Simpson Defense Accuses Police of Glee in His Arrest LAS VEGAS - O. J. Simpson's legal team began Thursday to mount a defense that will sound familiar to anyone who followed his 1995 murder trial: He is being persecuted by glory-seeking police officials overeager to convict him. A lawyer for Mr. Simpson, Yale Galanter, mentioned for the first time a part of surreptitious recordings of the robbery Mr. Simpson is accused of in which someone with the Las Vegas Police Department said, "California can't get him," and added, "Now we'll be able to." That comment has not been played in court, and Detective Andy Caldwell, the lead officer in the case, said he believed the person who made the remark was not an officer but a civilian employee. Mr. Simpson is charged with armed robbery and kidnapping stemming from his attempt to retrieve sports memorabilia he said had been taken from him. The incident showed the double-edged nature for the prosecution of the hours of secret recordings made by a collectibles dealer, Thomas Riccio, on a digital recorder left for 10 hours in the hotel room where Mr. Simpson is accused of leading a group of five other men to rob two collectibles dealers at gunpoint. "That's going to be big," another Simpson lawyer, Gabriel Grasso, said during a recess, referring to the remark. That kind of thing goes into closing arguments. Mr. Simpson's defense team in the 1995 trial, in which he was acquitted, argued that he had been framed by racist officers with the Los Angeles Police Department who planted evidence. In this case, Mr. Galanter and Mr. Grasso are not challenging the basic outline of what happened in the September 2007 incident but are arguing that the situation has been blown out of proportion in an effort to convict Mr. Simpson, the most famous murder defendant in recent American history. Mr. Simpson has acknowledged that he and his group entered the hotel room and took boxes and pillowcases full of sports collectibles that included memorabilia related to the careers of Mr. Simpson and three other famous athletes. But Mr. Simpson's lawyers say he wanted only items relevant to himself, including sports honors and family photos that had been stolen from him years ago. Prosecutors argue that the items no longer belonged to Mr. Simpson. Mr. Simpson also has insisted that he had no knowledge that two of his cohorts would bring weapons and said he never saw them brandish their guns during the six-minute incident. Mr. Riccio, who took center stage on Thursday as the prosecution began playing recordings he made of the planning for the raid, testified that he had arranged the confrontation by telling the two collectibles dealers that he had lined up a buyer. Instead, he brought Mr. Simpson and his group. Mr. Riccio said the two dealers, Bruce L. Fromong and Alfred Beardsley, were yielding the items to Mr. Simpson when two of the men became threatening and showed their weapons. "They were giving it back," Mr. Riccio said. There was no reason for the gun to come out. Mr. Riccio said he made the recordings to protect himself. He sold parts of them to a celebrity Web site before he turned them over to investigators. There is no indication from the recordings played in court from two meetings before the incident in the hotel room that Mr. Simpson directed anyone to take firearms to the room. He is heard repeatedly stating his desire to recover what he viewed as his belongings. "I just want my private pictures," Mr. Simpson is heard saying. Four of the men who accompanied Mr. Simpson have accepted plea bargains and are expected to testify in the trial, which could take more than a month. The fifth, Clarence Stewart, is being tried in the same trial as Mr. Simpson on the same 12 charges.