O.J. Simpson's attorneys are planning to try to convince a group of Nevada judges to overturn his 2007 conviction of a hotel room robbery this week. They worry about time, since they are only going to have a few minutes to make their case.

"We only have 15 minutes to make our arguments. It really is daunting," Yale Galanter said Thursday. "But what the public doesn't know is that there are hundreds of pages of briefs that have already been filed."

Simpson won't be in court with his attorneys, and neither will his co-defendant, Clarence "C.J." Stewart. Their attorneys are planning to argue that Simpson's fame and acquittal of the 1994 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman biased the jurors in his earlier trial.

Simpson is going to be 63-years old next month, and Stewart is now 56. Simpson was sentenced nine to 33 years in prison for his role in the crime.

"This was a referendum on O.J. Simpson's life. This was payback," Galanter said. "This was not about what happened here in Nevada."

The odds are stacked against Simpson. The same three judges heard arguments last year and decided not to free either defendant while they waited to hear the outcome of their appeals. After the arguments on Friday, the panel could take up to three months to make their decision, according to Bill Gang, spokeman for the state's appellate court. After that, the Nevada Supreme Court may agree to take the case.

Simpson's attorneys are alleging that there was judicial misconduct, insufficient evidence and a lack of racial diversity on the jury, as well as errors in sentencing and jury instructions.

It's hard to imagine that the second guilty verdict for OJ Simpson was done on a clean slate. Rarely in recent history has the entire nation been so adamant about presuming the guilt of a man who'd been acquitted of a crime. For the 13 years after Simpson's original trial, he has been treated by America as a guilty man. Much of the frustration was likely driven by the fact that just 30 years ago, America would not have had to watch a black man be acquitted of killing a white woman. In fact, vigilante justice would have sufficed.

The OJ Simpson trial taught us a lot about ourselves as a nation and reminded us that we have not made nearly as much racial progress as we might have liked. We thought, for a second, that we'd been cured of the racial bias that has plagued our nation for the past 400 years, only to be reminded in one poll after another that whites and blacks tend to live in very different realities.

Simpson is an old man now, hardly the stallion of an athlete that we remember. His last days will be sad ones, far away from the excitement of parties, fast drugs, and beautiful women. He now stands as a broke, crippled old man spending his last days without the freedom he once took for granted. I honestly do feel sorry for him.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and a Scholarship in Action Resident of the Institute for Black Public Policy. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.