Nobody is walking around with Free OJ Simpson shirts on despite the success of FX’s mini-series The People vs. OJ Simpson and then ESPN’s Oscar Award-winning 30-for-30 banger OJ: Made In America. Most are content with letting him rot in prison for crimes he may or may not have committed.
Sports Illustrated reported that the Hall-of-Fame back and most notorious murder suspect in American sports history might be released when he comes up for parole this summer after serving nine years of a 33-year sentence stemming from his attempts to forcibly take back memorabilia he said belonged to him.
Simpson, 69, has been locked behind the steel gates as inmate No. 1027820 at the Lovelock Correctional Center in Nevada since 2008. Thirteen years prior to that incarceration, he was found not guilty of killing his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman in what was dubbed the Trial of the Century.
O.J. couldnt avoid the jake and was found guilty in 2008 on 12 counts, including kidnapping, assault, robbery, burglary and conspiracy.
Sources say Simpson is in good standing with the parole board and scored well in 2013 in the point system they use to determine if an inmate should be released.
Simpson scored three points in 2013, and is expected to score low again when he comes up for parole, which could be this summer. Inmates who score fewer than five points have a good shot at being released.
“He’s the kind of person who gets paroled. He has done a significant amount of time and, by all accounts, hasn’t caused any problems [while in prison],” Daniel Hill, a Las Vegas criminal defense attorney, told Sports Illustrated.
Simpson is eligible for parole on October 1st, so a hearing is likely to occur around his 70th birthday in July.
The Nevada parole board reportedly grants release to about 50 percent of the inmates whose cases it hears.
If Simpson makes parole, he could be gone from Lovelock by the Fall.
If he is denied, he could stay in prison until 2022. If OJ is released, he will also have access to his NFL pension which sits at $2.7 million.
