O.J. Simpson was sentenced Friday to at least nine years in prison for the kidnapping and robbery last year of two sports memorabilia dealers in a Las Vegas casino hotel room.
Under the sentence handed down by Clark County District Court Judge Jackie Glass, Simpson would be eligible for parole in 2017. The maximum time he could serve is 33 years, at which time he would be 94 years old.
“In no way did I mean to hurt anybody, to steal anything from anybody,” a tearful Simpson said. “I just wanted my personal things.”
Glass, who presided over Simpson’s trial, didn’t want to hear it.
“When you take a gun with you and you take men with you in a show of force, that is not just a ‘Hey, give me my stuff back.’ That’s something else and that’s what happened here,” the judge said.
She insisted that the sentence had nothing to do with Simpson’s acquittal in the 1995 case in which Simpson was accused of slaying his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman.
Outside the court, Goldman’s father, Fred Goldman, and sister, Kim, were thrilled with the sentence.
“We are thrilled, and it’s a bittersweet moment,” Fred Goldman told CNN. “It was satisfying seeing him in shackles like he belongs.”
