Orenthal James Simpson, the ex-football star and probable killer, though not convicted, of his wife Nicole Simpson and her friend, Ron Goldman, was paroled on July 20 after spending nine years in prison for an unrelated robbery and kidnapping conviction. On October 1, if I am permitted to be cliché just once in this article, the Juice will, indeed, be let loose.

I have mixed feelings about his release into normal society. O.J., I believe, like many others do, killed his wife and friend in cold blood, brutally stabbing them to death with a large knife. He is a violent, narcissistic sociopath addicted to the spotlight who manipulates those around him for his own satisfaction.

On the other hand, he was not convicted of the murders (he was found guilty in civil court, however), which makes him innocent, legally, but that does not negate his other errors and the potential threat to society he poses when he walks out of his cell and onto the streets as a free man.

Has he truly reformed himself? Probably not. I watched the livestream of the parole hearing, and he lied through his teeth about his character. He claimed he never was accused of pulling a weapon on anyone, asserting it with the bravado and confidence of a con artist and well-trained actor. Those who would have accused him of pulling a knife on them are dead, so they technically couldn’t accuse him. Others accused him, however, because he was tried by a jury of his peers. He claimed he never started trouble with anyone, yet he admitted to beating his wife in the deposition tapes of his 1997 civil trial.

Justice is not always served. An armed robber, kidnapper, and killer will walk free in mere months, and when he gets home, he will be flooded with offers to sell the movie rights to his life story. He’ll get a book deal, probably, and he’ll get paid for making public appearances and speaking gigs. He’ll make a substantial sum of money, even if he has to pay a lot of money to the Goldmans, who will no doubt hound him for unpaid restitutions. He’ll live the rest of his miserable days in luxury, all the while people who committed much lesser acts will toil away their squalid lives in a cage and die alone, forgotten.

To invoke another cliché, life isn’t fair.

O.J. doesn’t affect my life personally, so it doesn’t matter to me if he leaves or not. I hope no one else has to endure pain and suffering because of his actions. He’s a 70-year-old man, however, which makes him much less likely to commit violent crimes after his release.

I hope the media doesn’t use his release as an excuse to stoke race baiting between blacks and whites, as they did with his original acquittal in 1995. There’s some hope that will not happen, though. People in my generation and slightly before didn’t live through the original trial, so we don’t understand the highly charged emotionality that surrounded the case. Race relations, however, have heated up in recent years.

Hopefully O.J.’s parole doesn’t contribute to further aggravation and provocations from any side.