The former football star O. J.Simpson was prematurely released from prison on the weekend after nine years.This is reported by the US news broadcaster CNN, referring to a spokesperson of the Nevada Department of Corrections.The 70-year-old therefore left the Lovelock Correctional Center on Sunday night.
Simpson was sentenced to 33 years in prison for armed robbery in a hotel in Las Vegas in 2008.A judiciary committee of the state of Nevada unanimously decided in mid-July to give Simpson the remaining years of probation.
“It was cheerful and seemed happy to be allowed to live his life on,”said spokeswoman Brooke Keast:”The release went off without a hitch.Our biggest worry was safety, we didn’t want paparazzi to follow him,” Simpson was a free man just after midnight.
The former world-class footballer, who later also made his career as an actor in Hollywood (“Die nackte Kanone”), had forced two collectors of fan articles to publish devotional items together with accomplices.
More than a decade before, he had been at the centre of one of the most controversial proceedings in recent US justice history.In the spectacular circumstantial trial in 1995, he was acquitted of the accusation of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her companion.The verdict of that time still divides the US public.