NOW FREE, O.J. FACES OBSTACLES
SIMPSON ENCOURAGED TO KEEP A LOW PROFILE
With O.J. Simpson officially eligible for parole at the stroke of midnight Sunday, the Nevada Department of Corrections pulled off what amounted to a trick play.
Last week, NDOC spokeperson Brooke Keast said Simpson would be released from prison no earlier than Monday and it would likely happen outside of Las Vegas. With much of the media asleep shortly after midnight Sunday, Simpson was released on parole from Lovelock Correctional Center outside Reno, and, for the first time in nine years, he was a free man.
“We needed to do this to ensure public safety and to avoid any possible incident,” Keast said, according to the Associated Press.
The surprise release was in everybody’s best interest — except the media’s.
But Simpson, 70, faces challenges beyond reporters and TV cameras. David Roger, the former district attorney who prosecuted Simpson for his role in a 2008 robbery in Las Vegas, said public scrutiny of Simpson could lead to parole violation.
“I think there’s a chance that he will do something that will be caught on someone’s camera and he’ll have to return to (prison),” Roger told USA TODAY Sports. “Maybe out drinking and being above .08 (the legal limit for blood alcohol content). Could be something else. Who knows with O.J.”
A similar warning came from Kato Kaelin, Simpson’s former houseguest who became a household name at the “Trial of the Century” during which Simpson was acquitted in the murders of his former wife, Nicole Simpson Brown, and her friend Ron Goldman.
Kaelin said Simpson should be prepared for everything he does in public to be captured by video camera.
“Who doesn’t do that now?” Kaelin said during an interview with USA TODAY Sports. “Who doesn’t pull out their phone when they see something that will probably get a lot of hits for them on YouTube or on Twitter, Instagram, whatever?
“My advice would be for him to be with his family and not to be seen and not to do any social media. I would think he would want to hide out.”
Simpson still creates enough of a media stir to have prompted the NDOC to break protocol with his release. (Inmates normally are transported to High Desert State Prison, about 45 miles outside of Las Vegas.) Simpson apparently remains of interest to memorabilia collectors, too.
Bruce Fromong, one of the memorabilia dealers held up in the 2007 robbery during which Simpson said he was trying to retrieve items Simpson said belonged to him, said the memorabilia are still in demand.
Fromong said he recovered all 534 photos taken from him during the robbery and that he’s sold about half of them.
“O.J. Simpson memorabilia has, and will always be, in demand,” Fromong told USA TODAY Sports. “I’ve sold a lot of O.J. stuff.”
Fromong said he handled Simpson’s last public autograph signing in 1994 and worked with Simpson during the 1994 murder trial to generate $3 million from memorabilia items the former Heisman Trophy was autographing in jail.
It’s unlikely there will be another public signing, according to Fromong, because the proceeds would go to the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Simpson Brown. A civil jury in 1995 found Simpson responsible for their murders and ordered him to pay $33.5 million to the two families.
During his July parole hearing, Simpson said he wanted to move back to Florida. But Florida’s attorney general opposes the potential transfer from Nevada.
Meanwhile, Kaelin said Simpson should be prepared for cruel comments from critics on social media. And Roger, the former district attorney, took a shot at Simpson while recalling an audiotape Roger said he heard. On the tape, Roger said, Simpson was humming the scarecrow’s tune from the Wizard of Oz. It was Simpson’s favorite tune, Roger said Simpson’s former manager told him.
“How appropriate,” Roger said. “If this guy only had a brain.
“He won acquittal on murder charges, he could have gone to Florida, played golf, laid low and never had any problems with anybody. But instead, he gets arrested and is charged with being involved in an altercation with another motorist, a road rage case. And then he comes to Vegas and does an armed robbery.
“If he only had a brain, he would have spent the last nine years playing golf in Florida.”