For the first time since 2013, the public will see O.J. Simpson live next week when he appears at a televised parole hearing.
The hearing will take place at 10 a.m. PT on Thursday, July 20, from Nevada and will be broadcast in a video pool, with networks including ESPN airing it live.
The televised Trial of the Century back in 1995, in which Simpson was acquitted in the double murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, captivated the nation. All eyes will no doubt be on the former USC and Buffalo Bills football star once again, though Simpson, who just turned 70, will look very different.
Understandably, the Nevada Board of Parole Commissioners stated that there has been “overwhelming media and public interest” in Simpson’s possible parole.
ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap will anchor a special 90 minute “Outside the Lines” on Thursday about the events surrounding the hearing. Earlier this year, the network won its first Oscar for the highly-accalimed “30 for 30” event series, “O.J.: Made in America,” directed by Ezra Edelman.
The hearing will be streamed from the Lovelock Correction Center, where Simpson has been a resident since 2008. The former football star was sentenced to nine to 33 years for armed robbery and kidnapping following a scheme to break into a room at the Palace Station hotel in Las Vegas to steal sports memorabilia.
Simpson denied that he broke into the room and that he held people at gunpoint, but did admit to taking the items, which included memorabilia that he said belonged to him.
He was sentenced exactly 13 years after he was acquitted on charges of murdering his ex-wife Nicole and Goldman.
Simpson was granted parole on some of the armed robbery convictions in 2013, but still had to serve at least four more years due to assault with a deadly weapon charges and other weapon-related charges.
If paroled, he won’t see the outside of the prison until October 2017.
Tony Maglio contributed to this report.