Simpson Lawyers Attack Key Detective’s Credibility : Courts: They suggest he may have planted bloody glove at mansion. His work history might become issue.

In an aggressive attack on a Los Angeles police detective’s credibility, O.J. Simpson’s defense team has injected new controversy into the case, suggesting that the officer may have planted a key piece of evidence against Simpson--the bloody glove.

Members of Simpson’s defense team are using a 1983 disability pension case filed by Detective Mark Fuhrman along with other research into his work history in an effort to show that his credibility has previously been challenged, that he has made derogatory racial statements and that he may have lied about his conduct in the Simpson probe.

Fuhrman, who found a bloody glove outside Simpson’s Brentwood mansion, testified during this month’s preliminary hearing, after which the football Hall of Famer was ordered to stand trial for the double murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman.

Members of Simpson’s defense camp say they do not expect to challenge the 42-year-old detective by suggesting that he is racist, but rather hope to use questions about his work history--including the 1983 disability case and a more recent investigation of his treatment of female colleagues--to raise doubts about his credibility or even to suggest that he might have planted the glove in order to be hailed as a hero.

Fuhrman’s 1983 case came to light on a national scale Sunday with news that Newsweek and the New Yorker magazine were publishing stories analyzing the defense strategy and its efforts to discredit the officer. As with other developments in the ever-evolving Simpson case, it spawned a rash of other requests for interviews, and LAPD officials were deluged by reporters again Monday. They declined to comment, saying the work history of Fuhrman, who joined the LAPD in 1975, was a personnel matter.

The attack on Fuhrman’s credibility is a risky one, in part because it would focus a jury’s attention on the significance of a bloody glove turning up at the home of the defendant. No witnesses have come forward to say that they saw Fuhrman plant the glove, but experts say the defense attack on his credibility is probably motivated by a desire to make jurors suspicious of the glove when they weigh Simpson’s guilt or innocence.

The likely intent of the defense maneuver “is to undercut the credibility of the police investigation and the prosecution case--just raise doubts,” said Laurie Levenson, a Loyola law school professor and former federal prosecutor. “Even if this theory doesn’t work, it would be kind of an instructive lesson to the jurors about how they can go about looking for problems with the prosecution case--to start them thinking of all the ways the prosecution could have unfairly pinned this on O.J. Simpson.”

During the contentious preliminary hearing, Simpson’s attorneys, led by Robert L. Shapiro, repeatedly suggested that their client is being railroaded by overzealous or careless investigators. Among other things, Shapiro accused police of lying to obtain a search warrant, of failing to protect the scene of the crime and of mishandling important pieces of evidence.

Defense lawyers did not have Fuhrman’s work history on hand for that hearing, but have since uncovered several pieces of information that they will probably use as the case proceeds.

In Fuhrman’s 1983 lawsuit, he told therapists that he was suffering from intense stress, that he left the Marine Corps after developing antagonistic feelings toward Mexican and African Americans, that he had beaten suspects and that he was preoccupied with violence.

“During his last six months (in the Marine Corps), he ‘got tired of having a bunch of Mexicans and niggers that should be in prison telling (him) they weren’t going to do something,’ ” Fuhrman was quoted as saying in one psychiatric evaluation performed in connection with the 1983 case.

Those and other racially charged comments may come back to haunt Fuhrman, lawyers said.

“These are his own words and he may live to regret them,” said Los Angeles defense lawyer Marcia A. Morrisey.

Ironically, Fuhrman’s credibility was challenged in 1983 by the very people who now employ him, the city of Los Angeles. In arguing that Fuhrman should not receive the stress pension he was seeking, lawyers and doctors for the city accused him of exaggerating his psychological problems for financial gain.

“This man has become tired of police work just as he became bored with life as a Marine,” said Dr. Ronald R. Koegler, a doctor who examined Fuhrman on behalf of the city in that case. “He does not want to quit and lose his benefits, so he is attempting to get pension and compensation rewards.”

Police pension cases such as this one often produce wildly divergent accounts of an officer’s health. Police officers claiming stress frequently try to find psychiatrists who will say they are suffering, while city-hired doctors typically counter that the officers are in fine health and are lying to get a pension.

Fuhrman lost the pension lawsuit, and his troubles with the LAPD did not end there. He has been sued unsuccessfully several times by people claiming he used excessive force. And according to department sources, he is currently a target of an LAPD probe into alleged sexual harassment at the West Los Angeles station.

Fuhrman, those sources said, belongs to an informal club known as MAW--short for Men Against Women. The group has attracted officers who deride the ability of female colleagues and who believe that women are unfit for police work.

The LAPD is conducting a sweeping audit of the West Los Angeles station, where Fuhrman works. The department has transferred a number of officers to other divisions in order to improve the working environment in West Los Angeles.

Nevertheless, the same police sources who said Fuhrman is being investigated in the sexual harassment probe also consider him an outstanding investigator. His recent cases have included a number of widely praised performances.

Fuhrman’s performance on the witness stand during Simpson’s preliminary hearing also impressed lawyers, police and lay people.

Legal experts agreed that no challenge to Fuhrman’s character or integrity would be enough to exclude the bloody glove from evidence unless some witness says Fuhrman planted it at the house. No such witness has come forward, and sources suggest several potential problems with that theory.

First, they say, Fuhrman was not the first police officer to arrive at the scene of the murders. By the time he got there, a number of patrol officers were on hand, and none of them have reported seeing a second bloody glove near the bodies. To plant one of the gloves at Simpson’s house, Fuhrman would have had to find it at the scene of the crime after other officers had overlooked it, then he would have had to surreptitiously pocket it and carry it to Simpson’s home unnoticed.

Second, police sources point out, Simpson friend Brian (Kato) Kaelin testified during the preliminary hearing that he heard three loud thumps outside his wall on the night of the murders. It was when Kaelin told Fuhrman about that thumping that the detective went to investigate and returned with news that he had discovered the glove.

Still, by raising questions about Fuhrman’s past, defense attorneys may be able to conduct a more searching analysis of department personnel records to determine whether the detective has been the subject of other complaints. That, in turn, may give them additional grist to challenge the detective’s credibility if and when he takes the stand in the Simpson trial.

In the meantime, the latest disclosures have injected race into the already volatile case, a development that defense attorneys say may be inevitable even though few welcome it in a city famous for its recent racial tensions.

Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., a prominent Los Angeles attorney whose name has been floated as a possible addition to the Simpson legal team, said questions about Fuhrman’s racial attitudes are relevant and should be pursued by the ex-athlete’s lawyers.

“As much as I don’t want to see race brought into this case, if this person has a feeling against minorities, his credibility becomes very much at issue,” Cochran said. “It could be a very powerful issue. . . . I think you’ll see the defense really seek to exploit it.”

That, too, is a risky proposition, however. Some analysts, such as UCLA law professor Peter Arenella, warned that calling attention to the issue of race could antagonize some jurors even as it meets with the approval of others.

Before the allegations about Fuhrman surfaced, some polls were suggesting that whites and blacks perceive the handling of the Simpson case differently. Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti is scheduled to meet this morning with John Mack, president of the Los Angeles Urban League, and with other prominent African Americans to discuss the Simpson case, according to an invitation to the meeting obtained by The Times.

Mack would not comment on the meeting. But a source close to the league said Garcetti asked for the meeting after some blacks expressed concerns over what they saw as potentially prejudicial public statements he and others in his office made early in the case. Others worried that the prosecution, intent upon winning the case above all else, would not deal Simpson a fair hand, the source said.

The racially charged comments attributed to Fuhrman in his disability case are 11 years old, a fact that might weigh against a judge allowing them to be admitted in the Simpson trial or in hearings leading up to it.

“Even though racial bias would be admitted in some cases to impeach, his racial views are old to begin with,” said E. Thomas Dunn, an Orange County deputy district attorney and evidence specialist. “They don’t necessarily reflect his current beliefs. They seem to me of marginal relevance. Whether a person is racially biased . . . does not necessarily impact upon his observations at the scene of a crime.”

Nevertheless, other legal experts agreed that much of the material, as well as any comments connected to the sexual harassment probe, might work their way into the Simpson case if they cast any doubt on Fuhrman’s history of telling the truth.

Peter Keane, chief deputy public defender of San Francisco, said he thought Fuhrman’s prior statements would be admissible during cross-examination because they suggested that the detective might have a hidden bias in the Simpson case.

“It goes to bias,” Keane said. “Bias is one of the principal ways of attacking and impeaching a witness on cross-examination.”

Courts have allowed lawyers broad discretion in challenging the credibility of witnesses.

In 1984, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of prosecutors to introduce evidence that a defendant and a key alibi witness in a Bellflower bank robbery case both had been members of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang, described by the court as “a secret prison sect sworn to perjury and self-protection.”

The defense contended that the gang information was highly inflammatory and increased the chance that the jury would convict the defendant merely because of his gang association. But the high court ruled that it was permissible for prosecutors to cross-examine the witness about the prison gang to show possible bias in favor of the defendant and to show past conduct that would bear on his truthfulness as a witness.

Times staff writers Andrea Ford and Nicholas Riccardi contributed to this report.