EDITORIAL: O.J. Simpson a free man?

O.J. Simpson is serving hard time for a bungled attempt at the Palace Station in 2007 to retrieve sports memorabilia he claimed had been stolen from him. That’s the official story, at least.

Of course, everyone knows that’s not the real reason why he’s leasing a cell at the Lovelock Correctional Center in Northern Nevada.

The incident that landed Simpson behind bars wouldn’t normally have attracted much attention and typically might have resulted in a plea deal and minimal jail time. But 12 years earlier — in a trial that riveted Americans and foreshadowed the rise of the nation’s obsession with reality TV and social media — a jury acquitted Simpson in the gruesome murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, despite overwhelming evidence of his guilt.

When Simpson was arrested 10 years ago after entering that off-Strip Las Vegas hotel room, brandishing a gun and threatening two men over family photos and other items, Clark County prosecutors weren’t going to let him walk. Not again. They jammed him with every possible charge — kidnapping, robbery, burglary, use of a deadly weapon. A jury returned guilty verdicts on all 12 counts. District Court Judge Jackie Glass handed down a sentence of nine to 33 years.

Critics said it was an abuse of the criminal justice system to turn the Las Vegas trial into “payback” for the California verdict. Many others cheered, calling it poetic justice.

On Thursday, 22 years after Ms. Brown Simpson and Mr. Goldman were found stabbed to death in the posh Brentwood area of Los Angeles, O.J. Simpson, now 70 years old, will appear via video before four members of the state Parole Board meeting in Carson City. It is the culmination of a process that began in 2013, when the board paroled him on five of the 12 counts.

The hearing, which will be televised by a variety of networks, including ESPN, will last around 30 minutes. Only victims, their family members, Simpson and his attorneys will be allowed to speak. If the board grants Simpson parole on the remaining seven counts, he could be a free man as early as October. The fact that he has been, by most accounts, a model inmate works heavily in his favor. So does his advanced age.

Even Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson, who is married to the judge who presided over Simpson’s Las Vegas trial, said last week that the former Heisman Trophy winner would be an “excellent candidate” for parole.

It might be tempting to argue that the Parole Board must keep Simpson confined as punishment for those heinous crimes more than two decades ago, but that would only compound past injustices. While the specter of those killings clearly hovered over his Las Vegas trial, it simply isn’t relevant to the issue now facing the panel.

Absent some new revelation about Simpson’s behavior in Lovelock, the Parole Board will be hard pressed to deny his application.