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 A four-member panel of the Nevada Board of
Parole Commissioners voted unanimously to release the
70-year-old former National Football League star turned TV
pitchman and actor, now best remembered as the defendant in a
sensational double-murder trial that gripped America two decades
ago.
Simpson participated by video feed from Lovelock Correctional
Center, about 100 miles (160 km) from the parole board's offices
in Carson City, sitting at a wooden table next to his attorney
dressed in a prison-issue denim shirt and dark pants.
A smiling Simpson, with close-cropped gray hair and looking
thinner than at his last parole hearing in 2013, testified along
with his daughter and one of the victims in the 2007 heist. He
offered a rambling account of the robbery, at times striking a
defensive tone and at others sounding apologetic.
A board spokesman said that Nevada law does not require an
expression of remorse as a criteria for winning parole, though
he said it could be noted as a mitigating factor.
Simpson bowed his head and appeared to be in tears as the board
voted unanimously to grant him parole, then stood and thanked
the commissioners repeatedly, hands clasped.
"I've done my time, I've done it as well and respectfully as
anyone can," Simpson said during the hearing. "None of this
would have happened if I'd had better judgment."
Among reasons the commissioners gave for granting parole once
Simpson completed the minimum of his nine-to-33-year sentence on
Oct. 1 was his compliance with prison rules, a lack of prior
criminal convictions and his minimal safety risk to the public.
"HE MADE A MISTAKE"
Despite previous murder charges against Simpson, commissioners
did not challenge his assertion that he had spent a largely
conflict-free life and had always been "pretty good to people."
Simpson, known during his football career as the "Juice", said
he was ready to spend time with his children and friends and
could handle the public attention he would get.
“I’m not a guy that has conflicts in the street, I don’t expect
to have any when I leave here” he told the commissioners.
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Simpson's adult daughter, Arnelle, told the hearing that his
incarceration had been hard on her family.
"No one really knows how much we have been through, this ordeal the
last nine years," she said. "He's like my best friend and like my
rock."
Bruce Fromong, one of the sports memorabilia dealers Simpson was
convicted of robbing, said he had long ago forgiven the man he
called a close friend.
"This is a good man. He made mistake. But if he called me tomorrow
and said, 'Bruce I'm getting out, will you pick me up?' Juice, I'll
be here tomorrow for you."
The second robbery victim was Alfred Beardsley, who according to
Simpson’s lawyer made amends with Simpson years before his death in
2015.
Simpson hopes to move to Florida, where he has friends and family,
when he is released, a plan that must first be approved by probation
authorities there.
"I could easily stay in Nevada, but I don’t think you guys want me
here,” Simpson said to laughter during the hearing. The board's
chairwoman, Connie Bisbee, replied: "No comment." The commissioners
said they did not take into consideration the notoriety still
surrounding Simpson's 1995 acquittal from charges he murdered his
ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman and a
civil court decision that found him liable for the deaths and
ordered him to pay $33.5 million in damages.
Simpson will probably be transferred in the final weeks of his
incarceration to one of two other Nevada prisons used to accommodate
soon-to-be-released inmates because of their proximity to airports
and other public transportation, Corrections Department Warden
Isidro Baca said.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Additional reporting and writing by Dan
Whitcomb in Los Angeles; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Andrew Hay)
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