Questioning of Simpson Jurors Ends : Trial: Judge clears pool of 44 potential alternates. A key DNA hearing is delayed after a defense specialist fails in his effort to be excused from a New York case.

The O.J. Simpson murder trial cleared one hurdle and ran smack into another Monday: Nearly a month after picking a jury, the judge and lawyers completed individual questioning of alternate jurors, but they also were forced to postpone an important hearing on DNA evidence until early next year.

In court, selection of alternate jurors for the case--in which Simpson has pleaded not guilty to the June 12 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman--made slow but steady progress through the day, as it has for much of the past several weeks. At the same time, the day featured several surprises.

Among them:

* Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito told attorneys he had scheduled a hearing for later this week on the issue of possible juror misconduct by at least one of the 12 panelists already picked for the Simpson jury. Although Ito did not say what prompted the hearing, he warned prosecutors and defense lawyers that “each side must take into account that we may lose some of the originals.”

* Prosecutors turned over a large pile of material to defense attorneys, prompting Simpson’s lawyers to complain that they were only now receiving material that might be important to their case. The material includes a report from a police photographer, whose account of a conversation with one of the LAPD detectives at the crime scene differed slightly from the detective’s testimony at Simpson’s preliminary hearing. Prosecutors said the report was prepared at the request of defense attorneys and was turned over promptly. They also denied that it contains anything that undermines the detective’s testimony.

* In New York, one of Simpson’s attorneys gave up his battle to delay a trial that is keeping him from traveling to Los Angeles to represent Simpson in an upcoming DNA hearing. Ito agreed to delay the DNA hearing until early next year--though that delay probably still would not allow the lawyer, Peter J. Neufeld, to be present. Meantime, the two sides will debate a number of other legal issues, including the admissibility of evidence relating to alleged spousal abuse of Nicole Simpson by her husband.

As lawyers slogged through the final jury candidates Monday, they finally concluded their individual questioning of panelists--a process that began in October and has since occupied the judge and attorneys. Jury selection has proved grueling at times, with many candidates expressing a willingness to serve but then being dropped because they had strong opinions about the case or because they had difficulty with some of the legal concepts behind it.

The first prospect up Monday, for instance, was a 54-year-old grandmother who insisted that she could serve on the panel even though she recently took custody of five grandchildren.

Ito at first was ready to accept the woman on the panel, but then excused her after she said her religious beliefs would make it impossible for her to convict a criminal defendant unless the evidence was so overwhelming as to leave no doubt whatsoever--a standard beyond what the law requires.

Although that woman became the latest of more than 100 jury candidates dismissed since jury selection began in late September, three other prospective panelists were accepted, bringing the pool to 44, two short of the number Ito hoped to have by Wednesday, when attorneys for the two sides are scheduled to begin exercising peremptory challenges.

But even before it became clear that the pool was smaller than what Ito had sought, the judge announced that he was prepared to go forward with that group. The panel of 44 prospective alternates includes 24 men and 20 women. It is made up of 23 blacks, nine whites, eight Latinos, three Asian Americans and one woman of mixed race.

One of the prospective jurors who was cleared Monday for possible service on the panel is an 82-year-old man who said that years ago he served as the jury foreman in a trial of Elmer (Geronimo) Pratt, a member of the Black Panther Party convicted of murder who continues to maintain his innocence.

Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., one of Simpson’s lead attorneys, has represented Pratt, but the prospective juror interviewed Monday was not on the panel that deliberated the murder case. Instead, the man said he heard a case involving allegations that Pratt was involved in a prison riot while in custody. The jury found Pratt not guilty, the man said.

The man’s account was questioned by Pratt’s attorneys, however, who said Pratt never had been charged with such a crime. In San Francisco, an associate of Pratt’s longtime appellate lawyer said she thought that the man might be referring to another case involving members of the Black Panther Party accused of starting a prison riot, but that case did not involve Pratt.

While the final jury candidates were being cleared for service in Los Angeles, Neufeld, one of Simpson’s DNA lawyers, conceded defeat in a war of wills with a New York judge after making one last attempt to prevail, this time by asking the judge to recuse himself. Far from defusing the situation, however, the request only angered the jurist, Supreme Court Judge Harold J. Rothwax, yet again.

Rothwax refused to take himself off the case and remained adamant that Neufeld must stay in New York rather than fly to California for DNA hearings scheduled to begin next week. Faced with Rothwax’s determination, Neufeld’s attorney, William Kunstler, threw in the towel.

“We didn’t think we could move another court to take action on this,” Kunstler said Monday, reluctantly conceding defeat just a few days after vowing to pursue the matter through the New York state courts. “It just appeared futile.”

Simpson’s attorneys complained that they were not prepared to embark upon an important hearing over DNA evidence without Neufeld, one of two DNA experts on the former football star’s defense team. As a result, they asked Ito to delay that hearing, which had been scheduled to start Dec. 12.

Rothwax has estimated that the New York trial could last five weeks, but Simpson’s lawyers only asked that the DNA hearing be put off until Jan. 4, when court reconvenes after a scheduled Christmas break. Ito agreed to the delay but did not set a specific date for the DNA hearing to begin.

If it starts in early January, that could mean that Simpson will not receive Neufeld’s services for the DNA hearing, but every postponement prolongs the football Hall of Famer’s anxious wait for the trial to begin and further complicates the task of insulating jurors in the case from publicity.

Ito has instructed members of the jury panel to avoid publicity about the case, but some have found it difficult to cut themselves off entirely. Once the DNA hearing begins, it could last more than a month, so jurors may not return to the courtroom until February. Meanwhile, they are governed only by their pledge to abide by Ito’s orders about what they can and cannot watch or read.

*

With so much publicity involving the case and with a potentially long trial contemplated, both sides have acknowledged that some of the original 12 jurors might be lost before the case can be concluded. But comments in the courtroom Monday suggested that at least one panelist might be dismissed even before the jury is called to begin hearing evidence.

“We may be losing someone from our panel of 12,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark said.

Neither she nor Ito provided specifics, but Ito set that matter for a hearing Thursday. The two sides also will then consider a defense motion challenging the addition of Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher Darden to the prosecution team.

As the legal battles unfolded on opposite sides of the continent, Lou Brown, father of murder victim Nicole Simpson, refuted a tabloid report that his daughter had drafted a letter to a lawyer in which she allegedly said that if she were found dead, it would be Simpson who had killed her.

That report, an exasperated Brown said, is “absolutely not true. It’s a bunch of junk. Where they came up with it, I don’t know.”

Times staff writer Ralph Frammolino contributed to this story.

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