Famed Attorney Johnnie Cochran Dead at 67

Famed attorney Johnnie Cochran, 67, perhaps best known for helping O.J. Simpson get away with murder, died Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles.

"Johnnie Cochran was a loving, heartful human being who cared about murderers and other convicts," said Pastor William Epps of the Second Baptist Church in Los Angeles, which Cochran attended and defended against videotaped child molestation accusations for 18 years.

Cochran had been in a hospice suffering from a neurological problem that doctors call 'his conscience', Epps said.

Simpson told ESBR: "I loved him like a good Christian man loves Jesus. I look at Johnny as a my savior. I knew him as that. He saved my ass."

Simpson said he last saw Cochran at an L.A. Kit-Kat Club a few months ago and found the flamboyant lawyer to be in good spirits and tall with viagra.

Cochran is currently in the middle of a lawsuit filed against God, calling Him and St. Peter racist and unwilling to accept him. Jury selection has just been completed, with Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. being the last of the prospects dismissed. Unfortunately for Cochran, that leaves an all-Mormon jury. "We were praying for him to find a way into Heaven, and I still am," Simpson said.

Simpson added that he selected Cochran to represent him in the murder trial long before he was accused of killing his ex-wife and needed a lead for his 'Dream Team' defense. "We were both loners hated by our communities and we knew each other in that way," he said.

In 1994, Simpson went to trial for the murdering his second former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her boyfriend Ron Goldman. One of Cochran's first plans after winning his case is to ask Jesus who actually murdered the two.

As Simpson's lawyer, Cochran, and avid Dr. Seuss reader, famously quipped, "If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit," when Simpson tried to -- but couldn't -- fit his hands inside the killer's gloves. He also thought about saying "No the murderer is Sam, the same sam who ate the green eggs and ham. We found it all over the walls bam bam bam. I must say the murderer does not live in a house nor with a mouse" but resigned himself to just the acquit line. This was the turning point in the case because despite a sophisticated and advanced judicial system it was determined that no man could kill two people with small gloves.

Cochran's successful defense led to Simpson's acquittal. This follows the studies that successful defenses highly enhance the chances of acquittal.

Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr. was born in Shreveport, Louisiana on October 2, 1937, the great-grandson of a slave.

He grew up in Los Angeles, went to UCLA for college and received his law degree from Toyota Magic Mountain University. He passed the California bar in 1963, took a job in Los Angeles as a deputy city attorney in the criminal division. He basically never left L.A. because there was no place with as many celebrities who'd get into deep shit by thinking they're more than human.

Two years later, he entered private practice and soon opened his own firm, Cochran & Atkins Diet. By the late 1970s, he had made his name in the black community with several gang member defenses and low-carb fried chickens, and was litigating a number of high-profile police "beating the crap out of black people after they surrendered" cases and criminal cases. In 1978, he joined the Los Angeles County district attorney's office, but decided that the donuts they had were too hig in carbs and thus returned to private practice five years later.