaching its split-vote damages verdicts against Simpson, who was acquitted in 1995 of the 1994 slashing deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
Without identifying themselves by name, eight jurors and alternates told a news conference that the evidence against Simpson had ranged from "above a preponderance" - the civil trial standard - to "beyond a reasonable doubt." One juror, a white woman, said: "It was 100 percent for me. I really believed Mr. Simpson was guilty. We went through all the evidence, and it had nothing to do with Mr. Simpson's skin."
The jury voted 10 to 2 to award Goldman's family $12.5 million, far more than legal experts had expected because of the $8.5 million in compensatory damages already awarded to the family last week, when Simpson was unanimously held liable for the deaths. The jury also allotted $12.5 million to Nicole Simpson's estate, whose beneficiaries include her two children now living in O.J. Simpson's custody.
The jury voted 11 to 1 on whether to award punitive damages to each of the families and 10 to 2 on the amounts. The lone holdout on awarding damages was a Jamaican-born man who also has Asian ancestry. He and a white woman in her twenties voted against the amount of the awards.
Almost all the jurors who spoke to reporters, with the exception of one black woman who served as an alternate, said they did not find Simpson to be a credible witness when he took the stand in his own defense.
"He really should have got his story straight before he got up there," the white woman juror in her twenties said. One white male juror said, "I find it hard to believe he can't remember where he got a scar-producing cut. I thought Kato Kaelin was more credible," referring to Simpson's erstwhile houseguest whose disjointed, sometimes bumbling testimony highlighted the criminal trial.
One white male juror said, "I had trouble believing what he was telling me. It seemed like he was just waiting to get the questions done" before denying the allegations against him.
The jurors said they had considered the plaintiffs' allegations that police had planted evidence against Simpson and had uniformly rejected them. Several of the panelists said they attached considerable importance to DNA blood evidence and the bloody glove found by police behind Simpson's estate the night of the murders, but that their conclusion that Simpson committed the murders was based on the accumulation of circumstantial evidence.
Goldman's father, Fred, said after the verdicts: "I think what you saw in this trial was truth, and lies on the other side. I think that's what the jury saw and saw clearly."
Daniel Petrocelli, the lead plaintiffs' lawyer, said: "It was critical to expose that he wasn't telling the truth. ... We all felt it wasabsolutely essential to call O.J. Simpson a killer - to treat him like a killer if we wanted the jury to conclude that he was."
Petrocelli said his strategy was to try "a tight case" and put on as many police witnesses as possible, thereby forcing Simpson to contradict them all.
Michael Brewer, attorney for Goldman's natural mother, Sharon Rufo, said Rufo was "very emotional" and "extremely pleased" over the verdicts. "She is looking forward to putting this issue behind her and getting on with her life," Brewer said.
Simpson was not in the courtroom when the verdicts were read; neither he nor his attorney, Robert Baker, had any immediate response. However, Simpson's friend and spokesman, attorney Leo Terrell, angrily told reporters: "This verdict is illegal. This verdict was wrong. You can't award more money under punitive damages than the man has." Terrell said the law is clear in its intent to punish and not destroy a civil defendant.
The punitive damages is one of the highest ever returned against an individual. A Bronx jury last year ordered $25 million in punitive damages and $18 million in compensatory damages against Bernhard Goetz, who shot four black youths in a subway car.
Simpson can appeal - and is almost certain to do so - to stay the award, since the amount is far higher even than what the plaintiffs claimed Simpson is worth. But if Simpson does appeal, he will have to post a bond of one and a half times the total judgments. Unless he files such a bond, the plaintiffs can almost immediately seek to attach Simpson's assets. Legal experts said the post-trial motions and appeals could take years to resolve.
In thanking the jurors for their service, Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki wryly noted, "While this case is over for you, it's not over for me." He indicated he would be dealing with post-trial motions and appeals for "some time to come."
Filing for bankruptcy is another option for Simpson, but it would not allow him to avoid his debts. Such a filing could, however, allow Simpson to put the plaintiffs in line behind his creditors, including his attorney, who placed a lien on the defendant's mansion in fashionable Brentwood to secure his payment.
Fujisaki ordered the damage awards stayed for 10 days while post-trial motions are filed. The judge rejected a motion from Simpson's attorney, Robert Baker, to continue a gag order barring lawyers and other trial principals from speaking publicly about the case.
In instructing the jury on the punitive damages, Fujisaki had said three principal elements should be considered: reprehensibility in Simpson's conduct, the deterrent effect of any judgment and the need for a reasonable relationship between the award and the injuries suffered by the victims.