What legal problems did OJ Simpson have before his death?

After Hall of Fame football player Orenthal James “OJ” Simpson was acquitted of the double murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman on October 3, 1995, it was safe to assume that his troubles were mostly legal had behind him. After all, Simpson had never been charged with a crime before his “trial of the century.” There was no reason to believe that a life of crime would follow him.

But between that favorable verdict in 1995 and his death in 2024, Simpson faced a series of increasingly dire legal problems. A&E True Crime looks at Simpson’s last 30 years in the courtroom.

The civil process

On October 23, 1996 – almost exactly a year after the conclusion of his criminal trial – a jury heard opening statements in a civil wrongful death trial over the same murders.

From the beginning, the tone of this trial was different than the previous criminal trial. In a case that polarized the nation, that jury was overwhelmingly white. And cameras were banned from the courtroom to contain the media frenzy that rocked the first trial.

Even then, there was a lot of attention, says John Q. Kelly, who was the attorney for the Nicole Brown Estate in this civil case.

“I couldn’t even leave my hotel without being swarmed by reporters looking for a crumb of something,” Kelly says A&E True Crime.

(Electricity OJ speaks: The Hidden Tapes in the A&E app.)

Among Kelly’s contributions to his team’s case was the shocking discovery of photographs showing Simpson wearing size 12 Bruno Magli shoes – the same ones the killer had worn when he tracked down bloody prints at the crime scene.

After that, “(Simpson’s) behavior changed,” Kelly says. “We came back into session after the Christmas and New Year break and … he was looking one way in his chair and his lawyers were looking the other way. You could tell they felt like they had been betrayed by him…He was immersed in the case and it went downhill from there.”

The jury found the former football star responsible for the murders and awarded the Goldman and Brown families $33.5 million in compensation for Simpson’s crimes.

But Simpson didn’t want to pay. Instead, through a series of legal maneuvers, he invested most of his money in retirement funds and bought a home in Florida, where the state’s “homestead exemption” protected his properties from creditors.

Nevertheless, in an attempt to recoup some money for the awards, several of Simpson’s memorabilia were confiscated and auctioned off, opening the next major chapter in Simpson’s legal troubles.

Armed robbery in Las Vegas

In the decade following that civil ruling, Simpson faced numerous (comparatively) minor legal problems.

He was arrested for a road rage incident, tried and acquitted in 2001 in Miami-Dade County. He was sued by DirecTV in 2005 convicted of pirating their services and ordered to pay $25,000 in damages.

But these incidents were 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 over a large collection of items – many of which originally belonged to Simpson himself and were believed to have been stolen by him.

David Roger, who served as Clark County district attorney at the time and led the case, says the evidence against Simpson was extremely compelling.

“He should have pleaded guilty,” Roger says A&E True Crime. “I think he just felt like he was invincible.”

Some of the most damning evidence against Simpson, according to Roger, was audio recordings in which Simpson spoke about the crimes.

“It made our work a lot easier. We had audio recordings of OJ Simpson planning the robbery. We had audio recordings of the actual robbery…. And then an audio recording of OJ Simpson explaining to the accomplices after the robbery that they cannot admit that they used weapons in 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 could not agree 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 the incarceration of OJ Simpson

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 a lot of junk food. He also worked in the prison gymnasium, where he cleaned the floors and equipment.

Simpson was eligible for parole after serving his nine-year sentence, and the parole board voted unanimously to release him. He was released on October 1, 2017.

“I was invited to speak (at the last parole hearing) and I chose not to,” Roger says. “He had been doing it for nine years. I assumed he had served his sentence.”

Surprisingly to Roger, Simpson continued to live in Las Vegas after his release.

OJ Simpson died of cancer at his home in Las Vegas on April 10, 2024, at the age of 76.

At the time of publication, Simpson’s debts to the Goldman and Brown families – which had ballooned to over $100 million due to interest and missed payments – were almost entirely unpaid and are likely to remain so.

It’s a depressing end to a long history of injustice, says Kelly.

“The whole thing was sad. From start to finish.”

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