Former football star and actor OJ Simpson is due back in a US court today. The 65-year-old was jailed for allegedly leading a gang of 5 men who robbed two sports memorabilia dealers in a Las Vegas hotel room in 2007.

He is seeking a retrial on the ground that the original hearing in 2008 was unfair. He claims his lawyer, Yale Galanter, gave him bad advice and had conflicting interests.

On Tuesday, Galanter's former friend and co-counsel, Gabriel Grasso, gave further evidence at Clark County Court on Simpson's behalf. He said he and Galanter decided to focus their case on Simpson's insistence that he did not know any members of the gang were armed.

Their other line of defence was that Simpson only wanted to retrieve property he believed had been stolen from him after his acquittal in 1995 of killing his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend in Los Angeles.

Grasso said he and Galanter considered other strategies, including that Simpson was drunk at the time of the robbery. But he, Grasso, did not believe jurors would be convinced due to all the "baggage" Simpson brought with him. On Monday Grasso told the court Galanter refused to pay for experts to analyse crucial audio recordings that helped convict Simpson.

"Hey,Gabe, wanna be famous?" Grasso recalled Galanter asking as the two embarked on a relationship that was expected to net them $750,000 in legal fees - a third for Grasso and two-thirds for Galanter.

In the event Grasso said he was only paid US$15,000, even though the weight of pre-trial work fell to him. Galanter has declined to comment before he gives testimony on Friday.

After his acquittal on the murder charges, Simpson was found liable for damages in a civil lawsuit and ordered to pay US$33.5 million to the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.