LAS VEGAS — Was it what he did in a $39-a-night hotel room in Las Vegas last year, or what many people think he did on a dark sidewalk in Brentwood 14 years ago?
A day after a jury convicted O.J. Simpson of armed robbery, kidnapping and 10 other charges, an attorney for the former NFL star dismissed the guilty finding as "payback" from a largely white jury for Simpson's 1995 murder acquittal.
But jurors said they were focused solely on the case at hand.
"We went out of our way not to mention that," juror Fred Jones said, referring to the racially charged "trial of the century" in which a mostly black jury found Simpson not guilty of killing his ex-wife and her friend.
The retired steel salesman acknowledged that he thought the Hall of Famer killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman in 1994 but said he had put it aside during 13 hours of deliberations.
"That was never, never in our thoughts," he said.
The foreman, Paul Connelly, called the Los Angeles acquittal "fair" and said the slayings "really didn't come up" in jury room discussions.
"I honestly believe in my heart of hearts that it did not" affect the verdict, said Connelly, 41, a mechanical engineer.
The jurors' finding -- guilty on all counts -- was a complete rejection of Simpson's defense. His legal team laid much of the blame on the process of selecting jurors. Prosecutors purposely excluded African Americans, the defense charged, and the judge prevented them from pressing other prospective jurors on their opinions of the football great.
There were 11 white jurors and one Latino.
"I firmly believe [the case] was lost the night we picked the jury," Simpson's longtime attorney, Yale Galanter, said.
Judge Jackie Glass ruled then that prosecutors had "race-neutral" reasons for using peremptory challenges to remove two African Americans. Galanter said the defense was hindered further when the judge cut off questioning of other panelists who said they could be unbiased even when their questionnaires indicated they had strong opinions.
"We had people who would say, 'I think he murdered Ron and Nicole. I hate the fact that he wrote the book. I don't like his life. He definitely murdered them.' But if they checked the 'fair and impartial' box, they were in the pool," Galanter said.
Edited jury questionnaires released by the judge Saturday show that several of the 12 jurors said they disagreed with the 1995 Simpson verdict. Most others were uncertain or did not answer the question.
