LOS ANGELES • O.J. Simpson could be out of prison as early as Oct 1 after a Nevada parole board voted 4-0 to grant him early release.

The 70-year-old has spent nine years in prison stemming from charges from a 2007 armed robbery in a Las Vegas hotel room, reported the New York Times.

That incident further dented the standing of the former American football hero, which had suffered after the 1994 knife slayings of his former wife and her friend, for which he was acquitted.

On Thursday, he told the parole board that he was "a good guy" and that "I basically have spent a conflict-free life".

Appearing on a video link from Lovelock Correctional Centre, he said: "I've spent nine years making no excuses about anything. I am sorry that things turned out the way they did."

Visibly greyer than when he was convicted, he gave an account of the hotel robbery that one parole commissioner noted "differs a little from the official record".

Simpson said he did not know that some of his accomplices were armed and that the items he took belonged to him.

"Obviously, there was a 10,000pound elephant in that room," said his lawyer Malcolm Lavergne after the parole hearing.

"Mr Simpson is obviously a very polarising figure."

Simpson had tapped on his sporting fame to become a household name with his appearances in movies and commercials.