LAS VEGAS (AP) — The shackles and blue prison garb seemed to weigh down O.J. Simpson as he returned to a Las Vegas courtroom on Monday to ask for a new trial in the armed robbery-kidnapping case that sent him to prison in 2008.
Looking grayer and heavier, the 65-year-old former football star and TV pitchman was flanked by guards as he nodded and raised his eyebrows to acknowledge people he recognized in the audience.
A marshal had warned onlookers not to try to communicate with Simpson, and no words were exchanged.
Still, a close friend saw a flash of the old, magnetic Simpson personality.
“Not much muscle tone,” observed Sherman White, a former NFL defensive lineman, teammate and friend of Simpson since they both played for the Buffalo Bills. “But you saw a little of the O.J. pizazz when he came in.”
Simpson later conferred with his lawyers and listened intently to testimony from his daughter Arnelle Simpson and other witnesses.
Simpson, now more than four years into a minimum nine-year prison term, will be in court all week to claim that he had poor legal representation in the trial involving the gunpoint robbery of two sports memorabilia dealers in 2007 in a Las Vegas hotel room.
Simpson’s drab appearance contrasted with the fancy clothing he wore during his acquittal in his historic, high-profile 1995 murder trial in Los Angeles. The suit he wore then is now part of the Newseum collection in Washington, D.C.
The courtroom on Monday was partly empty, and an overflow room with closed-circuit hookups wasn’t needed.
Simpson hopes a new set of lawyers can persuade a judge that lawyer Yale Galanter, who represented him in the robbery case, had conflicted interests.
In a sworn statement outlining what he intends to say on the stand, Simpson said Galanter knew ahead of time about his plan to retrieve what he thought were personal mementoes from the memorabilia dealers in a casino hotel room.
Simpson also said Galanter never told him a plea deal was on the table.
Galanter was paid nearly $700,000 for Simpson’s defense but had a personal interest in preventing himself from being identified as a witness to the crimes and misled Simpson so much that the former football star deserves a new trial, lawyers for Simpson claim.
Galanter, who is scheduled to testify Friday, has declined comment before his court appearance.
“To me, the claims are solid. I don’t know how the court can’t grant relief,” said Patricia Palm, the Simpsonappeals lawyer who produced a 94-page petition dissecting Galanter’s promises, payments and performance in the trial that ended with a jury finding Simpson and a co-defendant guilty of 12 felonies.
Of the 22 allegations of conflict-of-interest and ineffective counsel that Palm raised, Clark County District Court Judge Linda Marie Bell has agreed to hear 19.
It was not clear whether Bell would rule immediately after the hearing.
Simpson maintains his plan was to take back what he expected would be family photos and personal belongings stolen from him after his 1995 “trial of the century” acquittal in the slaying of his wife and her friend in Los Angeles.
Simpson was later found liable for damages in a civil wrongful death lawsuit and ordered to pay $33.5 million to the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
In the Las Vegas case, Galanter blessed the plan involving family photos and personal belongings as within the law, as long as no one trespassed and no force was used, Simpson said.
The first witness on Monday was Dr. Norman Roitman, a Las Vegas psychiatrist who testified that Simpson’s perception of what took place in the Palace Station hotel room might have been hampered by the effects of stress, lack of sleep and several vodka and cranberry juice cocktails Simpson consumed before the confrontation.
“In those situations, people may focus on objects in front of them and be oblivious to other things,” Roitman said.
Simpson is expected to testify that to this day, he doesn’t know there were guns in the room. He has testified just once in open court before — during the wrongful death lawsuit.
During the robbery trial, Simpson contends, Galanter “vigorously discouraged” him not to testify, and never told him that prosecutors were willing to let him plead guilty to charges that would have gotten him a minimum of two years in prison.
“He consistently told me the state could not prove its case because I acted within my rights in retaking my own property,” Simpson said in the sworn statement.
2:20 PM PT -- We're back again.
2:05 PM PT -- Break time.
1:42 PM PT -- Had he known he stood a chance of being convicted, O.J. said he would have insisted on testifying. He also said he definitely would have taken the plea deal if he knew about it.
1:36 PM PT -- O.J.'s testimony is making it appear there was a major communication breakdown between him and Galanter ... O.J. said Galanter withheld a lot of important information from him about his case.
1:15 PM PT -- O.J. said he repeatedly tried to ask Galanter to testify. but Galanter assured him it wasn't necessary. O.J. said Galanter told him there was no way he'd be convicted. O.J. said he wanted to testify.
1:10 PM PT -- O.J. said Galanter never told him about a possible plea deal that would have gotten him a reduced prison sentence, despite there being discussions about one.
1:00 PM PT -- And we're back!
12:00 PM PT -- It's lunch break time. O.J.'s testimony will resume at 1:00PM PT.
O.J. Simpson is on the stand in his bid for a new trial, begging the judge to give him a second shot in the 2007 armed robbery case that landed him in prison ... and we're live streaming his testimony.
For the most part, O.J. has been recounting the events leading up to the incident on September 13th, 2007 -- when he barged into a hotel room at the Palace Station in Vegas, flanked by a bunch of dudes, to retrieve a bunch of sports memorabilia he claims had been stolen from him.
O.J. is currently serving a 33-year prison sentence, but he's asking for a new trial on grounds his previous attorney Yale Galanter torpedoed the case to save his own neck.
O.J. has claimed Galanter knew about his plan to retrieve the memorabilia from the 2 memorabilia collectors ... and advised O.J. not to take the stand in his defense so he wouldn't name Galanter as a witness.
During his testimony today, a relaxed-looking O.J. explained that he spoke to Galanter about retrieving the items the night before the robbery took place ... but there was no mention of guns or the use of force.
O.J. admitted he had been drinking before the incident -- drunk enough that he wouldn't drive a car -- but insisted he was never aware that a gun had ever been used (or even brandished) during the incident. To this day, O.J. says he has no knowledge that a gun was ever used.
O.J. said he believed he was legally entitled to do what he did at the time because he didn't do anything his lawyer told him not to do -- i.e. breaking in, or using force. He was so confident that he had acted legally that he gave detectives his phone number to contact him about what took place.
To prove Galanter was aware of the plan to retrieve the items from the hotel room, O.J. said Galanter had specifically requested one of the items for himself ... an old suit.
O.J. was also asked if Galanter had ever offered to serve as a witness in his case because of his knowledge of the incident. O.J. said no. He said Galanter never warned him about the "perceived" use of force in the hotel room either.
And there's this ... O.J. said Galanter only showed him a portion of the audio recorded during the hotel incident, the same audio TMZ posted back in 2007.
Simpson was famously grilled on the stand in the 1996 civil trial when he was found liable for killing Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman -- but he's never spoken under oath in a criminal case.
It's been interesting.
[source]: http://www.tmz.com/2013/05/15/oj-simpson-testimony-new-trial-armed-robbery-prison/#ixzz2TOsyqVDx
