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All Eyes On O.J.

O.J. Simpson appears at a  hearing in Clark County District Court May 16, 2013 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Simpson is currently serving a nine to 33-year sentence in state prison as a result of his October 2008 conviction for armed robbery and kidnapping charges.
Steve Marcus-Pool/Getty Images
O.J. Simpson appears at a hearing in Clark County District Court May 16, 2013 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Simpson is currently serving a nine to 33-year sentence in state prison as a result of his October 2008 conviction for armed robbery and kidnapping charges.

Four Nevada parole commissioners are about to decide whether or not to release former pro football player O.J. Simpson from prison. Many expect Simpson will get paroled after serving nine years of his 33-year sentence for felony armed robbery and kidnapping.

But the case Simpson was convicted for is never the case that comes to mind when you hear the name O.J. More than 20 years after Simpson was acquitted for the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman, America still struggles with the intersection of race, fame and justice.

How far have we come since the O.J. trial rocked the nation? And how far do we still have to go?

GUESTS

Paul Butler, Georgetown University Law Center professor and former federal prosecutor; author of the forthcoming book “Chokehold: Policing Black Men”

Roger Cossack, Visiting professor at Pepperdine Law School and former ESPN legal analyst. He covered the OJ murder trial for CNN in 1995.

Karen Grigsby Bates, Correspondent for the Code Switch team at NPR that covers race and identity issues

For more, visit http://the1a.org.

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