After Hall of Fame football player Orenthal James “O.J.” Simpson was acquitted in the double homicide of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman, on October 3, 1995, it seemed safe to assume that his legal troubles were mostly behind him. After all, Simpson had never been charged with a crime prior to his “Trial of the Century.” There was no reason to believe that a life of crime would follow it.
But Simpson faced a series of increasingly dark legal problems between that favorable 1995 verdict and his 2024 death. A&E True Crime looks at Simpson’s final 30 years in courtrooms.
The Civil Trial
On October 23, 1996—almost exactly one year after the conclusion of his criminal trial—a jury heard opening arguments in a wrongful death civil trial for those same killings.
From the start, the tone of this trial was different from the criminal trial that had preceded it. In a case that had polarized the nation, this jury was mostly white. And cameras were disallowed from the courtroom in an attempt to tamp down some of the media frenzy that had rocked the first trial.
Even then, there was plenty of attention, says John Q. Kelly, who was the attorney for the Nicole Brown Estate in that civil trial.
“I couldn’t even walk out of my hotel without being swarmed by reporters looking for a crumb of something,” Kelly tells A&E True Crime.
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Among Kelly’s contributions to his team’s case was the shocking discovery of photographs which showed Simpson in size 12 Bruno Magli shoes—the same ones that the killer had worn when tracking bloody prints at the murder scene.
After that, “[Simpson’s] demeanor changed,” Kelly says. “We came back in session after the Christmas-New Year break, and…he was facing one way in his chair and his attorneys were facing the other way. You could tell they felt they had been betrayed by him… He was sunk on the case, and it was all downhill after that.”
The jury found the former football star liable in the killings, awarding the Goldman and Brown families $33.5 million as compensation for Simpson’s crimes.
But Simpson wouldn’t pay. Instead, through a series of legal maneuvers he tied up most of his money into pension funds and purchased a home in Florida, where the state’s “homestead exception” shielded his real estate from creditors.
Still, in an attempt to recoup some money for the awards, several of Simpson’s memorabilia were seized and sold at auction, setting up the next major chapter in Simpson’s legal trouble.
Armed Robbery in Las Vegas
In the decade that followed that civil judgement, Simpson faced numerous (comparatively) minor legal issues.
He was arrested, tried and acquitted for a road rage incident in 2001 in Miami-Dade county. He was sued by DirecTV in 2005 for pirating their services and ordered to pay them $25,000 in damages.
But these incidents would be overshadowed by the armed robbery of a casino hotel room in Las Vegas in October 2008.
At the Palace Station Hotel and Casino, Simpson and a group of co-conspirators met a sports memorabilia dealer and held him at gunpoint for a large collection of items—many of them had originally belonged to Simpson himself, and which he claimed had been stolen from him.
David Roger, who served as the District Attorney for Clark County at the time and oversaw the case, says the evidence against Simpson was extremely strong.
“He should have pled guilty,” Roger tells A&E True Crime. “I think he just felt like he was invincible.”
Among the most damning evidence against Simpson, Roger says, were audio recordings of Simpson talking about the crimes.
“It made our job substantially easier. We had audio of O.J. Simpson planning the robbery. We had audio of the actual robbery…. And then audio tape of O.J. Simpson telling the accomplices after the robbery that they can’t admit that they used guns during the commission of this event.”
Roger says he offered Simpson a 28-month sentence in exchange for a guilty plea. Simpson’s team countered with 12 months.
Ultimately, the two sides couldn’t reach an agreement, and the case was decided by the jury. They found Simpson guilty of armed robbery and kidnapping, among other crimes. The judge sentenced Simpson to up to 33 years in prison.
After O.J. Simpson’s Incarceration
When Simpson was sent to the Lovelock Correctional Center in Pershing County, Nevada in 2008, he was 61 years old. He spent the next nine years at the facility, where he coached softball, played fantasy football and ate lots of junk food. He also worked in the prison gym, where he cleaned the floors and equipment.
Simpson became eligible for parole after serving nine years of his sentence, and the parole board unanimously voted to release him. He was released on October 1, 2017.
“I was invited to speak [at the final parole hearing], and I chose not to,” Roger says. “He had done nine years. I figured that he had served his time.”
Surprisingly to Roger, Simpson continued living in Las Vegas after his release.
O.J. Simpson died of cancer in his Las Vegas home on April 10, 2024, at the age of 76.
At time of publication, Simpson’s debt to the Goldman and Brown families—which had ballooned to over $100 million due to interest and lack of payments—remained almost entirely unpaid, and will likely remain that way.
It’s a depressing ending to a long story of injustice, says Kelly.
“The whole thing was sad. From start to finish.”
Related Features:
The Most Memorable Moments from O.J. Simpson’s Murder Trial
The 10 Biggest Crime Stories of the 2010s
Marcia Clark on Life After O.J. and Digging Up New Answers in Famously Complex Crimes
