Inspired by the victory for blacks in the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education, he decided on a law career. He was a 1959 graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles and a 1962 graduate of Loyola University's law school.
After a brief term in the Los Angeles city attorney's office, he was literally thrust to fame with his first case.
After the Simpson trial, Cochran defended many other celebrities who had run-ins with the law, including rap mogul Sean "Puffy" Combs in 2001. The media were always on hand.
(Zuma Press)
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He represented the widow of Leonard Deadwyler, a black motorist fatally shot during a police stop in Los Angeles as he rushed his pregnant wife to the hospital. No charges were filed against the officer.
For their wrongful death suit in 1966, the Deadwyler family hired Cochran, who made an appearance at a televised coroner's inquest. Rules at the time prohibited him from posing questions directly to the court. So Cochran instead whispered his queries to the deputy district attorney, so frequently that the phrase "Mr. Cochran wants to know . . ." became the most memorable line of the day and ensured him, without a public word, star status.
He lost the case, however.
His approach in other cases was to win prompt settlements; in that, he was gifted. He returned to the public payroll in the late 1970s, raring to make changes "from the inside." He became the No. 3 prosecutor in the Los Angeles district attorney's office and was instrumental in forming a unit to investigate police shootings.
He would soon return to private practice and, by his own account, would be defined by the Simpson case.
His public life brought him unflattering attention. During divorce proceedings from his first wife, Barbara Berry, it was revealed that he had a second family. Patricia Sikora's palimony case was settled last year, the Associated Press reported.
Survivors include his wife, Dale Mason; two daughters from his first marriage; a son with Sikora; and two sisters.
