A Nevada parole board unanimously granted O.J. Simpson early release from the Lovelock Correctional Center. The former football star could be free as soon as October 1.
Simpson, 70, has served nine years of a nine-to-33-year prison sentence for the 2007 armed robbery and kidnapping in Las Vegas. He appeared before the four-member Nevada Parole Board via video link.
“Are you humbled by this incarceration?” Simpson was asked by a member of the parole board.
“I wish this never would have happened,” he replied, adding later: “I am sorry that things turned out the way they did.”
In the 1990s, Simpson, a Heisman Trophy winner and NFL star who parlayed his sporting fame to movies, television, and commercials, went from one of American’s best-known figures to one of its most notorious. He captured international headlines following his dramatic arrest in 1994 following the slayings of Nicole Brown Simpson, his former wife, and Ron Goldman, her friend. Simpson was acquitted of the killings the next year, following an 11-month trial dubbed the “trial of the century.” He was found liable for their deaths two years later following a civil suit brought by Brown and Goldman’s families.
The board told Simpson Thursday his 1995 acquittal wouldn’t be a factor in its decision.