Simpson Lawyer Wants to Exclude Victim’s Family : Trial: Cochran says Nicole Brown Simpson’s relatives should not be allowed in courtroom because they are potential witnesses. Family members say they are offended.

With both sides just weeks away from opening statements in the murder trial of O.J. Simpson, a leader of Simpson’s legal team said Thursday that he intends to ask that family members of victim Nicole Brown Simpson be prevented from attending the trial.

Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., one of Simpson’s lead attorneys, said the family members should not be allowed to attend because they are potential witnesses in the case.

It is standard practice to exclude witnesses from the courtroom so that their testimony will not be influenced by what they hear others say on the stand. But the family members of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman have emerged as visible and emotional reminders of the June 12 murders, and they have pledged to be in court for the trial of the man who has pleaded not guilty to killing their loved ones.

In recent weeks, the families also have become increasingly outspoken about their belief that Simpson is guilty and that his lawyers are manipulating the legal system to win his acquittal. The families’ growing stridence has posed a delicate problem for Simpson’s legal team as it has struggled to respond to the victims’ relatives without antagonizing them further.

No members of the Brown family were in court Thursday when Cochran made his comments about excluding them from the trial. Later, Nicole Simpson’s outspoken sister, Denise Brown, said she was surprised by the statement.

“I don’t think they can do that,” said Brown, who was at the courthouse to meet with prosecutors. “She was our sister, wasn’t she?”

Lou Brown, Nicole’s father, echoed that sentiment. “Why should I be, or the family be, excluded from the courtroom?” he asked. “Who’s the victim in this thing?”

Although Cochran did not propose excluding the Goldman family from the courtroom, Ron Goldman’s father said he was offended by the proposal.

“The defense may believe that this is a trial only about their client’s rights, but it’s not,” Fred Goldman said. “It doesn’t matter if they are talking about the Browns or if they are talking about me. For them to want to exclude the families in any way for any purpose would be an unbelievable outrage.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher Darden vowed to fight for the families’ right to attend the trial.

“Victims are different” from other witnesses, Darden said. “And we’re going to fight that tooth and nail.”

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The brief courtroom exchange on the issue of the families came near the close of a day of grab-bag developments in the Simpson case, which is moving quickly toward opening statements in the wake of a decision by Simpson’s defense team to forgo a hearing on the admissibility of DNA evidence. Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito said he hopes to have opening statements delivered on Jan. 18 or 19, after a potentially explosive hearing on allegations that O.J. Simpson battered Nicole Simpson repeatedly over a number of years.

Among other developments Thursday:

* Ito sanctioned prosecutors for failing to promptly disclose more than 20 possible witnesses. Because the prosecution did not quickly turn over information about those people to the defense, Ito said government lawyers could not mention them in their opening statement to the jury and would have to delay their testimony until after that of people who appeared on a witness list prepared last year. Prosecutors also sought sanctions against the defense for holding back material, but Ito denied that request.

* Prosecutors announced that they have intensively investigated domestic abuse claims detailed in a steamy book by Faye Resnick, the self-proclaimed best friend of Nicole Simpson, but have decided not to call Resnick as a witness. Legal experts were unsurprised by the move, noting that Resnick suffered from several potential problems as a witness, including her admitted drug use and her co-authorship of the book with a writer from the National Enquirer.

* DNA lawyers disagreed about the significance of the defense’s decision to forgo a full hearing on the admissibility of DNA test results that authorities say link Simpson to the crime scene. Simpson’s attorneys indicated that they still intend to challenge that evidence in front of the jury, while prosecutors maintained that Simpson gave up much of that right in waiving a hearing on the issue. Both sides say the defense has the right to attack the weight of the DNA evidence, but they differ as to whether Simpson’s lawyers may raise questions about the reliability of the scientific underpinnings of DNA testing.

* Prosecutors said they had finished sending blood and hair samples for DNA testing. Although some tests are still under way, they said they have no plans for additional samples to be tested unless they receive new information.

* Defense lawyers revealed that their witness list includes more than 270 people, including more than 100 aboard an American Airlines flight that Simpson took from Los Angeles to Chicago shortly after the murders. They said they do not intend to call all those people, however. Prosecutors have amassed a list of 216 possible witnesses, and 104 people appear on both lists.

Simpson’s lawyers had aggressively pressed for sanctions against the prosecution for its failure to move more quickly in revealing the identities and other information about potential witnesses in the case. In a prosecution motion filed in mid-December, long after the deadline Ito set for exchanging witness lists, government lawyers included references to 26 additional people who might be called to testify.

Both sides are allowed to alter witness lists, but are supposed to inform each other about potential new witnesses immediately. Although Deputy Dist. Atty. Cheri Lewis argued that prosecutors moved quickly to turn over information on the latest batch, prosecutors conceded that they had made mistakes.

Ito chastised them for apparently waiting as long as six weeks in some instances. “That sort of goes beyond immediate, wouldn’t you say?” the judge asked.

During the morning session, Ito warned prosecutors that he might punish them in some way, and his order gave the defense everything it had sought in retaliation for the late disclosure. Still, it does not curb the substance of the prosecution case, instead merely forcing government lawyers to call some of their witnesses in a preset order.

That requirement is intended to give Simpson’s team time to prepare for the testimony of the newly disclosed witnesses. They will not, however, have to brace for the appearance of Resnick, whose book about Nicole Simpson briefly disrupted jury selection last fall.

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Lewis said the book generated an enormous number of leads that had to be checked out and corroborated. Sources have said that Resnick, who detailed a number of instances of alleged abuse and who wrote that she believed Simpson was guilty, turned over notes and other background materials to prosecutors to assist in their case.

“An enormous effort was made by the prosecution to bolster the credibility of Faye Resnick,” Simpson lawyer Gerald Uelmen said in court. “Believe me, there is a lot to investigate about the credibility of Faye Resnick.”

Uelmen also professed amazement that the book had so preoccupied the team of government lawyers and investigators.

“I frankly find it very alarming that the bible for the investigation of this case has been a sleazy tabloid book,” he said. “My first reaction to reading that book is that I wanted to take a shower.”

Although Resnick will not be called to testify as part of the upcoming hearing on alleged domestic abuse, prosecutors have lined up a number of other witnesses. The defense motion seeking to keep jurors from hearing any of that evidence and the prosecution response are filed under seal. But Deputy Dist. Atty. Scott Gordon, a prosecutor who specializes in domestic violence, said one issue raised by the defense motion is that there is no link between spousal abuse and murder.

“There is substantial research to the contrary,” Gordon said, previewing one likely theme of the hearing, scheduled to begin Wednesday after jurors and alternate jurors have been sequestered.

Outside court, Cochran discounted any link between past instances of domestic discord in the Simpson household and the charges now facing the former football star.

“I don’t think any of that stuff is relevant,” Cochran said. “This is a murder trial.”

Ito has declined to release copies of the documents filed in connection with the issue of abuse, but said Thursday that his reading of those documents suggests that the two sides will debate roughly “two dozen discrete issues and incidents.”

“We could be here for quite a while,” Ito said.

Once that hearing has concluded, the two sides will turn to the question of how deeply the defense can delve into the personal history of Los Angeles Police Department Detective Mark Fuhrman, who has testified that he found a bloody glove outside Simpson’s Brentwood home hours after the murders. The glove matched one found at the crime scene, and it is a potentially important piece of evidence against Simpson.

Only after that issue is resolved can the two sides move to opening statements. Uelmen said the defense never has altered its basic approach to that phase of the trial.

“We have announced from the beginning that the defense is simply that O.J. Simpson did not commit this murder and is innocent of this crime,” Uelmen said. “There has been no shift in that strategy.”

Times staff writer Ralph Frammolino and correspondent Matthew Mosk contributed to this story.

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