Envelope Raises Ethics Issues in Simpson Case : Courts: Attorney obligations, nature of the evidence are debated. Prosecutor visits victim’s condominium.

When Judge Kathleen Kennedy-Powell came to court Friday with a bulky yellow envelope produced by defense attorneys for O.J. Simpson, she set off a weekend of speculation that it contained dramatic evidence in the celebrated murder case.

Numerous observers hypothesized that it was a knife; some assumed the development was worrisome for Simpson. “The only time I’ve seen defense lawyers turn over evidence is when it is incriminating or at least ambiguous,” said Los Angeles defense lawyer Harland W. Braun.

But other legal experts said that even if the mystery envelope contains a knife, that may not be harmful to the former football star. They noted there is a long line of cases holding that defense attorneys have to turn over physical evidence that may be relevant to a crime--including evidence that may help their case.

“While a defense lawyer has no obligation to go find evidence for the prosecution, that lawyer has a high ethical duty,” said Loyola University law professor Laurie Levenson. “The lawyer may not know how important something is, but if it’s possible that it’s relevant, the lawyer has to turn it over so he cannot be accused of hiding evidence.”

Although sources have indicated that the envelope contains a knife--much like one that witnesses described selling to Simpson in May--there is no guarantee that any details about it will be revealed when the preliminary hearing resumes Tuesday morning.

Investigators and attorneys worked over the holiday weekend. Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark, the lead prosecutor, and Los Angeles Police Detective Tom Lange, the lead investigator, spent about two hours at Nicole Brown Simpson’s condominium Sunday morning.

Neither would discuss what took them there, but Clark had earlier visited Simpson’s home to familiarize herself with the grounds and other details that could prove important to court arguments.

And despite reports that the knife described in court was already in court custody, Los Angeles police said their hunt for a murder weapon continues.

Police sources said they remained skeptical that a knife found by a passerby near O.J. Simpson’s home Saturday will turn out to be that weapon.

Two things make them suspicious, they said: The area where the knife was found had been searched just one day earlier, and the newly discovered knife does not appear to be the weapon that killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman. The blade of the kitchen knife is slightly longer and wider than the one that investigators believe inflicted the fatal wounds, one source said.

Also on Sunday, F. Lee Bailey, one of Simpson’s attorneys, visited Simpson at the Men’s Central Jail Downtown. Bailey was accompanied by Simpson’s adult children from his first marriage, Jason and Arnelle, as well as his friend and personal attorney, Robert Kardashian.

None would comment on the visit.

Simpson defense lawyer Robert L. Shapiro has declined comment about the envelope produced in court Friday. What is known is that Shapiro gave it first to a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to review in private. Cecil J. Mills, the presiding judge of the Superior Court, then became aware of its existence and made a brief stop in the courtroom where Kennedy-Powell is presiding over Simpson’s preliminary hearing.

Soon after, she left the bench briefly, went to her chambers and returned to court with the envelope--announcing that she planned to open it. Both Shapiro and prosecutor Clark immediately objected to any disclosure of the contents, however, and the judge put off disclosure pending further proceedings.

Because the envelope materialized just a day after a sales clerk from a Downtown cutlery store testified that he sold Simpson a 15-inch stiletto knife on May 3, many theorized that the envelope contained that knife or one similar to it. Among those expressing this view was Leslie Abramson, the Los Angeles defense lawyer who represents another prominent accused murderer, Erik Menendez.

“My guess is . . . it’s the knife that Mr. Simpson purchased,” she said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week with David Brinkley.” “And I base that--not just because it’s wishful thinking and it would be the greatest theater, but in looking at the envelope, it does seem to have a linear object inside.”

Abramson and several other criminal defense lawyers said in interviews with The Times on Sunday that they try to avoid coming into possession of any evidence that could incriminate their client--and thus would have to be turned over to authorities. “You don’t want to become an investigating officer against your own client,” she said.

To illustrate the potential problems a lawyer may encounter, Abramson cited an incident a decade ago when she was representing one of two men accused of murdering a Northridge family of four who disappeared without a trace. Abramson and her private investigator went to a remote hilly area in the Antelope Valley, where a sheet from the bed of one of the missing children had been found.

“My investigator gets out of his Honda Accord, opens the trunk and takes out a shovel. I said, ‘What do you intend to do with the shovel?’ He said, ‘I don’t think the police have done a thorough search. I’m going to dig.’

Abramson continued, “I said, ‘Oh, really. And what are you going to do if you find something?’

“He said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘If you disturb any evidence, including the bodies, then we have to use your car phone to call the police. What if what we find hurts our client? Who will represent him?”

She recalled that she finally directed the investigator: “We’re not doing this. Put the shovel away.”

Along the same line, Braun said: “If I go to a crime scene and see a knife or a gun that may have been used and I don’t do anything, just leave it there, I don’t have any duty to report it. The theory is I haven’t affected the prosecution’s case by doing anything to hide the weapon. But if I were to pick up the weapon and take it back to my office and it is potentially incriminating, I have an ethical duty to turn it over to the prosecution.”

In explaining his belief that evidence turned over by the Simpson defense may be damaging to Simpson, Braun asserted that a lawyer does not have to be “hyper-ethical” and turn over evidence that is not incriminating. In fact, he said, such an action can unfairly help prosecutors, enabling them to alter their theory of the case.

Nevertheless, some legal observers, including Abramson, have speculated that Simpson’s lawyers expect to use the contents of the envelope to aid his defense--perhaps by showing that it was not used in the crime.

Most legal experts agree, however, that when in doubt, a defense attorney should turn over physical evidence.

“If a lawyer comes into possession of physical evidence, the attorney is not allowed to keep it, hide it, alter it or destroy it,” said University of Southern California law professor Erwin Chemerinsky. He and others cited a series of relevant cases.

In 1964, for instance, the Washington Supreme Court ruled that a lawyer had to turn over a knife that might have been used in a murder.

In 1967, a Virginia federal court upheld an 18-month suspension of an attorney who failed to turn over money his client had stolen in a bank robbery and a gun used in the robbery.

And just two months ago, a California appellate court upheld the murder conviction of a man after incriminating notes related to the crime were given by the defendant’s lawyer to a judge--who turned them over to the prosecutor.

Chemerinsky said most courts have drawn a critical distinction between physical evidence and information that an attorney learns from interviews or other research. Although the hard evidence must be turned over, information does not have to be, he said.

In the real world, however, the decision-making often is not so clear-cut.

Sometimes, an attorney may find himself in a situation where he suddenly is presented with evidence, Chemerinsky noted--as when a client walks into his office and proclaims, “Here’s the knife!” The attorney then can say, “Don’t give it to me,” he said.

The attorney cannot tell the client to hide or destroy the knife. Nor can the lawyer advise him to turn it over to the police, because that would incriminate the client.

It is even unclear whether the lawyer can give the client any advice about what he should do with the knife, Chemerinsky said. “That’s the client’s problem. The lawyer shouldn’t make it his problem.”

“This is the classic ethical dilemma,” agreed Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer Barry Tarlow.

Santa Monica criminal defense lawyer Gerald L. Chaleff, who has handled several high-profile murder cases, said practical considerations--as well as ethical ones--come into play in these situations.

“You don’t want to put your client in a position where it looks like anything you did was wrong so that it (works) to his detriment. If it’s a knife or a gun and it looks like you’re trying to hide it, it may make something that is innocuous, neutral or even beneficial to your case look sinister,” said Chaleff, who is president of the Los Angeles County Bar Assn.

“In this kind of case, if you come into possession of evidence that’s positive for your client, you may not want to hold onto it because people could claim you manipulated it,” he added.

In general, courts have held that the attorney-client privilege protecting confidential conversations between a defendant and his lawyer does not apply to physical evidence, such as a weapon or stolen money.

Nevertheless, when a defense lawyer turns over such evidence, in most instances courts have held that when it is introduced in court, the prosecutor is not allowed to tell jurors how the evidence was obtained.

As a consequence, it is possible that there never will be a public revelation of what was in the now-famous yellow envelope--the evidence simply may appear in court as one of a string of exhibits.

Levenson said she was surprised that Judge Kennedy-Powell “announced in open court that she had the envelope and said she was going to open it,” before both prosecution and defense lawyers objected.

“What happened in court Friday would naturally cause people to speculate,” Levenson said. “If there was any matter to handle in chambers, it would seem like this one.”

But other lawyers said that with such intense public interest in the case, the judge may have been wary about doing anything that might make her look as if she were trying to keep something hidden.

And despite the weekend’s attention to the contents of the envelope and a passerby’s discovery of the kitchen knife near Simpson’s Brentwood home, prosecutors have indicated that their case does not depend on finding the murder weapon. Rather, they have emphasized forensic tests that could place the former football star at the murder scene.

Although police conceded that in earlier searches of the area they may have overlooked the knife found wrapped in a polka-dot blouse, they noted that it was lying in a place where it was easily spotted--and this makes them doubt that it will prove to be the murder weapon, which has been the subject of an intense search for weeks.

Lab tests were incomplete Sunday.

The tests will first attempt to determine whether red stains on the knife are human blood. If so, they will then be tested to determine whether the blood type matches that of either victim or Simpson, police sources said.

If anything, the kitchen knife drew even more of the curious to Brentwood on Sunday, where spectators lined the sidewalk across Bundy Street from the condominium.

“I know everyone in the neighborhood is annoyed,” said Geri Sluder, vacationing here with her three children. “But we’re from North Carolina. We don’t have many things like this happen.

“I want them to see her house, and see she was a real person.”

Meanwhile, the woman who found the blouse-wrapped knife wishes she had never seen it, her sister said.

Debbie Gonzalez said her sister Daniella, 21, has had nightmares after giving the knife to police. She said police behaved very skeptically toward her sister, saying “You know, this is a serious matter.” Now, Debbie Gonzalez says, Daniella is afraid she will become the object of public skepticism and even wrath.

Times staff writers Andrea Ford and Nick Riccardi and Times researchers Julia Franco and Joyce Pinney contributed to this story.