"Back on the record in the Simpson matter." — Judge Lance A. Ito
The Simpson Matter is a searchable digital archive of the complete trial transcripts from People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson (Case No. BA097211) and Rufo et al. v. Simpson (Case No. SC031947) — the criminal and civil trials of O.J. Simpson.
The archive contains 512,000+ lines across 4,500+ proceedings spanning 230+ trial days, indexed by speaker, proceeding, and trial day, and searchable a passage at a time.
All transcript text is sourced from walraven.org, the work of Jack Walraven, who began archiving Simpson trial transcripts in real time during the 1995 criminal trial — one of the earliest comprehensive legal archives on the web. His collection remains the most complete publicly available source of these transcripts nearly thirty years later. This project would not exist without his work. The original transcripts are official court records from the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles, Department 103.
This project does not alter the transcript text. Every line is preserved exactly as it appears in the source material. Any errors in the original transcriptions are carried forward.
The transcripts were split into individual lines with the speaker attached, then grouped into the proceedings they belong to — witness examinations, sidebars, motions, and the day's administrative business — so that a passage can be found by who said it, when, and in what part of the trial. The wording itself is untouched.
The criminal trial was televised almost in its entirety, and that footage is on YouTube. Where video exists, every line of the transcript is tied to the moment it was spoken. Click the ▶ beside a line and the video opens on the page at that second. Switch on "Sync transcript" and the page follows along as the video plays.
The criminal trial and the preliminary hearing are covered, along with O.J. Simpson's deposition in the civil case. The civil trial itself was not televised, so those transcripts have no video.
Alongside the transcripts, the archive carries an analysis sidebar on each proceeding and deposition page — an overview of what happened, selected quotes, a temperature reading, a catalog of evidence mentioned, and notable exchanges — along with person, evidence, exhibit, and location entries. These exist to help readers navigate a record that runs to half a million lines: what happened in a given session, who someone is, where a passage sits in the trial.
They are written to describe what the record contains, not to interpret it, argue it, or characterize anyone's conduct. They take no position on guilt, liability, credibility, or the merits of either trial.
This material is drafted with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor before publication. It is supplementary, may contain errors or miss important nuance, and is not a substitute for reading the transcript. The transcript text is always the primary source.
This archive is provided for educational, research, and historical purposes only. It does not constitute legal advice, legal analysis, or legal opinion of any kind.
Court transcripts are public records. This project organizes and presents those public records in a searchable format. No claim is made regarding the completeness or accuracy of the transcriptions — refer to the official court records for authoritative text.
The supporting material described above should not be cited as authoritative commentary on the proceedings.
The full statement, including corrections, removal requests, and reuse, is on the Terms of Use page.
When citing transcript material from this archive, we recommend referencing both the original court record and this digital archive. Below are suggested citation formats for common styles.
Original transcript source: Jack Walraven, walraven.org. Court transcripts are public records of the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles.
Found an error in the transcripts? Have a question about the data? Want to use this archive for research? We'd like to hear from you.
Email: contact@thesimpsonmatter.com
You can also use the "report an issue" link at the bottom of any page to flag specific data corrections or bugs directly from the page where you found them.
To support ongoing archive hosting, transcription cleanup, and preservation work, visit ko-fi.com/courtdaemon.
A Court Daemon archive, built by Trice Digital. The visual design references the Windows 95 desktop aesthetic, placing the trial in its temporal context — this was the first major trial of the internet age, unfolding in Department 103 while the web was being born.
Python + SQLite (pipeline) • Astro (static generation) • Pagefind (search) • Cloudflare (hosting)
© 2026 Trice Digital. Transcript data sourced from public court records.