MARGARET WARNER: A year and a half ago one-time football star O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murder in the 1994 killings of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. Yet, over the past four months he’s been back in court as a defendant in a civil lawsuit brought by the victims’ families. The jurors began their deliberations this afternoon, and to explain the distinctions between these two trials we’re joined by NewsHour regular Stuart Taylor, correspondent for the American Lawyer and Legal Times. Welcome back, Stuart.

STUART TAYLOR, The American Lawyer: Nice to be here.

MARGARET WARNER: What are these jurors being asked to decide?

STUART TAYLOR: They’ll have a verdict for them that asks eight questions. The first of them is fairly straightforward. Do you find that defendant Simpson wilfully or wrongfully caused the death of Ronald Goldman, and do you find it by a preponderance of the evidence? After that, the questions might seem a little strange to some people, which reflect some of the peculiarity of running a murder case through a civil damage suit. For example, the jury’s not asked whether Mr. Simpson killed his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson. It asked whether he committed battery upon her.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, why is that?

STUART TAYLOR: Her estate, her family did not bring what’s called a wrongful death action, presumably because they didn’t want her children and his children to have to testify in their part of the estate in a wrongful death action. The damage the victims or the survivors suffer is the loss of companionship and love of a dead person.

MARGARET WARNER: So–

STUART TAYLOR: They sued in what’s called a survivorship action, which is as though Nicole Brown Simpson were suing from the grave for what was done to her.

MARGARET WARNER: And now the burden of proof is also quite different in this case than it was in the criminal case, right?