OJ free in October as he wins parole battle
OJ SIMPSON was last night granted parole after nine years in jail for armed robbery.
The disgraced former actor and American football superstar bowed his head and said “Thank you” as a US parole panel in Nevada unanimously voted to set him free.
Simpson, 70, will be eligible to leave the Lovelock Correctional Centre from October 1 at the earliest.
He was jailed in 2007 for up to 33 years for a botched gunpoint robbery in Las Vegas, where he led a group of men into a hotel to steal sports memorabilia.
Emotional
The case came a decade after he was controversially acquitted of murdering ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, 35, and her friend Ron Goldman, 25, in 1995 in a case dubbed “trial of the century”.
Yesterday, Simpson appeared remotely via video link from Lovelock for the hour-long hearing in front of the Nevada Parole Board in Carson City, Nevada.
He told the board “I’ve done my time” and said “I wish this had never happened”.
His eldest daughter Arnelle made an emotional plea on behalf of his four children and said that they “just want him to come home”.
She added: “No one really knows how much we have been through in the last nine years. My experience with him is that he’s my best friend and my rock.”
The panel told Simpson he was being freed because he was a “low risk to re-offend” and had “stable release plans”.
They took just 30 minutes to decide and said that while it was a “difficult” decision it was “fair and just”.
During the hearing, Connie Bisbee, the board of parole commissioner, told Simpson that he was “getting the same hearing as everyone else” despite his celebrity status.
Speaking earlier yesterday, Mr Goldman’s father Fred said that Simpson should not be freed because he has a “history of violence”.
Simpson excelled in the NFL in the 1970s, before starring in movies including The Naked Gun.