Mark Fuhrman, the former Los Angeles police detective whose 1995 trial testimony made him a flashpoint in the national reckoning over racism in law enforcement, died May 12 at his home in Kootenai County, Idaho, the chief deputy coroner there confirmed. Lynn Acebedo, the county’s chief deputy coroner, said Fuhrman died May 12 but added that the county does not release the cause of death as a rule. He was 74.
As Main Street Independent previously reported, Fuhrman’s death closes a chapter in one of the most closely watched American murder trials of the 20th century — a case that laid bare deep fissures in public trust toward police and the justice system. The continuing coverage has traced how the questions Fuhrman’s testimony raised about police credibility and racial bias outlasted the trial itself.
Fuhrman was one of the first two detectives dispatched to the Brentwood home of Nicole Brown Simpson on June 13, 1994, after her body and that of Ronald Goldman were discovered. He reported finding a blood-stained leather glove on the walkway of Simpson’s estate — evidence that prosecutors later argued matched a glove found at the crime scene. Fuhrman’s testimony about how he discovered and handled the glove became a pillar of the prosecution’s case.
Under cross-examination by Simpson’s defense team, Fuhrman testified that he had not used the word “nigger” in the prior decade. The defense later introduced audio recordings in which Fuhrman used the racial slur repeatedly, including assertions that all African Americans in Los Angeles police custody should be summarily killed. The recordings, made by a screenwriting collaborator who had interviewed Fuhrman for a script project, shattered his credibility before the jury.
Simpson’s lead defense attorney, Johnnie Cochran, seized on the contradiction during closing arguments, framing the case as a response to a detective who had “lied” and “planted evidence” and who “called all African Americans niggers.” The defense’s now-famous instruction to jurors — “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit” — referred to Fuhrman’s glove evidence.
Fuhrman was charged with perjury in 1996 and pleaded no contest to a single count, receiving three years of probation and losing his law enforcement certification. The conviction permanently barred him from police work.
Alan Dershowitz, who served as a legal strategist on Simpson’s defense team, said Fuhrman was “a much better detective than he was a witness.”
In the decades following the trial, Fuhrman moved to Idaho and authored several books about criminal cases, including works critical of the Simpson investigation. He continued to maintain that his testimony had been truthful and that the recordings had been taken out of context.
Fuhrman’s death follows that of Henry Lee, a forensic scientist who testified in the Simpson trial, who died in March at age 87.