Climbing Costs : THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL
- Share via
The O.J. Simpson case is costing Los Angeles County taxpayers about $800,000 a month; the total as of April 30 had reached $4.99 million--a number that is expected to double by the time the trial is completed, perhaps in September.
A breakdown of some of the major items:*
JURY: $1.1 million
Includes $629,259 for salary and benefits of sheriff’s deputies providing security for the panel.
****
COURT: $758,090
Includes salaries of court reporters, judicial assistants and public information officers. (Judge Lance Ito, who earns about $104,000 annually, is paid by the state)
****
DISTRICT ATTORNEY: $2.4 million
Includes salaries of about a dozen lawyers, plus law clerks and support staff. (Nearly 40 employees in the D.A.’s office worked on the case in April.)
****
INCARCERATION: $96,930
Includes $81,000 spent during two months while Simpson was under 24-hour suicide watch. Now costs $55.69 a day.
****
PREVIOUS TRIALS
$13.2 million: The total cost for the McMartin case, which lasted 6 1/2 years.
$1.8 million: For the Night Stalker case
* As of April 30
Source: Los Angeles County auditor’s office, Los Angeles Times
More From the Los Angeles Times
Podcasts
UCLA professor and climate scientist, Alex Hall, joins host Kate Cagle to talk about how we can better prepare ourselves for the next mega-fire, including a proposal to create a classification system – and a standardized response – for Santa Ana wind storms, similar to the one we use for hurricanes in the U.S.
The Hillside Strangler murders terrorized Los Angeles in the late 1970s. The killers were a pair of sadistic cousins. One confessed. The other was set to stand trial—until L.A. prosecutors flinched.
Hosts Fidel Martínez and Suzy Exposito sit down with actor and stand-up comedian Fabrizio Guido — currently starring in Netflix’s Running Point — for a conversation about growing up all over LA, making his film debut alongside Brad Pitt in World War Z at age 12, and what it took to build a career from child actor to leading man.
