Race has always been an important issue in the United States and especially in the criminal justice system. It is often thought that racial tension in America is between blacks and whites, although in reality this is not the case. African-Americans believe the system favors whites while trying to keep them at the bottom. While whites say the criminal justice system is colorblind, blacks clearly don't think so; whites underestimate the racial gap in the criminal justice system (Bikel, 2005). The highly publicized OJ Simpson case is known to be a case more about race than murder. In the 1999 Gallup poll, 74% of people said OJ "probably" or "definitely" committed murder. A black male on trial accused of killing two white men, his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ronald Goldman, was set free not because the jury found him innocent, but because they were fighting the system that has so a long oppressed blacks, especially blacks. men. This document demonstrates that OJ owes his "not guilty" verdict to his race and not his innocence. Immediately after Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman were found dead on June 12, 1994, outside Brown's California home, OJ Simpson was a suspect (Linder, 2000). He was a retired football player who then lived a short distance from Brown's home. As a black male charged with the murder of two white men, racial tensions were already brewing. The importance of race in this case was thought about before the trial began especially as it pertains to the jury. The prosecution had decided to conduct jury selection in downtown Los Angeles even though the crime occurred in Santa Monica. Having a trial in Los Angeles meant having a jury made up largely of minorities… in the midst of… paper laws of the corrupt criminal justice system. Because of the publicity of the case, it was easy to use OJ as an informant for all of America, showing the inequalities that American society is built on. Works CitedBikel, O. (2005). The OJ verdict. PBS. Retrieved December 3, 2013, from: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/oj/view/.Gallup. (1995). Opinion polls on the OJ Simpson trial. UMKC School of Law. Retrieved December 3, 2013, from: Linder, D. (2000). The Trial of Orenthal James Simpson. UMKC School of Law. Retrieved December 3, 2013, from: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/Simpson/Simpsonaccount.htm.Jones, T. L. (2007). The OJ Simpson murder trial. TruTV. Retrieved December 3, 2013, from: http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders /famous/simpson/index_1.html.