Throughout 1995, both the American and international media were consumed by coverage of the O.J. Simpson murder trial. The public watched on, fascinated, as proceedings were broadcast live and every detail scrutinised by pundits. It earned descriptions such as “the trial of the century” and “the biggest story I have ever seen”. Such claims were not hyperbolic.

Nearly 20 years later, few - if any - court proceedings have so captured the public imagination. Perhaps only the Michael Jackson trial attracted the same level of attention. However, last week’s rulings in the George Zimmerman trial have elicited a particularly divisive public response.

Zimmerman was accused of murdering teenager Trayvon Martin in a case that was controversial even before the jury’s decision. Like O.J. Simpson, Zimmerman was acquitted of murder and manslaughter. And, like the Simpson trial, the heated responses to the Zimmerman case help illuminate the divisions still present in American society, albeit in a very different context.

The Simpson trial

Everyone would like to think it didn’t factor in, but underneath all the drama of the O.J. Simpson trial were old questions of race - ones that had been addressed in countless court cases past. The Internet was still young back in 1995, but a quick google search still throws up a wealth of articles discussing the racial conflicts and divisions the O.J. trial brought to the fore.

Analysis both during and after the trial showed up major discrepancies in black and white perceptions of the defendant. One ABC poll at the time of the trial found 70% of whites felt Simpson was guilty, compared 74% of blacks believing he wasn’t. A similar poll ten years later showed even more polarisation, with 87% of whites believing Simpson was guilty.

William Falk, writing in the immediate aftermath of Simpson’s acquittal, observed “the O. J. trial and all its ramifications... represents us as we are today, a more diverse and divided place. This new reality gives a new meaning to the metaphor of America as a melting pot. Historically, this meant that we were all thrown in the pot together and over time melted into one another. Now, however, it seems as though one interpretation might be that the pot, itself, is melting.”

The Zimmerman trial

20 years on, it still seems as if the pot is in meltdown. It is, on the surface, a very different situation. The defendant, who is mixed-race white and Hispanic, was accused of shooting a black teenager - in the O.J. trial, it was a black defendant and pair of white victims (Simpson’s wife Nicole and waiter Ronald Lyle Goldman). If anything, though, the racial issues boiling beneath the surface were even more pronounced – even Zimmerman’s own racial identity has been the subject of heated discussion.

For the most part, both the defense and prosecution attempted to avoid playing the loaded race card during the trial itself. But, with language such as ‘profiling’ used with such frequency, the race issue was unavoidable even as the lawyers tried to sidestep it or at least keep it vague.

In the protests that have followed, significant amounts of both white and black Americans have taken to the streets in a fight for “justice for Trayvon” and to express their dissatisfaction with the jury’s verdict. But when it’s organisations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that are leading the demonstrations and petitions, it’s equally clear that the racial aspect of the case are of particular concern to many.

Even in ongoing discussions about Florida’s controversial ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws, the race issue has been inescapable. The Daily Caller claim that “Florida blacks benefit from ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws at disproportionate rate.” The Atlantic countered in no uncertain terms, writing “there's one specific situation in which blacks ‘benefited’ from the ‘stand your ground’ law, if you will. Killings of whites by blacks were slightly more likely to be found justified than killings of whites by whites. But otherwise, the law has been less than helpful to the state's black community.”

There’s no doubt many feel there are more fundamental civil rights concerns that need to be addressed beyond this single case - a need to alter perceptions and prevent more deaths.

Reasonable doubt

While it’s hard to deny both the Simpson and Zimmerman trials have sparked racial divisions, others have stressed that, above all, these were both court cases, and the juries should not be swayed by the deeper social concerns raised. Questions, as Massimo Calabresi puts it, “that no pragmatic jury could answer.”

More than anything, many observers tend to agree that it was simply the lack of convincing evidence from the prosecution that lost the trial, the Florida attorneys unable to prove Zimmerman’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Jeffery Scott Sharpio suggests “the state’s case proved only one thing beyond a reasonable doubt - that from the very beginning the state did not have a case.” Lisa Bloom of the New York Times goes further, arguing “the state’s refusal to take an aggressive, clear position on Mr. Zimmerman’s racial profiling was, like many of its strategic decisions, a clear fumble.”

When the thorny issue of race is involved, juries are put in a difficult position. “Not so long ago, many black people were comfortable refusing to allow that O.J. Simpson was a murderer based on hairs slightly out of place in the prosecution’s case,” writes John McWhorter. “They almost excessively understood the concept of reasonable doubt. It shouldn’t be too hard to understand the jury’s decision here on the same basis.”

Both the Simpson and Zimmerman trials raise all manner of interesting questions about racial divisions in America, but also illustrate the problems that can occur when people expect these questions to be confronted in a court of law. As protests continue over the Zimmerman verdict, it almost certainly won’t be the last time we’ll see this kind of controversy.