Lawyer Johnnie Cochran Jr. played key role in famous cases

WASHINGTON — Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., the lawyer whose emotional, sometimes flamboyant courtroom summations played to national audiences during his successful defense of O.J. Simpson, died yesterday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 67 and had an inoperable brain tumor.

Having established himself as a successful and well-known lawyer in police-brutality and civil-rights cases, Mr. Cochran became a cultural and legal sensation with his leading role in the Simpson murder case in 1995. His strategy focusing on Simpson's race and some memorable turns of phrase — "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit," he said of the bloodstained glove he claimed was too small for Simpson — helped win an acquittal of the former football-star-turned-actor in the death of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. During the trial, Simpson appeared to struggle to put on what were presumed to be the killer's bloody gloves, one of which was found at the murder scene, the other outside Simpson's house.

"I've got to say I don't think I'd be home today without Johnnie," Simpson said yesterday. "I was innocent, but he believed it."

Simpson was held liable for the killings after a 1997 civil trial and ordered to pay the Brown and Goldman families $33.5 million in restitution. Mr. Cochran did not represent him in that case.

As a prosecutor in Los Angeles County early in his career, Mr. Cochran fostered changes in the county's handling of police-shooting cases. In private practice, he was well-regarded for his prowess in police-brutality cases and was reported to have won more than $45 million in judgments against the police department.

He liked to say his career was equal representation for O.J. and "no-Js"; among the latter was Haitian immigrant Abner Louima, who had been sodomized in a New York City police station and for whom Mr. Cochran won an $8.75 million settlement from the city. He called helping to win the release of Black Panther Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, who spent 27 years in jail on a murder charge before being freed, "the happiest day of my life practicing law."

In the public mind, however, Mr. Cochran was forever linked with such troubled athletes and entertainers as Jim Brown, when the football legend was accused of rape, and pop star Michael Jackson, when he was accused of child molestation in 1993. Over the years, Mr. Cochran also represented actor Todd Bridges and rappers Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg and Sean "P. Diddy" Combs.

Mr. Cochran was known for his colorful wardrobe and his high living, thinking nothing of flying friends around the world to catch a boxing match. He owned Jaguars and Rolls-Royces and was a commentator on celebrity trials.

He was born Oct. 2, 1937, in Shreveport, La.; his middle initial stood for nothing.

His father transplanted the family to Los Angeles, where he became a prosperous insurance salesman but remained, to his son, strangely ascetic. He shunned bigger homes and cars, which Mr. Cochran later said made him acutely aware of what his wealthier white neighbors had. "One kid I knew had an archery range at his house," he once told an interviewer. "I never even thought of that! That's why to this day I work hard. I wanted to provide that for my family."

Inspired by the legal victory for blacks in the Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed racial segregation in public schools, he decided on a career in law. He was a 1959 graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, and a 1962 graduate of Loyola University's law school.

After a brief term in the Los Angeles city attorney's office, he was thrust to fame with his first case. He represented the widow of Leonard Deadwyler, a black motorist fatally shot during a police stop in Los Angeles as he rushed his pregnant wife to the hospital. No charges were filed against the officer.

For their wrongful-death suit in 1966, the Deadwyler family hired Mr. Cochran, who made an appearance at a televised coroner's inquest. Rules at the time prohibited him from posing questions directly to the court. So Mr. Cochran instead whispered his queries to the deputy district attorney, so frequently that the phrase "Mr. Cochran wants to know ... " became the most memorable line of the day and assured him, without a public word, star status.

However, he lost the case.

His legal approach in other cases was to prompt settlements, and in this he was gifted. He was earning about $300,000 a year by the time he returned to the public payroll in the late 1970s, taking a pay cut but raring to make changes "from the inside." He became the No. 3 prosecutor in the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office and was instrumental in the formation of a unit to investigate police shootings. He soon returned to private practice and, by his own account, was defined by the Simpson case.

Mr. Cochran played a big role in destroying the credibility of Mark Fuhrman, the police detective who helped collect key evidence against Simpson and denied ever using racial epithets. Mr. Cochran found such remarks in a taped discussion between Fuhrman and a screenwriter.

Mr. Cochran's public life brought him unflattering attention. During divorce proceedings from his first wife, Barbara Berry, it was revealed that he had a second family with a woman named Patricia Sikora. Sikora sued him for palimony, and the case was settled last year, The Associated Press reported.

Survivors include his third wife, Dale Mason; two daughters from his first marriage; a son with Sikora; and two sisters.

Material from The Associated Press and Los Angeles Times is included in this report.