If It Doesn’t Fit, You Must Acquit

June 15, 1995

The prosecution in the Simpson murders asks O.J. Simpson to try on one of the gloves found at the murder scene and his home. Simpson appeared to have difficulty putting the glove on over the latex gloves he was wearing. The defense would then use the famous statement, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” The prosecution claimed they believed the gloves shrank from having been soaked in the blood of the victims. They had presented a witness who testified that in 1990 his then wife Nicole Brown Simpson had purchased a pair of those gloves in the same size for Simpson and presented a receipt and a photo of Simpson wearing the same type of gloves. A former vice president of the company that made the gloves testified the following September that the gloves had indeed shrunk from their original size and that “the gloves in the original condition would easily go onto the hand of someone of Mr. Simpson’s size.”
Football Hall of Fame running back O.J. Simpson was later found not guilty for the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ronald Goldman. The trial was dubbed “The Trial of the Century” due to its immense media coverage. An estimated 100 million people nationwide tuned in to watch or listen to the verdict announcement. No additional arrests or convictions related to the murders have been made.