US prosecutor fights to keep Simpson in jail

Published on Saturday 12 September 2009 19:47

A US prosecutor has challenged claims that OJ Simpson was unfairly convicted of armed robbery and kidnapping.

District Attorney David Roger has filed a brief with Nevada's top court challenging the former American football legend's appeal against his conviction on 12 charges relating to a confrontation with two men in a Las Vegas hotel room.

He was sentenced to nine to 33 years in state prison after being found guilty, along with his co-defendant Clarence "CJ" Stewart, of kidnapping two sporting memorabilia dealers and holding them hostage at the Palace Station hotel and casino in 2007.

Simpson and Stewart had been accused of leading a gang of six men to the room in the early hours of the morning to retrieve a selection of American footballs, sports trophies and signed photos.

During the trial, the jury heard testimony that two of the men had been armed with guns and that one accomplice had asked him to bring a gun and look "menacing".

Simpson, who had already been acquitted of the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman, in Los Angeles in 1994, has maintained he was trying to retrieve personal items that had been stolen from him and didn't know guns were involved when he led the swoop with what he claimed were golfing friends.

The 62-year-old's lawyers now want him exonerated of all charges and have cited judicial misconduct, insufficient evidence, a lack of racial diversity on the jury, which contained no black people, and errors in sentencing and jury instructions in arguing that he should be set free.

They have already made an attempt to have Simpson freed on bail pending the appeal – a process which can take up to two years to conclude – though that was rejected earlier this month.

However, Clark County District Attorney David Roger has now rebuffed the lawyers' accusations in a detailed legal document filed with the state's top court.

Challenging the grounds for Simpson's appeal, Roger outlined eight reasons to uphold the conviction in the 46-page brief, arguing, among other things, that the court did not remove two black women from the jury pool because of their race.

In the document, Roger said the women were removed, in part, because prosecutors believed they would not convict Simpson, despite the state's evidence, because of their religious convictions.

One of the women was a pastor in her church, and prosecutors worried that she might be forgiving by nature and able to influence other jurors.

"Prosecutors feared that a minister, whom many believe possesses a higher moral authority, could influence and sway jurors who might otherwise be inclined to convict and punish," the brief said. "Indeed, the state's apprehension … had nothing to do with her racial background and everything to do with her ministerial position."

Another woman was removed from the jury pool because she made several biblical references while being questioned by prosecutors and said her beliefs would make it hard to judge someone else's conduct. She also said she would not send anybody to jail.

In the brief, Roger also argues that Simpson's assertion that he was retrieving his own property is not a defence against robbery and the court was not obligated to give instructions that would have mis-stated the law.

He added that Judge Jackie Glass properly stopped Simpson's lawyers from cross-examining a witness about things that didn't relate to the charges Simpson faced.

In his filing, Roger also said that his attempt to show memorabilia dealer Alfred Beardsley's bias towards Simpson did not constitute prosecutorial misconduct. Beardsley was one of the men whom Simpson confronted during the incident for selling mementoes of his career.

The district attorney's brief did not respond to the appeal of Stewart, a 55-year-old friend of Simpson's who was convicted with him and is serving a seven-and-a-half to 27-year sentence. Stewart's lawyers have argued that he should have been tried separately from the footballer.

Simpson and Stewart were tried together. The four other men implicated in the incident took plea deals and received probation after testifying for the prosecution.

The former footballer's imprisonment has been widely seen as proxy justice for his part in the death of his ex-wife.

But in legal circles there has been a heated debate about whether it was possible for such a controversial individual like Simpson to receive a fair trial.