This file photo taken on September 25, 2008 shows former NFL star OJ Simpson in District Court during his trial at the Clark County Regional Justice Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. After spending nearly a decade behind bars, Simpson will be up for parole in July 2017, the Nevada Department of Corrections said on May 22, 2017, although a date for the hearing has not yet been set. (AFP PHOTO/POOL/Isaac Brekken)

LOS ANGELES, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Former American football star O.J. Simpson was granted parole Thursday after serving nearly 9 years in prison in Nevada for a Las Vegas armed robbery and kidnapping conviction about a decade ago.

Simpson, who turned 70 this month, could be out of jail as early as October 1. A Nevada parole board voted 4-0 to grant Simpson parole, after a roughly 90-minute hearing in which Simpson testified that he had been a model prisoner and he has no interest in returning to the media spotlight.

"I've spent nine years making no excuses about anything," Simpson said. He also repeatedly apologized for his role in the crime. "I am sorry that things turned out the way they did. I had no intent to commit a crime," he said.

The ex-NFL star has tangled with the legal system over the last three decades, most famously in 1995 when he was acquitted of charges that he murdered his 35-year-old ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her 25-year-old friend, Ron Goldman.

His robbery conviction in 2008 was for his attempt at the Palace Station Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas to take photographs and other items from two sports memorabilia dealers by using guns, threats and force.

Following his conviction for the botched attempt to take sports memorabilia he claimed belonged to him in the first place, Simpson was locked up in Lovelock, Nevada, in 2008 and was sentenced to 33 years behind bars, with a minimum of nine years without parole.