O.J. Simpson Back in Court in Florida

Jury selection began Tuesday in the trial of O.J. Simpson for alleged road rage, with a Miami court seeking jurors who would not be swayed either way by the former football star’s acquittal six years ago for the murder of his ex-wife and her friend.

Simpson, dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and tie, caused a ripple of excitement as he arrived in the Miami-Dade County courthouse. He paused in the corridor to shake hands.

Simpson, who moved to Miami from California last year, faces felony and misdemeanor charges arising from a December 2000 roadside incident in the suburb of Kendall.

Another motorist, Jeffrey Pattinson, accused Simpson of running a stop light, berating him, then reaching into the car and snatching his glasses, scraping his skin as he did so.

Simpson, 53, said at the time that Pattinson had honked and flashed his lights at him, and that he had simply walked away from Pattinson’s car after Pattinson yelled at him. He pleaded not guilty to the charges at an arraignment in March.

Prosecutor Paul Mendelson said Tuesday that state sentencing guidelines called for between two and 16 years in jail for the offenses and told the court the prosecution would seek a sentence within this range if Simpson was convicted.

The felony count was technically a burglary for allegedly taking the glasses from the car and carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison. The misdemeanor count was for battery and has a maximum sentence of 364 days.

As jury selection got underway with an initial batch of 50 people, Judge Dennis Murphy said the process could take days or even several weeks.

The judge made clear the key issue would be ensuring jurors were not swayed either way by what they thought of Simpson’s previous criminal and civil trials.

Murphy stressed that Simpson’s past was not on trial.

“The previous Simpson cases have no place in this courtroom or in this trial,” he told the group, adding the only thing that could be used by jurors deciding their verdict was evidence against Simpson.

“This case is the state of Florida versus O.J. Simpson, and no other case,” Murphy said.

Simpson’s sensational criminal trial for the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994 was obsessive viewing for many people around the country.

A Los Angeles jury acquitted Simpson in a verdict that divided Americans. Much of the split was along racial lines--many blacks thought the police tried to frame Simpson, while many whites thought he got away with murder.

In a later civil trial, Simpson was found liable for the killings and ordered to pay $33.5 million in damages.

Simpson’s lawyer, Yale Galanter, has said the charges from the roadside dispute are frivolous and arose purely because Simpson is a celebrity.

The judge asked the group of potential jurors if any of them had not seen media coverage of the previous Simpson cases in California.

“Not that I recall,” said a sole young woman, raising her hand.

As the process moved on to individual questioning, the judge, prosecutor Abbe Rifkin and Galanter honed in on how much the past might influence the present.

The first person to be questioned was excused from jury duty when she admitted that “I don’t think I would be a fair juror for Mr. Simpson.”

The potential juror did not say why.