Former Prosecutor Marcia Clark On OJ Simpson: 'He Got Away With Murder'

For more than 20 years since O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murder in the deaths of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, debate has persisted over his guilt. The former lead prosecutor in the case, Marcia Clark, however, made her view clear in an interview with People Magazine published Wednesday.

"He got away with murder," Clark, now 62, told People.

Clark said the overwhelming media attention had a serious impact on the case. The “media circus” was not something she was prepared for, and that while she had dealt with the media before, the O.J. case changed that.

"I hated the way it impacted the case — the way it impacted the witnesses. Everyone forgot Ron and Nicole and it became this enormous circus," Clark said. "That was harmful to the trial and had a terrible impact on [Judge Lance Ito,] who decided that it was going to be his star turn. It was terrible."

Interest in the notorious case was renewed by the FX series “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story,” in which Clark is played by Sarah Paulson. Clark told Dateline NBC earlier this week that hearing the not guilty verdict was "physically painful."

"And I thought of Ron and Nicole, and I thought, 'This is wrong,'" she said.

Clark left the district attorney’s office after the case, and has since become a novelist, Entertainment Weekly reported. She has said she wasn’t completely happy when she heard of the Simpson case being played out in a television drama.

“Everybody seemed to forget that two innocent people were slaughtered — not just killed, slaughtered. It was hideous. No one seemed to remember that,” Clark told the magazine. “The prospect of reliving it and having it all over the world again, not a happy one.”