Posted by Sabrina B. @gametimegirl
O.J. Simpson may not be coming back to South Florida for a good long while, but he’s still entitled to a homestead exemption on his Kendall home.
So ruled the Miami-Dade County property appraiser’s office after a neighbor complained that the convicted armed robber and long-ago football and TV star’s current extended residency at a Nevada prison should preclude him from receiving the property-tax break usually afforded to Florida homeowners.
Now the miffed neighbor, David Weston, thinks someone in Tallahassee should take another look.
What bothers Weston, he says, is not so much the fact that it’s Simpson getting the tax break, but more generally that state rules allow felons serving prison sentences — even those doing so out of state — to keep their exemptions.
“It doesn’t seem right,” Weston said. “It seems that’s a privilege of good citizenship, no?”
Florida Department of Revenue rules, which govern the homestead exemption, require that the property be the homeowner’s primary residence. But the rules also clearly state that a felony conviction by itself doesn’t disqualify anyone.
Nor does a temporary absence — “regardless of the reason for such,” the rule book says, “providing an abiding intention to return is always present.”
So there is no legal basis to rescind Simpson’s exemption, said Lazaro Solis, deputy property appraiser.
In fact, the only way Simpson could lose the exemption is if he rents out the home, Solis said.
A county inspector paid a visit and found Simpson’s son, Justin, living there.
Justin Simpson, 22, told the inspector he’s going back and forth to an out-of-town school, Solis said.
The younger Simpson, a graduate of Miami’s private Gulliver Academy, was known to have been attending Florida State in Tallahassee.
O.J. Simpson, now 63, moved to Miami with Justin and his older sister, Sydney, who is now 25, in 2000, five years after he was acquitted of murdering their mother, Nicole Brown, in Los Angeles.
Simpson’s Miami sojourn was cut short when he and a co-defendant were convicted in October 2008 of leading a bungled heist at a Las Vegas hotel to retrieve memorabilia the disgraced star claimed was stolen by dealers. Simpson, who has appealed, was sentenced to serve nine to 33 years at a Nevada state prison on charges of armed robbery, kidnapping and conspiracy.
Weston, the complainant, says he has nothing against Simpson. He believes Simpson deserved acquittal in his murder trial because “the police tampered with the evidence.”
But he said it’s “absurd” for someone in a Nevada prison to have a homestead exemption in Florida.
Miami-Dade Property Appraiser Pedro Garcia, however, said Simpson would not be the main person affected if the exemption were rescinded. “We have to have a little bit of human heart when we talk about the kids living in the house,” Garcia said.
