Simpson lawyer says celebrity defendant heading to Florida
ASSOCIATED PRESS
O.J. Simpson reacts after learning he was granted parole at Lovelock Correctional Center in Lovelock, Nev., on July 20.
LAS VEGAS >> O.J. Simpson will live in Florida following his parole from a Nevada prison where the former football star and celebrity criminal defendant has been held for the past nine years after a robbery conviction, his lawyer said today.
Attorney Malcolm LaVergne didn’t specify where Simpson would live in Florida, although Tom Scotto, a close friend who lives in Naples, Florida, has offered his home.
“He’s going to Florida,” LaVergne said. “There’s no doubt he’s going to Florida.”
Scotto didn’t immediately respond to telephone, email and text messages.
A Florida Department of Corrections spokeswoman, Ashley Cook, said her agency has not received a transfer request or documents about Simpson.
Simpson becomes eligible for release Oct. 1 but LaVergne said he doesn’t know where or when it will happen.
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He expects to learn more when Simpson notifies him that he is being moved from Lovelock Correctional Center in northern Nevada.
Release plans are in motion but need to be finalized for Simpson to be freed, perhaps as early as Oct. 2 in Las Vegas, Nevada prisons official Brooke Keast said.
Citing safety concerns, Keast said today the plans were not being made public.
LaVergne said he will begin pressing for answers if Simpson is not free by Oct. 8.
He said he spoke with Simpson by telephone on Sept. 28, and he is excited about his pending freedom.
“He’s really looking forward to the simple pleasures,” LaVergne said. “Seeing his family on the outside, spending time with them, eating food that’s not packaged.”
Simpson wants to eat steak and seafood and get a new iPhone, LaVergne told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
Simpson won parole in July after serving nine years of a possible 33-year sentence for his 2008 conviction on armed robbery, kidnapping and other charges.
The conviction came after a botched effort to retrieve items that Simpson insisted were stolen after his acquittal in the 1994 killings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman in Los Angeles.
Simpson was found liable for their deaths in a civil case in 1997 and ordered to pay the victims’ families $33.5 million.
A Goldman family attorney said the judgment amount has nearly doubled with interest over the years to more than $65 million, and he continues to seek payment.
