Simpson juror says murder case played no role in verdict

"We went out of our way not to mention that," Fred Jones said. "That was never, never in our thoughts."

Jones, 66, a retired steel salesman, said he believed Simpson committed the Los Angeles murders, but that he put the crimes out of his mind when he was selected as a juror.

He said he and fellow panelists focused instead on hours of surreptitious audio recordings of Simpson and his associates. The tapes captured the retired athlete and five cohorts confronting two memorabilia dealers in a casino hotel room last year.

"We played those recordings over and over and over," Jones said.

Portions of the tapes contradicted Simpson's assertions that he never saw any guns during the encounter and never asked two associates to arm themselves.

A lawyer for Simpson blamed his conviction late Friday night on jurors' inability to surmount their opinions about the gridiron great's guilt in the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman in 1994.

A Los Angeles jury acquitted Simpson of the murders, but a civil jury held him liable for their wrongful deaths. He wrote a "hypothetical memoir" last year called "If I Did It," about how the crimes may have been carried out.

Simpson's longtime attorney, Yale Galanter, said today that the way jurors were selected would be "a cornerstone" of a planned appeal.

"We had people who would say, 'I think he murdered Ron and Nicole. I hate the fact that he wrote the book. I don't like his life. He definitely murdered them.' But if they checked the fair and impartial box, they were in the pool," Galanter said.

Simpson, 61, faces 15 years to life in prison when he is sentenced Dec. 5.

ashley.powers@latimes.com

harriet.ryan@latimes.com