system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: 20 years ago, the country was divided by the O.J. Simpson trial. Now it seems almost everyone unanimously believes O.J. really did it. What changed public opinion?

I have been watching the "Made In America" mini-doc on Hulu and have seen all the tension and divide that plagued America back then almost similar to how it is today. I am a 21 year old male who's been raised in Los Angeles all my life, so I was just a baby when all this was going. I just want some insight (hopefully) from any Redditor who was there during this controversial times and who have seen the shift in public opinion from "maybe he's guilty" or "maybe the police were trying to frame him" to an almost one sided opinion "he did do it."
gpt
Keep in mind that a lot of the people who wanted OJ to go free actually believed he did it - that's even the attitude expressed by some of the jurors.  The trial became much more about race relations than about the facts of the case, to a lot of people.

But since the trial, there's been a civil trial (which OJ lost), about $0 spent trying to find the drug lord hitmen who OJ promised to track down, a book or twelve that have come out (none of which depict him favorably), a conviction for armed robbery, etc.  Not to mention, DNA evidence (which was very new at the time of the case) has become a huge part of the legal process - the people who didn't trust it or didn't understand it back in the mid-90's now know just how crazy accurate it is.

None of this means that OJ is guilty, necessarily.... but when you put it together on top of what was already a very convincing case, that door of reasonable doubt gets narrower and narrower.  Now that emotions are out of the picture and everyone has a clear picture of what's going on, it's much easier to say that the prosecution bungled a slam-dunk case and the defense seized on the race issue to push their guy through.