A jury on Friday night found O.J. Simpson guilty of robbery and kidnapping, a verdict that came 13 years to the day after Simpson was acquitted in the highly publicized murders of his ex-wife and her friend.
Simpson was facing 12 charges stemming from a confrontation in September last year in a casino hotel room in which he and five cohorts departed with hundreds of items of sports memorabilia.
In the courtroom as the verdict was read, Simpson showed no emotions. He was led away in handcuffs and taken into custody. His sister, Carmelita, who was sitting in the front row, broke down in tears. The items were in the possession of two memorabilia dealers, Bruce Fromong and Alfred Beardsley, who were led to believe a prospective buyer was coming to browse the goods. Instead, Simpson and his group burst into the room and, according to several witnesses, at least one gun was brandished.
The jury of nine women and three men, who deliberated for 13 hours, mulled weeks of testimony as well as hours of surreptitious audio recordings of the planning and execution of the event by Thomas Riccio, a memorabilia auctioneer who arranged the confrontation.
Simpson, 61, and co-defendant Clarence Stewart, 54, are facing 15 years to life on the kidnapping charge.
Sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 5. Simpson has said he was seeking to retrieve only personal keepsakes like ceremonial footballs from his Hall of Fame NFL career and photos of his family that years ago were taken from his home; the prosecutors said he should have filed a civil lawsuit to regain the items if they were, in fact, stolen from him.
Four of the 24 witnesses who testified were the other men who accompanied Simpson and Stewart, all of whom have accepted plea deals in exchange for testimony. Two of those men, Walter Alexander and Michael McClinton, carried guns in the incident and one, McClinton, testified that he did so at Simpson’s request.
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