Marcia Clark is Better Now, Thank You

The prosecutor, back in the spotlight with the success of The People v. O.J. Simpson, opens up about her rape, her sense of crime and punishment and scientology.

- Stephen Galloway

On the morning of Oct. 4, 1995, Marcia Clark awoke to find her life had changed.

She was in the Glendale home she shared with her two small sons, ages 3 and 5, still struggling to pay the mortgage. Twenty-one hours earlier, this single mother had lost the “trial of the century” when a jury of 10 women and two men rendered a not guilty verdict in the People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson, the case she had been prosecuting for 15 months. Clark no longer was the butt of jokes about her hair; she was, however, a loser in America’s eyes and perhaps her own.

“I didn’t go to work that day,” she says. “I didn’t have to. The case was over. I got the kids off to school. I drove up the coast to meet my friend for lunch. I was numb. I wanted relief.”

She knew her career as a prosecutor was over, and after a leave of absence, she resigned in 1997. “I couldn’t even think of going back there,” she says. “The misery was so profound. The only thing I wanted was, ‘Get me away from there’ — the ugliness I had been through. When my overtime and vacation time ran out, I had my office packed up. I never went back.”

Twenty years have passed since that low point, and Clark, now 62, has gone from being vilified (“bitch” was a frequent epithet) to being admired and even lionized, most recently thanks to Sarah Paulson’s portrayal of her in FX’s The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.