FOR the past 13 years he has inspired both fascination and revulsion among Americans dumbfounded by his notorious acquittal of double murder in 1995, but for much of the next decade OJ Simpson will be regarded differently. His conviction on Friday night on charges of armed robbery and kidnapping will earn him a minimum 15-year sentence and could keep him in jail for the rest of his life.

A Las Vegas jury found Simpson guilty on all 12 charges he faced after a bizarre assault on a pair of sports memorabilia dealers in a casino hotel room last year. His four-week trial was a muted echo of the 266-day marathon that cleared him of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman in what became the most sensational case in American legal history.

There was little sensation in the sordid proceedings that unfolded last month before an all-white jury in the Las Vegas case, where Simpson was accused of masterminding a plot to seize hundreds of sports-related items he believed had been stolen from him. Both Simpson’s associates and his alleged victims turned out to be deeply unsympathetic characters all scrabbling to cash in on the 61-year-old former American footballer’s notoriety.

Yet Nevada prosecutors succeeded in convincing the jury that Simpson had not only cooked up the scheme to grab autographed merchandise and mementos, but had arranged for five friends to accompany him, at least one with a gun.

As the verdicts were read out - 13 years to the day after his acquittal for murder - Simpson grimaced and shook his head. He was taken into custody in handcuffs as his sister, Carmelita Durio, sobbed. For many Americans who had gasped in disbelief as a mostly black jury acquitted him of murder in 1995, it was a moment of long overdue payback.

His lawyer, Yale Galanter, said Simpson was “ extremely upset , extremely emotional”. He added: “We knew this was going to be very difficult.”

Galanter said he would appeal the verdicts on the ground that an all-white jury could not treat Simpson fairly. The jury’s key finding that Simpson commissioned the use of guns is likely to add years to the sentences for at least nine of the charges he faced, which included conspiracy, kidnapping, robbery and assault.

Compared with the epic legal battle that mesmerised America in 1995, the Las Vegas trial proved a sideshow that failed to capture much public attention. On some days the courtroom was half-empty as Galanter attempted to undermine the testimony of Simpson associates who gave evidence against their former friend in exchange for lenient treatment.

The case was primarily notable for the glimpses it provided of Simpson’s life since he was forced to move to Florida by a 1997 civil court ruling that found him responsible for the murders of Brown and Goldman, and ordered him to pay $33.5m to their families.

In his Hollywood heyday, the star athlete was a fixture at film premieres and celebrity golf tournaments. He remains a handsome, charismatic figure, but he has fallen out with most of his friends and is often spotted in Miami sports bars, where he talks to anyone who buys him a drink. One of his friends joked on a tape heard in court that he was so broke he would sell his own underwear.

Goldman’s family has pursued Simpson’s assets and succeeded in seizing rights to a controversial book he wrote called If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer. But his million-dollar home and $400,000-a-year football pension are protected from civil creditors under Florida law. Las Vegas prosecutors argued that the roots of Simpson’s problems lay in his need to hide his possessions from the Goldman family’s investigators. Witnesses testified that Simpson described the Goldmans as “gold-diggers”.

At some point, Simpson claimed, a pair of sporting memorabilia dealers named Bruce Fromong and Alfred Beardsley made off with a large collection of Simpson-related items, including autographed footballs and photographs.

When Simpson - known in his sporting days as “the Juice” - arrived in Las Vegas for a friend’s wedding and discovered that the pair were attempting to sell items worth an estimated $100,000, he hatched his plan to seize them back. Prosecutors argued that whether or not the original “stuff” was Simpson’s, “we don’t want people going into rooms with guns to take property”.

Looking greyer and bulkier than 13 years before, Simpson sat stoically as a series of video and audiotapes exposed many of his friends and associates as double-talking spivs desperate to cash in on his fame.

According to one tape, one of his closest friends once paid a woman to seduce Simpson in a hotel room in the hope of secretly videotaping the encounter and selling it to a supermarket tabloid. The friend, Simpson’s former agent Mike Gilbert, was also alleged to have offered Simpson’s girlfriend, Christie Prody, $1m to install cameras in her bedroom. Prody said she asked Simpson incredulously: “This is your friend?”

Simpson and Gilbert have since fallen out, and Gilbert made headlines this year when he published a memoir called How I Helped OJ Get Away With Murder. Gilbert claimed that years after the murders Simpson had confessed his guilt; one of Simpson’s lawyers later dismissed the account as the ravings of a “delusional drug addict”.

Members of the jury, which deliberated for 13 hours, declined to comment, but it was clear they had ignored defence claims that Simpson was the victim of a concerted effort to punish him, not for a minor casino affray in which nobody was hurt, but for the murders of 13 years ago.

In his closing remarks, Galanter referred to an audio-tape of police officers boasting that they would succeed where their California colleagues had failed – and be the ones to “get” Simpson. Within minutes of the original incident in September last year, Beardsley was hawking his story around media outlets and Fromong talked of wanting “big money” from the case. Another witness admitted to making $200,000 from media interviews.

“This case has never been about a search for the true facts,” Galanter argued. “This case has taken on a life of its own because Mr Simpson’s involved. But being stupid and being frustrated is not being a criminal.”

This time, though, there was to be no miraculous escape for OJ in the face of overwhelming evidence. He has become, at long last, a convicted criminal.

NOTORIOUS CASE
- On June 12, 1994, Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman were found stabbed to death outside her Los Angeles home. Suspicion fell on Simpson Simpson’s lawyers argued that racist police had planted evidence.
- On October 3, 1995, he was acquitted as 150m people watched on TV.

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