Attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr. was born on October 2, 1937, in Shreveport, Louisiana. He was the great-grandson of an African-American slave; however he grew up in a stable and prosperous family, with parents who stressed education. His family relocated to Los Angeles in 1949 where he attended public schools and earned excellent grades .He graduated first in his class from Los Angeles High School in 1955. Although his father had a good job with the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company, Cochran always managed to find friends who had more money and more luxuries than he did. "If you were a person who integrated well, as I was, you got to go to people's houses and envision another life," he recalled in The American Lawyer. "I knew kids who had things I could only dream of.” He went on to earn a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1959. He supported himself by selling insurance policies for his father’s company. Later that year he was accepted by the Loyola Marymount University School of Law, where he earned his Juris Doctor in 1962. In 1963 he passed the California bar examination. He soon began taking highly publicized police brutality cases. In May of 1966, a young black man named Leonard Deadwyler was shot dead by police as he tried to rush his pregnant wife to the hospital. Cochran represented Deadwyler's family, who accused the police of needless brutality in their son's murder. The Los Angeles Police Department argued that the officers had acted in self-defense. "To me, this was clearly a bad shooting," Cochran maintained in The American Lawyer. "But the [district attorney] did not file charges, and when our firm filed a civil suit we lost. Those were extremely difficult cases to win in those days. But what Deadwyler confirmed for me was that this issue of police abuse really galvanized the minority community. It taught me that these cases could really get attention”. Another memorable case further steered Cochran toward working on behalf of his race. In the early 1970s, he went to court in defense of Geronimo Pratt, a former Black Panther who stood accused of murder. Cochran lost that case too, but he insists to this day that Pratt was railroaded by the F.B.I. and local police. "White America just can't come to grips with this," Cochran explained in Essence. "To them the police are as they should be: saving children, acting like heroes in the community. They aren't setting up people, they're not lying, and they aren't using their racist beliefs as an excuse to go after certain people." Cochran has continued to press for a re-trial in the Pratt case. Such headline-grabbing cases quickly made Cochran's name among the black community in Los Angeles, and by the late 1970s he was handling a number of police brutality and other criminal cases. In an abrupt about-face in 1978, however, he joined the Los Angeles County district attorney's office as the first African-American assistant District Attorney. Cochran has said that he took the job because he wanted to broaden his political contacts and refashion his image. "In those days, if you were a criminal defense lawyer, even though you might be very good, you were not considered one of the good guys, one of the very top rung," he explained in The American Lawyer. Returning to private practice in 1983, Cochran established himself as "the best in the West," to quote Ebony magazine. One of his first major victories occurred in the case of Ron Settles, a college football player who police said had hanged himself in a jail cell after having been picked up for speeding. On the behalf of Settles' family, Cochran demanded that the athlete's body be exhumed and examined. A coroner determined that Settles had been strangled by a police choke hold. A pre-trial settlement brought the grieving family $760,000.The Settles case settlement was the first in a series of damage awards that Cochran has won for clients—some observers estimate he has won between $40 and $43 million from various California municipalities and police districts in judgments for his clients. Essence reporter Diane Weathers wrote: "Cochran is not just another rich celebrity lawyer. His specialty is suing City Hall on behalf of many fameless people who don't sing, dance or score touchdowns and who have been framed, beaten up, shot at, humiliated and sometimes killed at the hands of the notorious L.A.P.D". Success begot success for Cochran. The Settles case was followed by another emotional case in which an off-duty police officer molested a teenager and threatened her with bodily harm if she told anyone. In that case Cochran spurned an out-of-court settlement in six figures and took the issue to the courtroom—where a jury awarded his client $9.4 million. A post-verdict settlement paid the young woman $4.6 million. As Cochran's fame grew, his client list began to include more celebrities, of which pop singer Michael Jackson is the best known. On Jackson's behalf, Cochran arranged an out-of-court settlement with a boy who had accused the singer of molestation. Cochran had the case retired in such a way that the charges against Jackson were withdrawn, and Jackson could publicly proclaim his complete innocence. Cochran also engineered an acquittal for Diff'rent Strokes star Todd Bridges, who stood accused of attempted murder. No celebrity trial was more followed than O. J. Simpson's trial, however. In the summer of 1994, Simpson was arrested and charged with the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman. Simpson declared that he was innocent, and he engaged Cochran as part of an expensive "dream team" of lawyers dedicated to his defense. Before long, Cochran had replaced Robert Shapiro as leader of the "dream team" as the matter was brought to trial. Calling the O. J. Simpson trial a "classic rush-to-judgment case," Cochran vowed to win an acquittal for the football star-turned-television celebrity. Responding to questions about the nickname for his legal team, Cochran told Time: "We certainly don't refer to ourselves as the Dream Team. We're just a collection of lawyers just trying to do the best we can". One week into the Simpson trial in February of 1995, Cochran unveiled an unexpectedly strong defense. With his engaging manner and sincerity, Cochran sought to poke holes in the case against Simpson as presented by district attorneys Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden. Piece by piece, he challenged the evidence, paying special attention to the racist attitudes of one of the investigating officers, Mark Fuhrman. Cochran was effective—and controversial—in his closing arguments on Simpson's behalf. He claimed his client had been framed by a racist police officer and that if such injustice were allowed to persist, it could lead to genocide as practiced by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. Speaking to the jury, Cochran concluded: "If you don't speak out, if you don't stand up, if you don't do what's right, this kind of conduct will continue on forever." After deliberating only four hours, the mostly black jury found Simpson not guilty on all counts. Observers called Cochran's remarks the "race card” and some castigated the attorney for proceeding in this manner. Cochran offered no apologies for his strategy, claiming that his scenario represented the truth as he saw it. "I think race plays a part of everything in America, let alone this trial," he maintained in a Newsweek interview. "That's one of the problems in America. People don't want to face up to the fact that we do have some racial divisions." After handling the post-trial publicity, Cochran returned to other cases, including civil litigation against Simpson, which forced the ex-football star to pay a hefty settlement to the Brown and Goldman families. The trial has had its impact on Cochran's life. Once a celebrity lawyer only in Los Angeles, he is now a celebrity lawyer across America, receiving a million-dollar advance to write his memoirs and a hefty fee for any personal appearances he makes. Cochran has had his share of negative publicity, however. His first wife, Barbara Cochran Berry, wrote a memoir during the Simpson trial in which she accused Cochran of abuse and infidelity. Cochran's longtime mistress, Patricia Cochran, also claims to be writing her own memoir. "I did a lot of stupid things," Cochran admitted in Essence when asked about his private life. "I paid a price with my eldest daughter and with my [first] marriage. I would like young lawyers not to make the mistakes I made." Married for a second time, Cochran lived in a luxurious home with a commanding view of the Los Angeles basin. His father, whom he calls "the Chief," lived with him. He has written a book, Journey to Justice, and took part in a daily show for the Court TV channel. Cochran left Court TV in 1999 to create The Cochran Firm, one of the largest personal injury law firms in America. Cochran died of a brain tumor on March 29, 2005 at the age of 67.