Former NFL footballer O.J. Simpson Granted Parole after 9 Years in Prison

Former NFL football star O.J. Simpson appears via video for his parole hearing at the Lovelock Correctional Center. (Lovelock Correctional Center via AP)
A parole board in Nevada has granted parole to former NFL player O.J. Simpson, who has served more than eight years for armed robbery and assault with a weapon.

Simpson, 70, was convicted in 2008 after enlisting a group of men, including two with guns, to retrieve some items from two sports collectibles sellers that Simpson said were stolen from him a decade earlier. He has now reached the nine-year minimum of the 33-year sentence he received.

Simpson appeared in front of the board via a live video feed from a prison in Nevada.

In his plea for release, Simpson told the board that he’s taken an “alternative to violence” course and that he is the commissioner of a softball league in prison.

The board he appeared in front of is the same one that granted parole on 12 of his charges in 2013.

Simpson was at the centre of the “trial of the century” in 1995, when he was acquitted for the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.