OJ Simpson set for fresh trial

Former American football star and actor OJ Simpson is due to go on trial over kidnapping and armed robbery charges in Las Vegas.

Orenthal J Simpson returns to court more than ten years after he was acquitted of the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman in the so-called "trial of the century".

The trial, before Clark County District Court Judge Jackie Glass in the Nevada city, is expected to last five weeks.

On November 28, the 61-year-old and his co-defendant Clarence "CJ" Stewart, pleaded not guilty to kidnapping, armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, burglary, coercion and conspiracy charges relating to the alleged theft of sports memorabilia at the Palace Station Casino in the Nevada city on September 13, 2007.

Four other former co-defendants have negotiated plea deals with prosecutors on lesser charges and testified against Simpson at a previous hearing.

Simpson has denied any knowledge about guns being involved in the confrontation with memorabilia dealers Bruce Fromong and Alfred Beardsley. He has said he intended only to retrieve items that had been stolen from him by a former agent.

He faces a life sentence if found guilty.

One of the items at the centre of the case is the suit he was wearing in 1995 when cleared of murdering Mrs Brown Simpson and Mr Goldman.

The previous year he was arrested and charged with the June 12 murders but after failing to turn himself in, notoriously became the object of a low-speed pursuit in a white Ford Bronco SUV.

The trial was one of the most widely publicised in American history but on October 3, 1995, he was found not guilty of their deaths.

The verdict was seen live on TV by more than half of the US population, making it one of the most watched events in American TV history.

Polls showed that most black Americans felt that justice had been served by the "not guilty" verdict, while most white Americans did not.

Then in 1997, a default judgment against Simpson was awarded for their wrongful deaths in civil court by a jury, but to date he has paid little of the £19 million in damages.

He went on to write a book called If I Did It in 2006, which set out how he might have murdered his wife, had he been so inclined. The book had to be withdrawn and pulped by HarperCollins shortly before its publishing date.

In August last year, a Florida bankruptcy court gave the rights to the book to the Goldman family, who published it under the title I Did It: Confessions of the Killer.

© Independent Television News Limited 2008. All rights reserved.

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