LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Florida corrections officials said on Thursday they had no indication from O.J. Simpson that he would move to the state after his upcoming release from a Nevada prison, amid speculation about the former “Trial of the Century” defendant’s post-incarceration plans.
Simpson, 70, had told Nevada parole commissioners that he planned to move to Florida, where he has friends and family.
The release of Simpson on parole after serving nine years for a botched armed robbery at a Las Vegas hotel casino has generated wide interest in the media, but few details about his first moments of freedom have been made public.
Nevada corrections officials have said only that the former football star, once nicknamed “The Juice,” would be released from prison sometime shortly after Oct. 1, the date of his parole.
A spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Corrections said on Thursday that the state had not received a transfer request or any documentation regarding Simpson and had not been contacted by its counterparts in Nevada.
Simpson was sentenced in 2008 to nine years in prison for the Las Vegas hotel heist of his own mementos.
In granting his release, the parole commissioners said they did not take into consideration the notoriety still surrounding Simpson’s 1995 acquittal from charges he murdered his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman and a civil court decision that found him liable for the deaths and ordered him to pay $33.5 million in damages.
(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Leslie Adler)
