LAS VEGAS — Four times, in a halting, broken voice, a humbled O. J. Simpson said Friday, “I’m sorry.”

Yet for all his compunction about the September 2007 raid and armed robbery at a casino hotel for which he was convicted of 12 felonies, Mr. Simpson also continued to insist that he did not think at the time that he had done anything illegal.

And so Judge Jackie Glass of Clark County District Court, facing down the man acquitted in perhaps the most-watched murder trial of the 20th century, scolded Mr. Simpson for his arrogance and stupidity and sentenced him to a minimum of nine years in state prison.

“The evidence was overwhelming,” Judge Glass said before pronouncing sentence, first on one of Mr. Simpson’s five accomplices, Clarence Stewart, 54, and then on Mr. Simpson himself.

Both men were convicted by the same jury of the same 12 charges, including kidnapping and armed robbery, stemming from the incident at the Palace Station Hotel-Casino. Mr. Simpson and five men, at least two of whom carried guns, stole a trove of sports memorabilia worth thousands of dollars from two collectibles dealers.

“It was a little-bitty room and a lot of you big guys in that little-bitty room,” Judge Glass said. “That was ‘nobody leave this room.’ That was actually a very violent event. Guns were brought; one was displayed. The potential for harm to occur in that room was tremendous.”

Mr. Simpson’s maximum sentence could be 33 years. Judge Glass sentenced Mr. Stewart to a minimum of seven and a half years and a maximum of 27 years. A Parole and Probation Division report had recommended an 18-year minimum sentence for each man; prosecutors said they had sought at least six years.

“It could’ve been a lot worse,” Mr. Simpson’s longtime lawyer, Yale Galanter, said at a news conference. “It was one of those days where you expect the worst, hope for the best and it turned out better than we thought. Obviously he’s upset by the prospect of facing nine years in prison, but I think he’s really relieved he didn’t get a life sentence.”

Mr. Simpson, a Pro Football Hall of Famer, wore a blue prison jumpsuit and shackles on his legs and wrists. Shortly before he was sentenced, he rose and addressed the court for about five minutes, his first comments in the courtroom throughout the trial, and ones that Judge Glass said later that she had not expected.

Mr. Simpson apologized repeatedly for the trouble he had caused while restating his belief that the items he had sought in the hotel room were rightfully his. They included trophies and family photos that he said were stolen years ago from his Los Angeles home and had ended up in the possession of the collectibles dealers, Bruce L. Fromong and Alfred Beardsley.

“I didn’t want to hurt anybody,” Mr. Simpson insisted. “I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong.”

In remarks leading up to the sentencing, Judge Glass repeatedly insisted that neither she nor the jury had been influenced by the 1995 trial in which a Los Angeles jury acquitted Mr. Simpson in the murders of his former wife Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald L. Goldman.

“That doesn’t matter to me; I want that to be perfectly clear to everyone,” she said, explaining that she gave Mr. Stewart a shorter sentence because she felt he was less culpable.

A hearing to determine in which Nevada prison Mr. Simpson, 61, will serve his sentence will be held in coming weeks. Earlier Friday, Judge Glass denied a defense motion that he be allowed to remain free pending appeal.

The prosecutor, District Attorney David Roger, said he did not think Mr. Simpson would be isolated from the rest of the prison population, and Mr. Simpson’s lawyer Gabriel Grasso indicated that he had not been separated from other inmates in the Clark County Detention Center. He has been held there since he was convicted on Oct. 3, exactly 13 years after his acquittal in the killings of Ms. Simpson and Mr. Goldman. Mr. Simpson has become popular among his fellow jail inmates, Mr. Grasso said, because he buys candy for them with his own commissary money.

Neither Mr. Fromong nor Mr. Beardsley attended the sentencing. Mr. Goldman’s father and sister did, though, and said they were pleased by the outcome.

“There’s never closure; Ron is always gone,” the father, Fred Goldman, said on the courthouse steps. “What we have is satisfaction that this monster is where he belongs, behind bars.”

Four of Mr. Simpson’s accomplices pleaded guilty and testified against him at the trial here, which played out like a very low-key echo of his circuslike trial in Los Angeles in 1995. Even the sentencing drew only a small cadre of publicity-seeking figures, including, appropriately for Las Vegas, an Elvis Presley impersonator.

While many legal experts said they did not think the case would have gone to trial had it not centered on Mr. Simpson, a noted Las Vegas criminal defense lawyer, Dayvid Figler, said he was surprised and impressed that Judge Glass did not go harder on him. “This sentence is not out of line with someone who would be in a similar position as Simpson with those charges having gone to trial,” said Mr. Figler, who also discussed the case on truTV.

Lawyers for Mr. Simpson and Mr. Stewart said they would appeal the convictions on several grounds. They argue that jury selection was manipulated to produce a panel with no African-Americans and that one juror claimed on a questionnaire not to have a strong opinion about the 1995 trial but said in post-trial interviews that Mr. Simpson should have been convicted 13 years ago.

“This isn’t the end for this legal team,” Mr. Galanter said. “This is the beginning. There’s a long way to go. We’re not going to leave any stone unturned.”

In a glittering career as a running back in the 1970s, Mr. Simpson was one of the most famous football players of his generation. But he became the prime suspect in the 1994 murder of Ms. Simpson, who had divorced him two years earlier, and Mr. Goldman, outside her home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles.

The acquittal of Mr. Simpson, who has always vehemently maintained his innocence in the killings, came at the end of a racially charged trial.

Mr. Simpson was found liable for the deaths in a 1997 civil suit and was ordered to pay damages to the victims’ families totaling $33.5 million.