Former football player O.J. Simpson used the conviction of Henry Ruggs III to maintain his own innocence from a 2007 armed robbery.
On Wednesday, Ruggs, 24, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for a DUI crash that killed a woman and her dog. He pleaded guilty in May.
In 2007, Simpson was arrested after leading a group of men into a Las Vegas hotel room to steal sports memorabilia at gunpoint. Simpson claimed the memorabilia was taken from him and no weapons were present during the incident.
While his three co-defendants took plea deals, Simpson pleaded not guilty and took the case to trial. He was eventually convicted and sentenced to 33 years in prison in December 2008. In 2017, he was granted parole and released.
Still, Simpson believes he was only taking back what was rightfully his.
“I know I went to college on a football scholarship, but somehow this mad is not adding up to me,” Simpson said in a video posted to Twitter. “You’re driving a car at roughly 160 miles an hour on a public street — killing a girl and her dog — and you get 3-10 years.
“You go to a hotel room that you’re invited to, to retrieve your own personal stolen property — property I now have because it was ruled to be mine by the state of California — and you get 9-33 years. Same courthouse, same city, same state. I don’t know. Somehow, it just does not add up to me. I’m just saying.”
The justice system hasn’t been entirely unforgiven to Simpson, however. He stunned the country in 1995 when — despite evidence seemingly indicating the opposite — he was acquitted of the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.
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