Thomas Lambert dies at 69; convinced civil jury to hold O.J. Simpson responsible for slayings

Thomas Lambert, the Los Angeles trial attorney who helped convince a jury to hold O.J. Simpson responsible for the stabbing deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman, has died at the age of 69.

Lambert, who died Nov. 7 of a heart attack in Los Angeles, handled both corporate and celebrity clients — helping movie producer Dino De Laurentiis defend himself against investors and representing Occidental Petroleum when it was sued over oil drilling rights.

But it was his role in the Simpson civil case — a remix of the high-profile criminal case that had riveted the nation just two years earlier — that pushed Lambert directly into the spotlight.

Although Simpson had been acquitted of murder in the 1995 criminal trial, the wrongful-death case swung the other way, with jurors pinning the killings on Simpson and awarding the victims’ families $33.5 million.

The case played out in a Santa Monica courtroom in 1997 and was muted compared with the criminal trial, which was broadcast live and took on a circus-like atmosphere in which attorneys, witnesses and even the judge became celebrities.

In the civil case, cameras were barred from the courtroom and, unlike the noisy criminal trial, attorneys were barred from discussing the case.

Lambert’s role was to establish the blood trail that would help prove Simpson was the probable killer, something prosecutors had failed to do during the murder trial.

Over and over, Simpson’s defense team had raised the specter that the DNA samples collected at the crime scene had been contaminated, and maybe even planted.

Lambert, however, told jurors that the blood samples had been stored in a secure evidence room, accessed only with a computer key card that immediately recorded each person’s identity. And accusations that Simpson’s blood had been planted inside his Ford Bronco also were misguided because that evidence had been seen days before Simpson even gave a blood sample to police, Lambert said.

“The whole planting theory is simply a ruse,” Lambert told jurors. He called the entire defense a stew of “deception, desperation and dishonesty.”

Later, in an interview with Larry King, Lambert said that it had been a challenge at times to convince himself that Simpson could possibly be a killer.

“The guy doesn’t look like a killer. He’s charming and handsome. And he dressed better than any of us, for sure,” Lambert told King.

Yet, he said, he was overcome by the sensation that he was sitting feet from “the person you knew killed your client’s son, and your client is sitting there, too.”

Though Simpson has paid little if any of the judgment, Lambert and his colleagues stood by the belief that, far more than money, their clients had taken on Simpson to win a measure of justice.

Born in Chicago on Oct. 14, 1946, Lambert graduated from Loyola University and UCLA Law School.

He is survived by his wife, Susan, and stepdaughter, Amber.

steve.marble@latimes.com