Bitter Juice
FREED O.J.’S GRIPE FEST:
The Juice is loose — but he’s still feeling squeezed.
O.J. Simpson was released from a Nevada prison under the cover of darkness early Sunday but admitted hours later that he still felt like a caged man.
“I’ve been in Nowhere USA for the last nine years doing nothing. Nothing has changed in my life. What do you expect?” the former football great groused at a rest stop just outside Las Vegas, according to video obtained by The Post.
“I’m in a car for the last five hours, so how do I know how it feels to be out?”
Simpson, who won parole after serving nine years for robbery, is seen in the video sitting in the back of a white SUV at the Amargosa Valley, Nev., rest stop.
When he is first approached by the camera at the stop at around 5:30 a.m., he stammers, “Man, how in the . . . Have y’all been, y’all stalking me?”
Simpson, 70, was released from the Lovelock Correctional Center shortly after midnight and chauffeured away in a waiting car, officials said.
The dead-of-night release was intended to avoid a media circus and “ensure public safety and reduce the potential for incident,” the Nevada Department of Corrections said in a Facebook post accompanying another video showing Simpson walking out of the prison.
Prison officials said they did not know where he was headed.
“I told him, ‘Don’t come back,’ and he responded, ‘I don’t intend to,’ ” said Department of Corrections spokeswoman Brooke Keast. “He was upbeat, personable and seemed happy to get on with his life.”
Keast said it was typical for prison officials to tell departing inmates “not to come back.’’
Simpson took all his belongings — including a couple of pairs of shoes, a hot plate andd legal papers — so theyy couldn’t be sold as memorabilia,, Keast said.
Citing associ-ates, CNN re-ported that hee was headed to a wealthy northern Las Vegas suburb to stay with pals.
Simpson has said he intends to move to Florida to be closer to his two children with ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, whose 1994 slaying with Ron Goldman led to his standing trial for murder.
He has a standing offer to stay at the Naples, Fla., home of close friend Tom Scotto. And Simpson’s lawyer, Malcolm LaVergne, recently said, “There’s no doubt he’s going to Florida.”
But Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said Simpson was not welcome in her state.
“I’ve handled parole hearings my entire titime as a prosecutor, and . . . I have never seen such lack of remorse in my entire career,” she told “Fox & Friends” Sunday.
Simpson won parole in July, nine years after being sentenced to 33 years in prison for his attempt to rob sports-memorabilia dealers in a Las Vegas hotel room in 2007.
He will remain under supervision for five years, although that could be reduced with good behavior, officials say.