diff --git a/requests/compat.py b/requests/compat.py
index bdf10d6a..84d703b6 100644
--- a/requests/compat.py
+++ b/requests/compat.py
@@ -75,7 +75,9 @@ is_solaris = ('solar==' in str(sys.platform).lower())   # Complete guess.
 
 try:
     import simplejson as json
-except ImportError:
+except (ImportError, SyntaxError):
+    # simplejson does not support Python 3.2, it thows a SyntaxError
+    # because of u'...' Unicode literals.
     import json
 
 # ---------