Ito Removes 4th Juror From Simpson Panel

Ending weeks of investigation and anticipation, Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito excused another juror from the murder trial of O.J. Simpson on Wednesday, this time dismissing a man about whom prosecutors had expressed deep reservations.

The juror, a 46-year-old Long Beach man named Michael Knox who wore a San Francisco 49ers cap during a recent jury field trip, became the fourth member of the panel to be excused since the trial began, leaving eight remaining alternates.

Knox, who is black, was replaced by a 38-year-old white woman from the San Gabriel Valley who described herself as a “touchy-feely” kind of person and who has complained about the confinement of serving as a sequestered juror.

On the questionnaire completed by all prospective jurors, the San Gabriel Valley woman said she was stunned when she learned that Simpson was a suspect in the June 12 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman, to which he has pleaded not guilty.

“It seemed impossible” that Simpson could have committed the crimes, the woman said, insisting nevertheless that she had no opinion about his guilt or innocence.

Knox was ousted on a day without testimony in the Simpson trial, but the wrangling inside and outside court continued. Robert Tourtelot, a lawyer for Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman, denounced defense attorneys for suggesting that his client once possessed Nazi paraphernalia, and lawyers for the two sides returned to court in the afternoon to wrangle over evidence-sharing, a long-running issue in the case.

Robert L. Shapiro, the lawyer who built the highly touted defense team, took full responsibility for the defense’s failure to turn over some materials to prosecutors, but he urged Ito not to punish Simpson for the mistakes of his lawyers.

“If I have been in contempt of court, I will suffer appropriate sanctions,” Shapiro said. As he sat down, Simpson’s lead trial lawyer, Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., leaned across Simpson and shook Shapiro’s hand.

The latest shift again alters the demographics of the Simpson jury both in terms of gender and race. The jury now consists of eight blacks, two whites, one Latino and one person of mixed ancestry. There are eight women and four men.

Knox was a juror whom Simpson’s defense team had eagerly welcomed on the panel. In recent weeks, he had sent several signals that he might be leaning toward Simpson, publicly wearing the cap of a football team for which Simpson had played and lingering over photographs in the defendant’s house despite Ito’s admonition to the panelists to ignore the pictures.

Ironically, Knox said after his dismissal that he thought prosecutors, who have not yet begun to present blood evidence that they say will link Simpson to the June 12 murders, were already making a powerful presentation.

“I think it’s going to be a fair verdict, and I think the prosecutor did a good job,” Knox told reporters who gathered outside his home. In meeting with journalists, Knox and his family seemed overwhelmed by their sudden fame.

“This is a very stressful situation,” said Beverly Knox, the excused juror’s wife. “I’m glad to have my husband home.”

Ito did not tell other jurors why their colleague had been excused, but sources said last week that the judge had tentatively decided to make the move after an investigation revealed that the man had failed to disclose a past allegation of domestic abuse on his jury questionnaire--an allegation that sources said was more than a decade old. Those sources denied a television report claiming that Knox had placed a bet on the outcome of the case.

The juror would not comment on the specific reason for his removal, saying that Ito asked him not to. He did say, however, that reports about him are false.

The change in jurors offered the panel its first opportunity to come to court since last week because the proceedings have been stalled by wrangling over the testimony of Rosa Lopez, a housekeeper who lived and worked next door to Simpson and who said his car was parked outside at the time that prosecutors believe the murders were committed.

Lopez’s testimony--which was interrupted earlier this week and is expected to resume today--is being taken without the jury present but is being recorded on videotape in case she leaves the country and refuses to return to testify during the defense’s case.

The jury’s appearance Wednesday was brief, but Ito used the opportunity to explain in general terms why the panel had not been called to court in recent days.

Ito apologized to the jury for the inconvenience but said he hoped the delays would be made more palatable by new entertainment being solicited for the panel. Specifically, Ito said producers of various Academy Award-nominated films would make tapes of their movies available to the Simpson jury.

As the jury has dwindled, concern has been raised about whether enough panelists are left to complete the trial, which is expected to last into the summer. Both sides expected to lose jurors before the case was over, but the pace and intensity of juror investigations has been more intense than the attorneys originally anticipated.

At the same time, however, the latest move solved one logistics problem. The jury box in Ito’s courtroom is only large enough to hold 20 people, so one alternate juror has been forced to sit outside the box, just a few feet from the prosecution table. That has created occasional problems, contributing, for instance, to the inadvertent broadcast of an alternate juror’s image on television.

Since that time, Court TV, which was responsible for the juror’s picture being broadcast, has installed new measures to prevent a recurrence. The removal of the latest juror should also help prevent such an incident because there will be more room between the jury and government attorneys.

Outside court, meanwhile, Fuhrman’s lawyer blasted defense attorneys for suggesting that his client possessed Nazi paraphernalia. Fuhrman testified during last summer’s preliminary hearing that he found a bloody glove at Simpson’s estate, and since then, Fuhrman has come under steady assault by the defense team, which has accused him of racism and has suggested that he may have planted the glove.

In a motion filed this week, the defense asked for any police records relating to an investigation of Fuhrman for “possession of a swastika or other Nazi-like symbol while at the West Los Angeles station house.” According to Tourtelot, however, the only Nazi logo ever in Fuhrman’s possession was part of a cartoon by Pulitzer Prize-winner Paul Conrad that pictured the ominous rise of fascism in Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

“Conrad’s not a Nazi,” Tourtelot said. “Neither is Mark Fuhrman.”

Police sources have said that the department looked into why Fuhrman had the cartoon on his desk and found no wrongdoing by the detective. Tourtelot said his client collected cartoons by Conrad and had about 15 of them at the time a colleague cut out the one in question and left it on his desk.

Police sources said that Deputy Dist. Atty. William Hodgman brought the matter to the Police Department’s attention, and that department officials inquired about it at his request. No action was taken against Fuhrman, they said.

Although the two sides have spent most of the last week arguing over Lopez’s testimony, Wednesday’s courtroom sessions were devoted to a longstanding dispute in the trial over whether each side is properly sharing evidence under California law.

In recent days, defense attorneys have acknowledged failing to promptly turn over some material. They have argued that any oversights have been inadvertent, but their position came under further attack after one defense lawyer assured Ito that all reports and other material related to Lopez had been turned over, only to be contradicted the same day by a defense investigator, Bill Pavelic.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark said Wednesday that the episode illustrated contempt for Ito’s orders and asked that the judge impose a series of harsh punishments on the defense for what she called “a sinister scheme.” She requested that Ito tell the jury that the defense had deliberately withheld evidence from the prosecution, and she asked for permission to argue the significance of that conduct to the jury in the government’s closing argument.

So far, Ito has imposed only one sanction against the defense, ordering Cochran to pay Lopez’s hotel bills. Clark dismissed that as not nearly enough. Gesturing at the defense table, she said: “I’m sure that’s been a great burden to the defense. We’ve got four millionaires over here paying what, a hundred a night?”

Defense attorneys admitted mistakes but said they were inadvertent and asked Ito not to grant the punishments sought by the prosecution.

“We screwed up,” said Gerald F. Uelmen, one of Simpson’s lawyers who returned to the courtroom Wednesday for the first time in weeks. “We admit that. We apologize for that. The only explanation we can make is that we are human.”

After the last lengthy session on the subject of evidence-sharing, Ito ordered Simpson’s lawyers to immediately turn over any reports they had from the experts they intend to call at trial. Among the experts was Dr. Lenore Walker, a nationally recognized expert on battered woman’s syndrome. In his opening statement, Cochran said Walker had conducted a “battery of tests” on Simpson and had concluded that he showed no signs of antisocial behavior.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Cheri Lewis said that if such tests have been performed, prosecutors are entitled to see them. In a ruling issued Jan. 29, Ito agreed, ordering the defense to immediately disclose reports.

Since then, Lewis said, “They have produced zero.”

According to Uelmen, however, the various defense experts either have not completed reports or have not settled on the full scope of their anticipated testimony. Until that happens, Uelmen said, it is premature to ask the defense to turn over any documents.

According to Uelmen, defense attorneys cannot be required to assist prosecutors by turning over evidence that would help the government’s case.

Ito did not rule on the prosecution’s demand for immediate access to notes, reports and other material compiled by the defense experts. He said he would review the various experts and issue his ruling in writing.

Times staff writer Duke Helfand contributed to this article.

* INTO THE SPOTLIGHT: Former detective is a harsh critic of the LAPD. B1