Johnnie Cochran: Cultural Icon & ‘Rainmaker’

By. Gene Johnson Jr.Special to the NNPA from Wave Newspapers LOS ANGELES (NNPA) – Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. had long become a cultural icon when comedian Chris Rock, playing a detective in “Lethal Weapon 3,” told a criminal suspect: “You have the right to an attorney. If you get Johnnie Cochran, I’ll kill you.” And although Rock said it jokingly, in the Black community and around the world it rang true: When in need, call Johnnie Cochran. “He reached a level few Blacks achieved,” said noted civil rights attorney Connie Rice, reflecting on the legacy of Cochran, who died recently at his home of an inoperable brain tumor. “Very few make rainmaker status and are recognized in the mainstream world. “I think that Johnnie’s legacy as a rainmaker is that he left nobody behind and his heart stayed with the [Black community],” Rice said. “He gave his heart and soul to the community. A lot of people don’t know about the hundreds of Blacks and Latinos he defended.” Long before he defended football Hall-of-Famers O.J. Simpson and Jim Brown, rappers Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur, and ex-Black Panther Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt, who spent 27 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, Cochran sprang into prominence in May 1966. Cochran represented the family of Leonard Deadwyler, a man killed by a Los Angeles police officer while trying to drive his pregnant wife to the hospital. The legal proceedings were televised, and although Cochran lost the $3-million wrongful death civil suit, he would later say: “No case affected me more than the shooting of Leonard Deadwyler.” Still, the televised event gave Black people a face and a name, an outlet to air their grievances in respect to the Los Angeles Police Department and law enforcement as a whole. And that suited Cochran fine. As a child growing up in Los Angeles, he idolized Thurgood Marshall, the attorney who persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court to outlaw school segregation in the 1954 Brown vs. the Board of Education decision. Cochran, born in Oct. 2, 1937, in Shreveport, La., first came to Los Angeles with his family in 1949. During the 1950s he was one of two dozen students to integrate Los Angeles High School.Sports columnist Brad Pye Jr. recalled when he drove with Cochran’s father to watch the younger Cochran quarterback the school’s football team. Cochran “was a decent human being in addition to being the greatest lawyer,” Pye said. “Johnnie would make you feel important. You never knew the stature he obtained as a lawyer.” After graduating from UCLA, Cochran earned a law degree from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. He spent two years in the Los Angeles city attorney’s office before establishing his own practice, later building his firm into a personal injury giant with more than 100 lawyers and offices around the country. One of Cochran’s fellow attorneys accused him of playing “race card” during the 1995 trial of former football star Simpson, who was accused of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman. In his autobiography, “Journey to Justice,” however, Cochran said, “..If some people insist in comparing a double murder trial to a card game, then they ought to be honest enough to admit that we played the history and credibility card.” Cochran became famous for his “If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit” line in the Simpson trial, referring to the former football player’s attempt in court to put on the blood-stained glove found at the murder scene. Another attorney on the team originated the phrase. Although he frequently took police departments on in court, Cochran denied being anti-police and supported the decision of his only son, Jonathan, to join the California Highway Patrol. Last May, Cochran’s firm revealed he had been released from hospital after being treated for an undisclosed neurological condition, and he told the Los Angeles Times in September that he was suffering a brain tumor. Cochran is survived by his wife, Dale Mason Cochran, his son, Jonathan; daughters, Tiffany Cochran Edwards and Melodie Cochran; sisters, Pearl Baker and Martha Jean Sherrard; and father, Johnnie L. Cochran Sr.