That would be the sound of champagne corks popping over at Court TV.

A Las Vegas judge ruled Wednesday that prosecutors have enough evidence to take O.J. Simpson and two alleged accomplices to trial on charges of robbing two sports memorabilia collectors at gunpoint in a Las Vegas hotel room.

Simpson, Charles Ehrlich and Clarence Stewart have each been booked on 12 felony counts of armed robbery, assault, kidnapping, burglary, conspiracy and coercion. While the robbery charges carry mandatory prison time, all three could spend the rest of their lives in prison if convicted of kidnapping.

Court officials said that a trial could begin as "soon" as next fall. (Meaning, Phil Spector could theoretically be retried before Simpson stands trial.) In the meantime, Simpson remains free on $125,000 bail.

The defendants were ordered to appear for arraignment on Nov. 28.

"We're disappointed, but we understand the judge's decision," Stewart's attorney, Robert Lucherini, said, adding that he might move to have his client tried separately.

"This is what we expected," Simpson told reporters on his way out of the courtroom. "If I have any disappointment it's that I wish a jury was here. As always, I rely on the jury system."

It was the "jury system" that famously acquitted Simpson of murder on Oct. 3, 1995, following the killings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman. That trial lasted 10 months.

A civil jury found Simpson liable for their deaths in 1997, however, ordering the famed running back to pay the Goldman family $33.5 million in damages.

And now Simpson is at the mercy of the criminal justice system once again.

Over the course of four days, eight witnesses took the stand, with the majority of testimony supporting Clark County prosecutors' version of events: Simpson asked at least two of the five people accompanying him on Sept. 13 to carry guns and then proceeded to bully collectors Alfred Beardsley and Bruce Fromong into submission, allowing the posse to tote off a reported $80,000 worth of memorabilia, including signed baseballs and footballs, awards and photographs.

Throughout, Simpson's legal camp challenged the validity of each witness, especially the three men who went to the hotel with Simpson who have since pleaded guilty to lesser charges in exchange for their testimony against the former NFL star.

Earlier Wednesday, Simpson attorney Gabriel Grasso implored Justice of the Peace Joe Bonaventure to dismiss the charges.

The Naked Gun star had no intention to steal anything because he thought he was meeting up with Beardsley and Fromong to retrieve items that had been stolen from him, Grasso argued.

"There has been no showing by the state that there was anything other than the intent by Mr. Simpson to recover property that he reasonably believed was his own property," he said.

The lawyer also questioned whether prosecutors had added the kidnapping rap because they were charging that Simpson lured Beardsley and Fromong to the meeting, or whether it stemmed from the confrontation that ensued.

Either way, "this is clearly overcharging," Grasso said.

"Sunglasses? Hats? Cell phones? Twelve counts over that? What are we doing here?" Ehrlich's lawyer, John Moran Jr., argued, reading off some of the lesser items taken during the alleged heist.

"It's a waste of the court's time. Everybody they got on that stand cut deals."

While Simpson has maintained that he only wanted to take back items that his former licensing agent stole from him and that no guns were involved, admitted accomplices Charles Cashmore, Walter Alexander and Mike McClinton—all of whom have accepted plea deals—testified that Simpson was not only fully aware that Alexander and McClinton had guns, but that he asked the men to bring them.

Beardsley, the last witness to take the stand, testified Wednesday morning that, because he did not see Simpson carrying a gun, he wasn't being entirely accurate when he called 911 following the holdup and told the dispatcher that the Naked Gun actor had robbed him at gunpoint.

When asked by longtime Simpson attorney Yale Galanter whether his recollection of the incident could be trusted, Beardsley admitted that his memories might be a little fuzzy.

"I'm fired and stressed from this entire situation," the Burbank-based collector said. Later on, he also testified that he admired Simpson as an athlete and was reluctant to testify against him.

But Beardsley maintained that the items in his possession were not stolen and that many of them came into his possession when they were auctioned off after someone failed to make a payment on the storage locker they were kept in.

Beardsley also contradicted previous testimony from Thomas Riccio, the memorabilia dealer who arranged—and then made an audio recording of—the meeting, denying that he was the one who approached Riccio about unloading some Simpson items.

Riccio, who was granted immunity after turning his recordings over to authorities, "is a man driven by money and he wants to set Mr. Simpson up and myself," Beardsley said.

Both Riccio and Beardsley, who's currently serving a jail term in L.A. for violating his probation on a stalking charge, are convicted felons.

Riccio said Friday that he thought it was possible that Simpson hadn't seen the guns that Walter Alexander and Mike McClinton admittedly brought into the hotel room.

Alexander testified Tuesday, however, that Simpson pointedly asked him to get his hands on "some heat—just in case things go wrong."