Pretrial Predictors of Judgments in the O. J. Simpson Case

Five hundred seventy-eight community college and four-year state university students responded to questionnaires designed to assess judgments regarding O. J. Simpson's guilt, beliefs surrounding the case, general attitudes, and background information. Although African Americans were more likely to perceive Simpson as innocent than non–African Americans, correlation analyses revealed that, for the most part, the same predictors explained African Americans' and non–African American's judgments of guilt. Finally, set-wise hierarchical regression analyses indicated that case-related beliefs that Simpson abused Nicole Brown Simpson and that the system was biased against him accounted for more significant incremental variance than did demographic variables such as age and ethnicity, personal experiences, and general attitudes. The results suggested that the racial polarization emphasized in public polls does not reflect the diversity of beliefs that existed within both African American and European American populations.