O.J. Simpson To Be Sentenced Today

LAS VEGAS (CN) - O.J. Simpson's attorneys have asked Clark County District Court Judge Jackie Glass for leniency when sentencing the football hero for robbing a pair of sports memorabilia dealers last year. They're asking Glass to sentence Simpson to 6 years.

"Simpson has never previously been convicted of a crime," one of Simpson's attorneys, Gabriel Grasso, wrote in a sentencing memorandum filed Wednesday. "Thus, he now stands before the court as a first time offender. Furthermore, the crimes for which Simpson awaits sentencing have caused no physical harm to the initially complaining witnesses."

Grasso continued: "Simpson was not an individual storming a bank and taking property that belonged to others. Simpson was not a defendant that bound and gagged people while their personal possessions were being taken. This was an individual who truly believed he was not committing a crime....

"(T)he punishment should be proportionate to the facts and circumstances surrounding the crime. Even the harshest of Mr. Simpson's critics would agree that these were not the acts of a hardened criminal mind."

News spread Thursday that Marcia Clark, Christopher Darden, Mark Furman and the Goldman family are among the cast of characters from Simpson's 1994 murder trial expected to be in court Friday during Simpson's sentencing.

Court officials, meanwhile, were preparing Glass' courtroom Thursday for the onslaught of spectators expected to fill the courtroom when Simpson and his co-defendant Clarence C.J. Stewart learn their fates.

Two overflow rooms have been prepared to handle both the media and the public. The courtroom itself is expected to be filled with Simpson's family and the prosecutors who couldn't convict him in Los Angeles 13 years ago for the stabbing death of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman.

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