Malibu Arson Probe Figure Is in Jury Pool : Simpson case: In his questionnaire, firefighter expresses disdain for authorities who accused him. Selection process is stalled briefly as defense seeks to question Ito’s wife.

The wide net cast for jurors in the O.J. Simpson murder trial has gathered in people from all walks of life, but none with a more unusual claim to fame than a young man who was scheduled to appear Monday: Six months ago, he was one of two firefighters accused of setting last year’s deadly Malibu blaze.

At the end of the court day Monday, jury selection was interrupted briefly by what had been billed as an opportunity for defense attorneys to question Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito’s wife, Los Angeles Police Capt. Margaret York. After an hourlong, private session involving Superior Court Judge Curtis Rappe and the lawyers, however, Rappe announced that he was giving Simpson’s attorneys time to prepare a motion and would take the matter up again Dec. 15.

On the questionnaire completed by all jury prospects, the firefighter--whose name has previously been published in connection with the fire inquiry but is being withheld now because of Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito’s request that prospective jurors in the Simpson case not be identified--expressed anger about his ordeal and disdain for the authorities behind it.

After a lengthy investigation by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, authorities decided not to charge that man and one other with setting the blaze, which killed three people and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage. The two men filed a lawsuit against the county and Sheriff Sherman Block on Monday, alleging that Block defamed them by implicating them in the blaze during an interview with a television news program.

“Sheriff Sherman Block publicly accused my friend and me of starting the Malibu fire,” the 29-year-old firefighter from Northridge said. “As a result, I was basically crucified by the media, and I have a very bad taste in my mouth with regards to the concept of due process.”

In response to other questions, the firefighter said Block “is not my friend” and expressed low regard for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, which is prosecuting Simpson for the June 12 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman. Simpson has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have repeatedly asserted that authorities have the wrong man.

“The D.A.’s office is not always concerned, or should I say, is very little concerned, with the truth,” wrote the firefighter, who was suspended from active duty during the investigation but since has returned to his firefighting job. He did not show up for questioning Monday--he was busy fighting an early-morning fire in Westlake--but was asked to appear when another batch of prospective jurors is called in.

But the firefighter is not the only person on the jury panel with a noteworthy piece of personal history. Among the jury prospects interviewed Monday was a man who claimed credit for thwarting two assassination attempts on Ronald Reagan.

That man showed up as scheduled, fidgeting in the jury box as he waited his turn to be interviewed. But he was released without answering a single question after Judge Ito and the attorneys conferred privately.

Jury selection has dominated nearly two months of the Simpson trial, but York’s testimony had been eagerly anticipated since last week, when defense attorneys announced that they wanted to question her about an internal Police Department investigation of Detective Mark Fuhrman.

Fuhrman testified during the preliminary hearing that he found a bloody glove outside Simpson’s home hours after the murders. Since then, he has come under withering defense scrutiny. But the Simpson camp’s latest attack involves York as well, as defense attorneys are seeking to determine whether she ever investigated the detective and thus whether she might be called as a witness during the trial.

Although police sources say that she did not, it could create problems for Ito continuing to preside over the case if she did, since he could not oversee his own wife’s testimony. Resolution of that question was delayed Monday when Judge Rappe said he wanted to question York privately before deciding whether Simpson’s lawyers should be allowed to put her on the stand; he also asked defense attorneys to file a motion on the subject in writing and said he would take the matter up Dec. 15.

Defense attorneys have prepared questions for Rappe to ask York. Lawyers for the city and county have filed objections to York being questioned about Fuhrman.

Meanwhile, in the quest to find alternate jurors for the trial, one other woman was dismissed Monday after she seemed to have trouble grasping the notion that a criminal defendant has no obligation to prove his innocence. But attorneys cleared other panelists--all of them with more mundane personal stories than the firefighter or the assassination-stopper--for possible service. That brought the total pool of alternate-juror prospects to 33.

Prospective alternates who were retained on the panel Monday included a white agricultural inspector and a black hospital worker, both of whom have had some contact with people in law enforcement.

The agricultural inspector, a 47-year-old Long Beach resident, said he volunteers as a Scoutmaster for a local Boy Scout troop; one of the other adults involved in the troop is a Los Angeles Police Department officer, the man said, adding that he does not know the officer well.

That prospective juror expressed reservations about serving on the Simpson panel, saying that he found a previous jury experience disagreeable and that the public interest in this trial worried him.

“There’s a lot of nuts out there, and one way or another, they might go after a juror or a member of this court,” he said. Nevertheless, he pledged to be fair to both sides. He was retained for possible service.

The hospital worker, who said she came into contact with police and paramedics regularly while working in an emergency room, said she too had served on a jury before. But she had a far different reaction to it.

“I enjoyed jury duty,” she said. “It was like a vacation away from work.”

Although that woman wrote on her questionnaire that she thought it would be awful for anyone to be accused of such horrible crimes as Simpson had, she insisted that her answer was not meant to express sympathy for the football great. After she was questioned by both sides, she was retained for possible further service.

She and other prospective alternates are being asked to return in early December, when prosecutors and defense attorneys will begin exercising peremptory challenges. They are hoping to find 15 alternate jurors to supplement the eight men and four women already sworn in as the jury in the case.

With opening statements in the trial expected in January, both sides still are staking out legal positions and jockeying over the evidence that the jury will be allowed to hear.

Monday, Simpson’s lawyers filed a motion under seal seeking to suppress any evidence suggesting that Simpson struck his ex-wife. Among other things, that could include a 1989 incident in which Simpson pleaded no contest after he was charged with beating Nicole Simpson, and a 1993 emergency call in which she begged police to come to her assistance because a man she identified as her ex-husband was beating down the door.

Those incidents have made spousal battery a longstanding background issue in the murder case, and prospective jurors have been asked about their experiences with domestic abuse. Monday, one jury candidate said that he and his wife had a fight 19 years ago and that he pushed her to the ground after she spat in his face.

Under questioning by Deputy Dist. Atty. William Hodgman, the man said he had felt bad about the incident and cried over it afterward. He said it would not affect his ability to fairly judge the evidence in the Simpson case, and he was left on the panel.

Selection of alternate jurors for the Simpson case continues today before breaking until next week because of the Thanksgiving holiday.

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The Simpson Case

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