OJ Simpson freed from jail on parole after nine years
OJ SIMPSON, the former American football player and Hollywood star, has been released from a Nevada prison after serving nine years for armed robbery.
Unlike when he walked free after his murder trial in 1995, Simpson faces parole supervision for another five years.
Nevada state prisons spokeswoman Brooke Keast said he was released early on Sunday.
The 70-year-old told the parole board that he wanted to live in Florida but the Florida Department of Corrections said officials had not received a transfer request or required documents.
Simpson was sent to prison in Nevada for a botched hotel-room robbery of sports memorabilia 12 years after he was acquitted of killing his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman in Los Angeles.
Ms Keast said that Simpson was released at 12.08am local time from Lovelock Correctional Center in northern Nevada.
She said she did not know who met Simpson upon his release and did not know where Simpson was immediately heading in his first hours of freedom.
She said the dead-of-night release from the prison located about 90 miles east of Reno, Nevada, was conducted to avoid media attention.
“We needed to do this to ensure public safety and to avoid any possible incident,” she added.
Simpson is looking forward to reuniting with his family, eating a steak and some seafood and moving back to Florida, his lawyer said recently.
Simpson also plans to get an iPhone and get reacquainted with technology that was in its infancy when he was sent to prison in 2008.
But Florida’s attorney general Pam Bondi said: “Our state should not become a country club for this convicted criminal.”
Close friend Tom Scotto, who lives in Naples, Florida, has offered to have Simpson live at his house. Simpson lost his home near Miami to foreclosure in 2012.
Two of Simpson’s children, Justin and Sydney, also live in Florida.