OJ Simpson is set to appear in front of a Nevada parole board on July 20, and the prosecutor who put him away in 2008 believes the former NFL running back will be released from prison.
Retired Clark County District Attorney David Roger got a jury to convict Simpson on 12 charges related to robbery and kidnapping in a sports memorabilia heist. Simpson has served more than nine years of a sentence that was nine years to 33 years, and Roger believes the parole board will see that as enough time.
“The guy did a lot of time on a robbery charge, I expect he’ll probably be paroled,” he told David K. Li of the New York Post recently. “Assuming he didn’t do anything bad on the inside, I think nine years is a pretty good stay for his charges. Obviously he’d be on parole and would have to toe the line with parole officers. But I don’t know if granting him parole would be out of line here.”
Roger said he offered Simpson a plea bargain that would have resulted in the Hall of Famer serving 2 1/2 years, but Simpson did not want to serve more than a year.
“He had plenty of opportunity to enter a plea to do far less time,” he added. “He thought he was invincible. He wanted to roll the dice.”
If Simpson is granted parole, he could be released from prison on Oct. 1. The 70-year-old already had two parole hearings denied in 2013 and 2014.
A former guard at the prison where Simpson is being held told Emily Smith of Page Six this week that OJ is afraid pressure from the media will impact his upcoming hearing.
“O.J. thinks he deserves his parole — he’s been clean for nine years, hasn’t had any write-ups, took all the programs and classes they told him to take — but he thinks all this media hype is going to screw with the parole board and put pressure on them to keep him locked up,” Jeffrey Felix said. “The media still portrays him in a negative light because he was acquitted of the murders [of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman].”
If he is released from prison, we have already heard about at least one unique opportunity that could allow Simpson to make some money. Though OJ was acquitted of murdering his ex-wife and her friend, he was found liable in a civil suit related to the case and ordered to pay $33.5 million. Believe it or not, the NFL may actually owe Simpson money.
