OJ Simpson has died from cancer, aged 76

OJ Simpson, the former American football star at the centre of a double-murder trial that gripped the world three decades ago, has died.

Simpson was acquitted in a sensational 1995 trial of murdering his former wife but was found responsible for her death in a civil lawsuit and was later imprisoned for armed robbery and kidnapping.

The former NFL player, cleared by a Los Angeles jury in what the US media called "the trial of the century," died on Wednesday (local time) after a battle with cancer, his family posted on social media on Thursday.

Simpson avoided prison when he was found not guilty in the 1994 stabbing deaths of former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman in Los Angeles. 

Simpson later served nine years in a Nevada prison after being convicted in 2008 on 12 counts of armed robbery and kidnapping two sports memorabilia dealers at gunpoint in a Las Vegas hotel.

Nicknamed "The Juice," Simpson was one of the best and most popular athletes of the late 1960s and 1970s.

He overcame childhood infirmity to become an electrifying running back at the University of Southern California and won the Heisman Trophy as college football's top player.

After a record-setting career in the NFL with the Buffalo Bills and San Francisco 49ers, he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Simpson parlayed his football stardom into a career as a sportscaster, TV ad star and Hollywood actor in films including the "Naked Gun" series.

All that changed after Ms Simpson and Mr Goldman were found fatally slashed in a bloody scene outside her Los Angeles home on June 12, 1994.

Simpson quickly emerged as a suspect.

OJ Simpson arrives at the funeral of lawyer Johnnie Cochran in LA in 2005.(Fred Prouser: Reuters)

He was ordered to surrender to police but five days after the killings, he fled in his white SUV with a former teammate, carrying his passport and a disguise.

A slow-speed chase through the Los Angeles area ended at Simpson's mansion and he was later charged with the murders.

What ensued was one of the most notorious trials in 20th century America and a media circus.

It had everything: a rich celebrity defendant; a Black man accused of killing his white former wife out of jealousy; a woman slain after divorcing a man who had beaten her; a "dream team" of expensive and charismatic defense lawyers; and a huge gaffe by prosecutors.

Simpson, who at the outset of the case declared himself "absolutely 100 per cent not guilty", waved at the jurors and mouthed the words "thank you" after the predominately Black panel of 10 women and two men acquitted him on October 3, 1995.

Prosecutors argued that Simpson killed his ex-wife in a jealous fury, and they presented extensive blood, hair and fibre tests linking Simpson to the murders.

The defence countered that the celebrity defendant was framed by racist white police.

The trial transfixed America. In the White House, then-president Bill Clinton left the Oval Office and watched the verdict on his secretary's TV.

Simpson's legal team included prominent criminal defence lawyers Johnnie Cochran, Alan Dershowitz and F Lee Bailey, who often out-manoeuvred the prosecution.

Prosecutors committed a memorable blunder when they directed Simpson to try on a pair of blood-stained gloves found at the murder scene, confident they would fit perfectly and show he was the killer.

OJ Simpson, wearing blood-stained gloves found by police, displays his hands to the jury in his 1995 trial.(Reuters: Sam Mircovich)

In a highly theatrical demonstration, Simpson struggled to put on the gloves and indicated to the jury they did not fit.

Delivering the trial's most famous words, Mr Cochran referred to the gloves in closing arguments to jurors with a rhyme: "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."

Mr Dershowitz later called the prosecution decision to ask Simpson to try on the gloves "the greatest legal blunder of the 20th century."

Reuters