The O.J. Simpson Verdict: 15 Years Later

CLEVELAND - Just like nearly everyone else in the U.S., I watched and studied the O.J. Simpson murder trial during the first 9 months of 1995 after having watched the drama that led to it during the final six and a half months of 1994. And here we are today, on the 15th anniversary of the fateful verdict that sent the world into a tizzy.

Where did the time go?

Simpson was born into a challenging world. Poverty stricken and saddled with a leg ailment called rickets, he seemed destined to live an average life at best. But he wound up enjoying a charmed existence of athletic excellence, celebrity and wealth for some 25 years beginning in the late 1960's.

Then he supposedly murdered two people.

Of course, everyone knows the story well. We've all heard about the stunning and callous events that took place at a quaint condo in Brentwood, CA on June 12, 1994. We all know that Simpson's wife Nicole and her friend Ron were the victims of a gruesome double murder and that O.J.'s DNA was all over the crime scene. It is all of that which we know that made the "not guilty" verdicts 15 years ago today so baffling.

To some.

I'll forever marvel at the way O.J. willfully threw his life in the toilet. Not for murdering two people, because I don't know for certain that he did such things. I'm stunned at how he never showed any real grief over the loss of his two youngest children's mom's death. Also, he's behaved as though he was in fact the murderer in the many years since. From near confessions in interviews to a puzzling book that purportedly told of how he would've murdered the victims if he were in fact the assailant, O.J.'s judgment has been AWOL.

It's as if he wanted to be hated worldwide.

I just hope that the two years (of a possible 33) that O.J. has spent so far in a Nevada prison on far lesser charges has given him time to realize his colossal failure in life. Taking such a privileged life and destroying it is simply stupid. But then again, O.J. only told us he was a great athlete and a product pitchman. He never said he was smart...we simply assumed he was.

We were wrong.