O.J. SIMPSON’S PAROLE BID.
LAS VEGAS • O.J. Simpson, the former football star, TV pitchman and now Nevada prison inmate No. 1027820, will have a lot going for him when he asks state parole board members this week to release him after serving more than eight years for an ill-fated bid to retrieve sports memorabilia.
Now 70, Simpson will have history in his favour and a clean record behind bars as he approaches the nine-year minimum of his 33-year sentence for armed robbery and assault with a weapon. Plus, the parole board sided with him before.
No one at his Thursday hearing is expected to oppose releasing him in October — not his victim, not even the former prosecutor who persuaded a jury in Las Vegas to convict Simpson in 2008.
“Assuming that he’s behaved himself in prison, I don’t think it will be out of line for him to get parole,” said David Roger, the retired Clark County district attorney.
Four other men who went with Simpson to a hotel room to retrieve sports collectibles and personal items the former football star said belonged to him took plea deals in the heist and received probation.
Two of those men testified they carried guns. Another who stood trial with Simpson was convicted and served 27 months before the Nevada Supreme Court ruled Simpson’s fame tainted the jury. Simpson’s conviction was upheld.
Prison life was a stunning fall for a celebrity whose storybook career as an electrifying running back dubbed “The Juice” won him the Heisman Trophy as the best college player in 1968 and a place in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985.
He became a sports commentator, movie actor and one of the world’s most famous people even before his “trial of the century,” when he was acquitted in the killings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.
Simpson appeared greyer and heavier than most remembered him when he was last seen four years ago.
He will appear Thursday by video conference from the Lovelock Correctional Center, to be quizzed by four state parole commissioners in Carson City. Two other members of the board will monitor the hearing, said David Smith, a parole hearing examiner.
The commissioners will have a parole hearing report that has not been made public, plus guidelines and worksheets that would appear to favour Simpson. It plans to make its written risk assessment public after a decision.
They will consider his age, whether his conviction was for a violent crime (it was), his prior criminal history (he had none) and his plans after release, Smith said.