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According to a Nevada prison official, former National Football League (NFL) star and film actor, O.J. Simpson has been released after a nine-year sentence for armed robbery.
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Nevada state prisons spokeswoman Brooke Keast says Simpson was released at 12:08 a.m. from the Lovelock Correctional Center in northern Nevada. The spokeswoman explained that he was released at midnight to avoid media flurry.
"We needed to do this to ensure public safety and to avoid any possible incident," she told CBS News by telephone.
He will be supervised by the state division of parole and probation for five years.
Before his release, 70-year-old Simpson expressed a desire to return to Florida, but implied that the state's attorney general did not want him there. But, Florida Department of Corrections said officials had not received any request asking for a transfer.
"The specter of his residing in comfort in Florida should not be an option," Attorney General Pam Bondi said. "Our state should not become a country club for this convicted criminal."
The football star was previously the center of one of the most high-profile murder trials of the century. A dozen years before his robbery conviction, Simpson was found not guilty of killing his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman. He was later found liable in civil court for the murders and ordered to pay $33.5 million to survivors – including his children with Brown Simpson, and Goldman's family.
Simpson's children with Brown Simpson, Justin and Sydney, live in Florida
Last year Emmy-winning FX miniseries, "The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story," and the Oscar-winning documentary "O.J.: Made in America," documented aspects of the former athlete's life.
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