"Today" co-host Bryant Gumbel converses with O.J. Simpson lawyer Johnnie Cochran in a three-day series of interviews, September 30-October 2, 1996:

• Comments that he has made to others would seem to indicate a certain degree of, and not unjustifiably, a certain degree of anger, bitterness. Has he expressed that to you?

  

• Why do you suppose it is that one year after his acquittal, most white Americans at least, cannot accept the idea that he's out walking around free, refuse to let him live his life?

• Most white Americans still charge that O.J.'s jurors didn't do their job. You talk about a rush to judgment. They would claim the same. They would claim the verdict was race-based. Do you think their judgment of those jurors is race-based?

• Do you think O.J. will ever get a fair shake in this country? Will people ever let him live out his life and accept the fact that he was acquitted?

Gumbel:

Do you think if those two victims had been, say, Marguerite, his first wife, and Al Cowlings, his best friend, that there would have been the same amount [of media attention]?

Cochran:

Absolutely not. And I think any person who wants to be honest about it would say the same thing.

Gumbel:

Why? Because America doesn't care about black victims?

...and another comment from Gumbel on October 16:

Two weeks after his acquittal, we'll see how O.J. Simpson is still being treated as if he were guilty.

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