Lawyer Rips Maneuver by Attorneys for Simpson : Hearing: Detective Mark Fuhrman’s lawyer calls defense team’s renewed inquiry into his background a ‘desperate’ attempt to divert attention. Cochran says action is ‘appropriate.’

Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman’s lawyer Thursday denounced the latest efforts by O.J. Simpson’s attorneys to probe into his client’s past, calling them “the desperate acts of desperate lawyers who have no case.”

Attorney Robert Tourtelot was reacting to news that Simpson’s lawyers hope to question a police captain Monday to determine whether she ever investigated allegations of wrongdoing by Fuhrman. Because that captain, veteran LAPD Officer Margaret York, is married to Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito, the hearing will be before another judge to avoid any possible conflict.

York has volunteered to testify at that hearing, scheduled Monday afternoon before Superior Court Judge Curtis Rappe.

But Tourtelot said Thursday that he planned to fight any inquiry into Fuhrman’s background, which he said was irrelevant to the case and merely an effort by Simpson lawyers Robert L. Shapiro and Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. to distract attention from their client’s guilt. Simpson is charged with the June 12 killings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman. He has pleaded not guilty.

Although Tourtelot said York and Fuhrman “had some disagreements” during the time that Fuhrman worked under her command--a recollection not shared by others who have spoken with York--the lawyer said York never accused his client of wrongdoing. Tourtelot also derisively compared Shapiro and Cochran to a famous magician and said they were willing to do anything to distract attention from the evidence against Simpson.

“I call these guys the Blackstone twins,” Tourtelot said. “They’re diverting everyone’s attention while they steal your watch.”

Told of Tourtelot’s comments, Cochran replied: “What does he know? He hasn’t been down here. I don’t think he’s familiar with what’s going on. . . . We’re just doing what we think is appropriate under the circumstances.”

Fuhrman, who testified during the preliminary hearing that he found a bloody glove behind O.J. Simpson’s Brentwood mansion, has come under steady attack by defense attorneys for months. They have accused the detective of racism and, in one motion, called him a “dangerous officer with a propensity to create false information against African American defendants.”

To bolster that claim, they sought Fuhrman’s military and police personnel records. But Ito denied the request for military records, and after reviewing the police files, determined that there was nothing in them relevant to the Simpson case. He then denied the defense lawyers’ request to read the police records.

Still, Simpson’s defense team has continued to probe Fuhrman’s past and sought the hearing next week as part of that effort. Simpson’s lawyers have declined to comment on the subject of the hearing, except to say that they are trying to determine whether York ever investigated Fuhrman.

Police sources say Fuhrman came under scrutiny during the early 1980s as part of an internal LAPD investigation into a group at the West Los Angeles police station known as MAW, short for Men Against Women. No complaint against Fuhrman was sustained involving that inquiry, sources have said.

Then a newly promoted lieutenant, York was assigned to West Los Angeles in 1985 as that investigation was concluding, and Simpson’s camp apparently wants to determine whether York was part of the Internal Affairs investigation. If she were and were to be called as a witness in the Simpson case, it could force Ito to recuse himself from the trial.

But Police Department sources say she was not part of that inquiry, which was handled by the Internal Affairs Division and the LAPD’s Office of Operations. According to law enforcement sources, York was questioned later about sexual harassment at the station but did not identify Fuhrman as a perpetrator.

In fact, York was generally complimentary of Fuhrman’s work, said retired Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, who assigned York to West Los Angeles and later transferred her back to the chief’s office to work directly for him.

While attorneys squabbled outside court, the judge and lawyers moved forward with jury selection, proceeding under Ito’s newly imposed time limits on questioning, which have markedly speeded up the sometimes laborious process.

The lawyers and Ito have been questioning prospective alternate jurors for more than a week, and so far have cleared 28 candidates for possible selection to the alternate panel--including seven people originally among those questioned to serve on the actual jury. Outside court Thursday, Shapiro said Ito had told the lawyers that he planned to stop the questioning when 46 prospective alternates have been found.

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Each side is allowed up to 15 peremptory challenges, so finding 46 eligible people would ensure that even if both sides exercised all the challenges available to them--which they did not do in picking the original panel of 12 jurors--at least 15 alternates would remain.

The first two prospective alternates questioned Thursday were allowed to remain on the panel after stating that they had little knowledge of the case or its issues. On the question of DNA evidence, which figures to play a prominent role in the trial, one prospective juror, a 63-year-old legal secretary, said: “I don’t know much about DNA. I’ll have to study up on that.”

“Don’t,” Ito interjected.

Also retained Thursday was a retired Marine who said he had admired Simpson and who agreed with Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark when she asked, “Would you agree that image is not everything?”

“Yes,” the man responded. “He has no more rights than I do.”

When it was her turn to be questioned, a Compton postal worker said she was eager to be picked as an alternate. Asked by Cochran why she wanted to serve, that woman responded: “Anyway I can get out of working for the post office, I’d do it.”

That woman said her father had abused his wife and children--domestic abuse could play a role in the Simpson case because prosecutors may seek to introduce evidence that Simpson beat his ex-wife.

But Cochran told the prospective juror that Simpson vehemently denies ever abusing Nicole Simpson--despite a 1989 case in which he pleaded no contest to battery and a 1993 emergency call placed by Nicole Simpson in which she pleads with a dispatcher to send help as a man she identifies as her ex-husband rages in the background.

As the questioning of prospective alternates has dragged on in recent days, Ito has urged lawyers to move more quickly and the two sides have become less aggressive about asking that jury prospects be removed for biases or knowledge of the case. Thursday, an articulate UCLA graduate student was retained even though he said he had studied DNA and had discussed it at length with a friend who is a biochemist.

That same man, a 27-year-old Japanese American who lives in Westwood, said his girlfriend was intensely interested in the case. After news of the investigation began appearing in the press, the man said he took his girlfriend to the scene of the crime on Bundy Drive and to Simpson’s nearby Brentwood estate.

But the man added that he and his girlfriend have stopped talking about the case since he received his jury summons and added: “If Mr. O.J. gets found not guilty, I hope he gets compensated in some way.”

Simpson, sitting nearby, smiled, pumped his fist in agreement and exclaimed: “I wish.”