THE SIMPSON VERDICTS : Famous No More : Simpson’s Jail Cell Becomes Just Another Lockup After Its Best-Known Tenant Is Freed

There are places in society that will never be the same in this, the post-O.J. world. But cellblock 1750 of the Los Angeles County Jail isn’t one of them.

It took less than an hour, officials said, for the 9-by-7-foot cell that had housed the city’s most famous inmate to snap back to steel-and-concrete normalcy. And less time than that for the massive mechanism that is the Men’s Central Jail to purge itself of O.J. Simpson.

The deputies were so eager to unload the security risk he posed that they clocked his departure--24 minutes and 35 seconds from the time that Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito ordered him released “forthwith” to the moment his private van hit the nearest freeway.

“Once the word of the verdict reached our people at the jail . . . they immediately gathered up his property and had it at the reception center before he got back there,” said Sheriff Sherman Block shortly after Simpson’s release. “He never walked back into his cell at all. He went to the inmate reception center and was fingerprinted for identification. . . . We gave him his property and he went.”

The County Jail, like most big bureaucracies, abhors disruption, and Simpson was a hassle from Day One. Because he was a celebrity, he had to be given “keep-away” status, so inmates in the general population could not threaten him. Because he had 15 lawyers--and the money to pay them to escort a steady stream of “material witnesses” to see him--he rarely spent a day without a visitor.

He slept later, showered more often and spent more time in street clothes than other prisoners. When his lawyers complained that they were unable to see him on weekends because the visiting room for attorneys was only staffed with guards during the week, a court order was issued and the county was forced to redo a visiting room next to the infirmary so that Simpson’s lawyers could conduct their visits there. And the lawyers weren’t the half of it; certainly, no other inmate was entertaining model Paula Barbieri when court was dark.

Block said Simpson had “never personally created any problems” at the jail, and, in fact, was a model prisoner. But “because of all the material witnesses visiting him, his presence there was somewhat disruptive of the process.”

Although he was kept in handcuffs for his five-minute ride back to the jail Tuesday, he was hustled out as quickly as possible. Block supervised the paperwork, standing by as the cuffs were removed and Simpson wordlessly shook the hand of the deputy who had ferried him back and forth to court for more than a year.

By Wednesday morning, the only reminder that Simpson had slept in his cell, officials said, was the exercise bicycle that he had used every day. They had left that in place for the next high-security prisoner who, for whatever reason, cannot use the regular recreation facilities.

So far, no one has been moved into the cell--or the other six cells next to it, which were kept vacant during Simpson’s stay.

But, officials said, the floor has been swept, the mattress changed, the toilet scrubbed and the security cameras unplugged. The Simpson cell is ready for another guest.