Simpson released from jail on parole

Disgraced American football star OJ Simpson, whose racially charged 1995 murder trial riveted the nation, was released from jail on parole early on Sunday after nine years behind bars for armed robbery.

Simpson, 70, left the Lovelock Correctional Centre in Nevada just after midnight local time, prison representative Brooke Keast said. “I don’t know where he was headed.”

Simpson was granted parole at a hearing in July.

Keast said the former sports star had been released early “to ensure public safety and avoid possible incident”.

Simpson planned to relocate to Florida, following his release from the medium-security prison where he had been serving his sentence, Malcolm LaVergne, his lawyer, said.

Simpson was famously found not guilty in 1995 of the murders of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and a male friend, Ron Goldman.

But the former National Football League star and actor was sent to prison in 2008 for his role in an armed robbery the previous year of two sports memorabilia dealers at a Las Vegas resort.

He was sentenced to a minimum of nine years in prison and a maximum of 33 years.

Simpson claimed at his trial he was merely seeking to recover personal items from the dealers and he repeated that explanation at his parole board hearing in July, where the fourmember panel voted unanimously for his release.

At that hearing, Simpson initially did not express any remorse for his actions, but eventually offered that he was “sorry that things turned out the way they did”.

He said: “I had no intent to commit a crime. If I would have made a better judgment back then, none of this would have ever happened.”

Simpson said he was “at a point in my life where all I want to do is spend time, as much time as I can, with my children and my friends”.

He said: “Believe it or not I do have some real friends.”