Former O.J. Simpson prosecutor Christopher Darden said he wished he had never been involved in the “trial of the century.”
“It changed my life, it changed me,” Darden told TODAY in an exclusive interview Monday.
The now 60-year-old Darden said he was experiencing back spasms on the first day he was to appear in court for the trial.
“I was at home. I could not get off the floor. I thought I was having a heart attack and I should have stayed on the floor,” he told TODAY’s Savannah Guthrie.
Darden also defended a pivotal moment in the trial — when Simpson tried on gloves found at the murder scene.
Simpson struggled to put on the gloves, which were covered with dried blood.
“I think the trial was lost way before then. I think the whole glove thing was just the most brilliant move in the criminal courtroom in history of American jurisprudence,” he said with a smile.
“Let me go on the record and say that I can’t regret it. It’s the past. I think desperate times call for desperate measures,” he added. “For me, as a lawyer, I’m always going to try and win.”
Simpson ultimately was acquitted of the 1994 murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ron Goldman.
The trial again captivated the nation’s attention this year thanks to the hit FX mini-series, “The People v O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.”
Darden said he didn’t bother to watch the series because he “lived through it.
“I knew the series would not be accurate,” he said.
He said he’s been amazed by the nation’s continuing fascination with the trial. But he thought it best to ignore the TV series, in which he was portrayed by Sterling K. Brown.
“Not paying a lot of attention to it, I think that’s the healthiest thing for me to do,” he said. Darden also addressed rumors that circulated about whether he had a relationship with the trial’s lead prosecutor, Marcia Clark. “People want that. People want a happy ending to what was a terrible ending, a terrible story,” he said. But he said admitting to any kind of romance with Clark would cast a shadow on their work. “If I were to say that I had a relationship with Marcia Clark, people would say we lost the case becase we were more interested in intimacy than in the law and the facts,” he said. In an interview last month with TODAY, Clark also addressed the romance rumors by describing her relationship with Darden as a close partnership. “We were the best of friends. We were trench mates,” she said. “It was like living in a bubble. No one else could understand what it was like to live through that, but he could. We were certainly very close, but no, we were partners.” This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com
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