Simpson Team Seeks Access to Records of 4 Officers : Court: Detective Mark Fuhrman’s lawyer characterizes defense as desperate. Early DNA test results are in.

In their most aggressive assault yet on the integrity of police detectives in the O.J. Simpson case, defense lawyers filed a motion Thursday seeking broad access to the officers’ personnel records and produced a sworn declaration alleging racism on the part of one key investigator.

Simpson’s lawyers requested information that might indicate that any of the four detectives--Philip L. Vannatter, Tom Lange, Ronald Phillips and Mark Fuhrman--violated Police Department policies by lying in the preparation of search warrants, concealing evidence or falsifying reports, among other things.

Defense attorneys are eager to get information on all four detectives, but took particular aim at Fuhrman, whom they described as “a dangerous officer with a propensity to create false information against African American defendants.”

Fuhrman’s attorney, Robert H. Tourtelot, vehemently denied that allegation and said the defense’s attack on his client is “a desperate act by a desperate attorney.”

Late Thursday, members of Simpson’s defense team received a tentative but guardedly heartening update on the DNA tests being performed by a Maryland lab.

The first batch of preliminary results do not tend to implicate Simpson in the slayings, sources close to the investigation said. The same sources cautioned, however, that the results from Cellmark Diagnostics, the lab performing most of the DNA analysis, are not final and that analysis is under way on additional blood samples.

One sample that has been tested is a blood spot found on victim Ronald Lyle Goldman’s shoe, sources said. DNA tests of that sample show it was not Simpson’s blood, sources said--an important conclusion for the defense team, as it would have been difficult to explain Simpson’s blood there.

The lab, however, is performing DNA analyses on a number of samples recovered from Simpson’s home and car, as well as from the murder scene. The preliminary results do not include findings on most of those samples. Those tests still are being conducted, and more samples recently were sent to a Berkeley lab to be tested there as well.

Nevertheless, the preliminary results heartened members of Simpson’s defense team. “It looks pretty good,” said one defense source. “It’s not the last word, but it’s a good word.”

The director of the Cellmark lab declined comment Thursday, as did police and prosecution officials. Buoyed by the preliminary findings, defense team members said Simpson’s attorneys may file a motion to force the prosecution to disclose the result.

Despite the strong tone of Thursday’s motion seeking access to police personnel files, attorney Robert L. Shapiro insisted again that race will not be a factor as he defends Simpson against charges that he murdered his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Goldman. Simpson has pleaded not guilty.

The defense motion and accompanying documents represent the first time that allegations of racism have been raised in official court records in the Simpson case.

Included with the defense motion are previously reported transcripts from a 1983 case in which Fuhrman allegedly made racially charged remarks as he sought a stress pension; documents involving a 1991 lawsuit filed by a lawyer who said testimony in that case indicated that Fuhrman placed a knife at the feet of a wounded suspect, and a new declaration from a woman who said that Fuhrman made racially offensive comments to her in 1985 or 1986.

“During our conversation, Mark Fuhrman stated that he would pull over any vehicle that was occupied by a black man and a white woman,” real estate agent Kathleen Bell said, describing an encounter with the officer at a Marine Corps recruiting office.

In her sworn declaration, taken this week, Bell continued: “I then asked him: ‘What if you don’t have a good reason to pull them over?’ Mr. Fuhrman then stated: ‘I’d make one up.’ ”

Bell said she asked Fuhrman if he would do the same thing if the two people were in love. “Fuhrman then appeared to get disgusted with me and stated, ‘If I had my way, they would take all the niggers, put them together in a big group and burn them.’ I became visibly upset, began to cry and left the office.”

According to Tourtelot, Fuhrman denies ever having met the woman whose declaration was submitted and says he never made the comments attributed to him. Efforts to locate Bell were unsuccessful Thursday, and Shapiro would not say how the defense team became aware of her account.

The allegations about Fuhrman are included because they cast doubt on his credibility, Shapiro said.

Tourtelot scoffed at that. “He stood up in court and said in front of the judge and the world that race was not going to be an issue in this case,” Fuhrman’s lawyer said. “Then we see this motion. What’s that they say? If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. This is about race.”

The motion was drafted by Carl E. Douglas, an associate of Shapiro’s co-counsel Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. Before he joined the defense team, Cochran said that race would loom as a major issue if it were linked to Fuhrman’s credibility. “I think you’ll see the defense really seek to exploit it,” Cochran said last month.

Indeed, the allegations raise potential problems for Fuhrman if prosecutors call him as a witness.

If the judge permitted it, he could be cross-examined about his alleged statements as defense attorneys try to establish that he had a motive to lie or plant evidence in the Simpson case. Fuhrman is the officer who discovered a bloody glove at Simpson’s estate a few hours after the slayings.

So far, no evidence has surfaced that Fuhrman planted the glove, as some defense sources have suggested. Police, in fact, have concluded after interviewing officers who were at the crime scene on the night of the slayings that it would have been virtually impossible for Fuhrman to remove a glove from the area where the bodies were recovered and take it to Simpson’s home.

Peter Arenella, a UCLA law professor, said the allegations of racially charged remarks by Fuhrman might be admissible, at least to cross-examine the detective about his willingness and motive to lie. But Arenella, like other legal experts, added that the ability to raise those questions might be limited by the kind of defense that Simpson’s attorneys mount.

The defense is seeking five years’ worth of personnel records on the detectives. To get them, defense attorneys do not need to establish admissibility right away; they need only demonstrate a good reason to review the files.

Legal experts predicted that the defense probably would get some of the records it is seeking, but added that motions such as the one filed Thursday are frequently made and often yield only a fraction of what is sought.

If Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito decides the defense has justified its request, the LAPD records would be turned over to him. The judge would review them and decide whether anything contained in the documents is relevant to the Simpson case. Pertinent records would be made available to the defense.

Legal experts said that if the police records contain information suggesting that Lange or Vannatter have been previously accused of misrepresenting themselves in applying for search warrants, the defense would almost certainly be entitled to that information. Lange and Vannatter prepared the search warrant affidavit in the Simpson case, and the motion filed Thursday alleges that the affidavit “contained numerous false statements, misrepresentations and concealments of material facts.”

The motion details what defense attorneys say were misrepresentations, but does not offer any evidence to suggest that either Lange or Vannatter have had previous complaints leveled against them. Likewise, it makes only scant reference to Detective Phillips, Fuhrman’s supervisor.

But it levels a blistering attack at Fuhrman.

The files from the 1983 pension case have been widely reported. But the other material about Fuhrman contained new details of allegations against him.

In the 1991 lawsuit, Joseph J. Britton alleged that he was shot six times by Fuhrman and another officer April 7, 1987.

Britton’s lawyer, Robert Deutsch, said testimony during a trial last fall indicated that Fuhrman had picked up a knife from one location and placed it near Britton’s feet to justify the officers’ shooting--a contention similar to that raised by defense sources in the Simpson case.

Britton, who said he was unarmed and offering no resistance, alleged that after he was shot and lying on the ground, one of the officers taunted him, saying: “Why don’t you just die?”

Although the taunting officer was not identified by name in the original complaint, Deutsch said Thursday that the officer was Fuhrman.

A substantially different version of the same incident emerges in a report prepared by prosecutors who routinely investigate officer-involved shootings. Those prosecutors found no wrongdoing on the part of the officers.

According to the September, 1987, report, which is based on statements that Fuhrman and Officer J. P. Aiken gave to investigators, Britton and another man were attempting to rob an ATM customer when Fuhrman and Aiken emerged from a stakeout and chased the suspect.

The officers found Britton hiding in a nearby shopping center and together fired 16 rounds at him after he refused to drop a “shiney object” that Aiken thought was a gun, according to the report.

A knife nearly 15 inches long was recovered, the report said without indicating where and at what point the knife was found.

In explaining why no wrongdoing was found on the part of the officers, Deputy Dist. Atty. Herbert R. Lapin said Britton eventually pleaded guilty to the robbery and a charge of “drawing or exhibiting a weapon in a rude and threatening manner.”