LAS VEGAS — A jury convicted O. J. Simpson
of armed robbery, kidnapping and all 10 other counts stemming
from a confrontation last year in a Las Vegas hotel room.
The verdict, which was read late Friday after 13 hours of
deliberations, came 13 years to the day after Mr. Simpson was
acquitted in the highly publicized murders of his former wife,
Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald L. Goldman.
Mr. Simpson gave a heavy sigh as the verdict was announced
but showed little emotion as officers led him handcuffed from
the courtroom. Mr. Simpson’s sister, Carmelita Durio, broke
into sobs as he was led away and later fainted.
Mr. Simpson’s lawyer said the conviction would be appealed.
Sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 5, and Mr. Simpson, 61, and
his co-defendant, Clarence Stewart, 54, could spend the rest
of their lives in prison. Kidnapping is punishable by five years
to life, and the armed robbery conviction requires a mandatory
sentence of at least two years and up to 30 years. The presence
of a weapon at the scene adds years to the minimum sentences
for 9 of the 12 charges, which include conspiracy to commit
robbery, burglary, assault and coercion.
“He’s extremely upset, extremely emotional,” Yale Galanter,
Mr. Simpson’s lawyer, told reporters after the verdict. “We
knew this was going to be very difficult, we knew the jury was
going to be very difficult, we knew the jurisdiction would be
very difficult.”
Defense lawyers said they worried from the start about what
one described as the “spillover effect” from Mr. Simpson’s controversial
acquittal in 1995.
“I don’t like to use the word payback,” Mr. Galanter said.
“I can tell you from the beginning my biggest concern w as whether
or not the jury would be able to separate their very strong
feelings about Mr. Simpson and judge him fairly and honestly.”
Mr. Simpson was facing charges after an incident on Sept.
13, 2007, in a room at the Palace Station Hotel-Casino in which
he and five other men departed with hundreds of items of sports
memorabilia.
The items were in the possession of two memorabilia dealers,
Bruce L. Fromong and Alfred Beardsley, who were led to believe
that a prospective buyer was coming to inspect the goods.
Instead, Mr. Simpson and his group burst into the room and,
according to several witnesses, at least one in the group was
brandishing a gun.
The jury of nine women and three men considered weeks of testimony
as well as hours of surreptitious audio recordings of the planning
and execution of the event by Thomas Riccio, a memorabilia auctioneer
who arranged the confrontation. Mr. Simpson, who could be heard
on the recordings, did not testify.
Mr. Simpson has said he was seeking to retrieve only personal
keepsakes like ceremonial footballs from his Hall of Fame N.F.L.
career and photographs of his family that years ago were taken
from his home.
Among the 24 prosecution witnesses were four of the men who
prosecutors said accompanied Mr. Simpson and Mr. Stewart into
the hotel room. The four accepted plea bargains from prosecutors
in exchange for their testimony, and two of them, Walter Alexander
and Michael McClinton, testified that they had carried g uns
during the confrontation. Mr. McClinton said he was armed at
Mr. Simpson’s request.
The proceedings failed to capture the intense public interest
that turned Mr. Simpson’s 1995 trial into the so-called trial
of the century. That spectacle became a racial touchstone and
turned a number of legal analysts into television stars.
While Mr. Simpson’s earlier acquittal was never discussed
during the trial, it hung over the proceedings. Jurors were
quizzed extensively before their selection about their views
of the divisive 1995 trial, and references were made in some
of the audio recordings to the fact that Mr. Simpson owes the
estate of Ms. Simpson and Mr. Goldman $33.5 million because
in 1997 he was held liable in a civil lawsuit for the deaths.
Mr. Galanter attacked that issue in his closing, pointing
out that Mr. Riccio’s recorder picked up police officers at
the crime scene seeming to exult in their chance to prosecute
Mr. Simpson. He also noted that Mr. Riccio alone testified that
he had made more than $200,000 in fees from the news media in
exchange for interviews and rights to his recordings.
“This case has never been about a search for the true facts,”
Mr. Galanter said. “This case has taken on a life of its own
because Mr. Simpson’s involved. You know that, I know that,
every cooperator, every person with a gun, every person who
signed a book deal, every person who got paid money, the police,
the district attorney's office, was only interested in one thing:
Mr. Simpson.”
