THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : Lopez Ends Her Testimony; 2 Simpson Lawyers Fined

Seven days after she was reluctantly thrust into the glare of the O.J. Simpson trial, Rosa Lopez concluded her testimony Friday after a final round of questioning from lawyers on each side of the hard-fought murder case.

The likelihood of the jury ever hearing Lopez’s testimony may have diminished at day’s end, however, as Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito issued an order punishing defense lawyers for failing to promptly turn over material about Lopez. As part of that punishment, Ito said that in the event Simpson’s attorneys seek to introduce the videotape of Lopez’s testimony, he will tell the jury that the defense team had violated the state evidence-sharing law and that jurors could consider that violation in evaluating her credibility.

Lopez, a Salvadoran housekeeper who lived and worked next door to Simpson, spent more than three days on the stand, weathering a barrage of prosecution challenges to her truthfulness, admitting to a number of contradictory statements and acknowledging that her memory was foggy about some times, dates, conversations and events.

The tough cross-examination was motivated partly by her importance in the case. Lopez is the only known witness who has emerged to corroborate Simpson’s alibi that he was at home when Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman were killed June 12. Simpson has pleaded not guilty.

But through all the questioning, Lopez did not waver from the central thrust of her testimony: that she saw Simpson’s white Ford Bronco parked outside his house in the early evening of June 12 and that it never moved from that spot until police came to take it away the next day.

Lopez’s testimony has been shadowed by accusations that defense lawyers failed to share promptly with prosecutors a tape-recorded July 29 interview of her. The government lawyers were infuriated by the late disclosure, and asked Ito to impose sanctions on the defense for that failure as well as for not turning over material related to defense experts.

Late Friday, Ito agreed to punish the defense, fining two of the lawyers $950 each and finding that Simpson attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. “has made untrue representations to the court in reckless disregard of the truth.”

Simpson’s lawyers--who were going to be fined $1,000 each before Ito reduced the amount below the level that would prompt State Bar involvement--also were ordered to pay Lopez’s hotel bills and transportation costs, and were directed to prepare a list of witnesses and other material in their possession. More significant than those sanctions, however, was the admonition that Ito said he would read to the jury if Lopez’s videotaped testimony is offered.

Ito said he would tell the jury, among other things: “This was a violation of the law, and the cause of the delay (this week). You may consider the effect of this delay in disclosure, if any, upon the credibility of the witness involved and give to it the weight to which you feel it is entitled.”

Legal experts said the prospect of that admonition might dissuade the defense from using Lopez’s testimony, but they downplayed the importance of the fines imposed on Cochran and his associate, Carl E. Douglas.

“A $1,000 fine wouldn’t scare me,” said Gigi Gordon, a Santa Monica criminal defense lawyer. “And believe me, it would scare me a lot more than it would scare Johnnie Cochran.”

Harland W. Braun, another criminal defense lawyer, agreed. “The $950 is no big deal. The problem is the admonition. . . . What the jury will hear is very critical. The question is: ‘What will they do with that information?’ ”

Although Lopez has balked at the long questioning to which she has been subjected and has repeatedly said she wants to leave for El Salvador as soon as possible, she completed her time on the stand Friday with a brief thank you to Ito. Prosecutors asked the judge to order Lopez to return, but defense lawyers did not join in that request, and Ito declined to issue the order.

“Good luck, Miss Lopez,” he said as she turned to leave.

“Thank you, sir,” she responded. “You’re very kind. I appreciate this.”

After leaving court, her lawyer said Lopez intended to return to El Salvador within a day or two. She has been showered with gifts--flowers, clothes and other items--from the public during her time on the stand. Her lawyer, Carl Jones, said she also had received about $150, and would use the money to travel.

Throughout her testimony, Lopez was returned repeatedly to one potentially significant point of her account, her difficulty pinpointing a precise time at which she said she saw Simpson’s vehicle. She testified that she saw Simpson’s Bronco parked outside after 10 p.m. on the night of the murders, suggesting in at least one interview that it was about 10:15 p.m. or 10:20 p.m. but other times saying she could not be sure how long after 10 p.m. it was.

The exact time is important because prosecutors say that Nicole Simpson and Goldman were killed about 10:15 p.m. outside Nicole Simpson’s Brentwood condominium. Authorities believe Simpson committed the murders, then fled the scene in his Bronco--accounting for blood stains found inside that car.

On Friday, Lopez insisted she could not be exactly sure of the time, and she added that she called Cochran’s law offices to complain when she heard television reports stating that she had offered a precise time.

“When I heard my name on television with 10:15, 10:20 time, I called Mr. Johnnie Cochran’s office,” Lopez testified. “And I said I have never given them a specific time.”

Rather than accept Lopez’s statement that she could not be sure about that time, however, Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher A. Darden chose to show that Lopez had given inconsistent statements about that point.

With Lopez listening, Darden played a tape-recording of an interview she gave to a defense investigator July 29; in that interview, Lopez agreed with the investigator that the time was 10:15 p.m. or so.

“So you take your dog for a walk about 10:15?” the investigator, Bill Pavelic, asked.

“10:15,” Lopez responded.

“10:15, 10:20, 10:30, OK,” Pavelic said, speaking over her.

“Yeah,” she answered.

“Now, when you took your dog for a walk could you still see the Bronco outside?” Pavelic asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes.”

That was just one of many questions in which Pavelic suggested a response, and Lopez agreed with him. On the stand, she seemed to struggle with the notion that she had agreed with statements by him, including some she no longer endorses.

At one point, Pavelic seemed to suggest that Lopez’s employers had two dogs, not just one, a small detail but an incorrect one. Lopez did not correct that during her interview but said Friday: “There is only one dog. How am I going to make one up?”

In the early questioning, Lopez referred to Pavelic as “Mr. Bill,” and Darden adopted that name derisively throughout his cross-examination. He often referred to Cochran as “Mr. Johnnie” as well.

Although Lopez struggled with many specific times and dates, she emphatically said Friday that she had never meant to suggest an exact time for spotting the Ford Bronco late on the evening of June 12, only that it was not long after 10 p.m. Darden described it as “shortly after,” a vague description that Lopez accepted.

Cochran asked during his questioning for her most accurate recollection at this point.

“After 10, sir,” she answered.

“And is that your best response?” Cochran asked.

“Yes, sir,” she responded.

Defense attorneys argued that the contradictions in Lopez’s testimony are largely attributable to language mix-ups--Lopez is a native of El Salvador and, though she speaks some English, she has testified through an interpreter. Cochran asked her about any confusions that may be caused by the translation, and Lopez said she felt some of her answers might have been misunderstood--particularly her oft-repeated insistence that she could not remember certain things.

“In my, in our Latin countries, we speak different dialects,” Lopez said. “When I’m saying I don’t remember, I am saying no.”

“Is that something that’s common to your particular country, El Salvador?” Cochran asked.

“Yes, sir,” Lopez said.

After a long cross-examination by Darden concluded Friday morning, Cochran used his turn to question Lopez in an effort to shore up her credibility. He was partially successful, eliciting from her responses that made clear that she remains convinced she met with Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman on the day after the killings and giving her a chance to describe again her observations about the night of June 12.

Lopez also firmly denied that she ever sought or received money for her testimony--a notion that Darden raised during his cross-examination but that he offered no evidence to support. Trying to pin Lopez down on that point, Darden asked her whether she expected to receive money from any of Simpson’s lawyers.

Again without offering evidence to support that allegation--which, if true, would be illegal--Darden listed the defense lawyers and investigators one at a time, asking Lopez if any of them had promised her money. She responded no each time, while the attorneys grinned and Simpson shook his head in apparent disbelief.

But Cochran ran into a few snags during his questioning. At one point, Lopez stumbled when trying to say what time she saw Simpson and a passenger return to his house after leaving for a short trip while in Simpson’s Bentley. At first, she could not pin down the time, suggesting it could have been anywhere between 8:45 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., then saying she could not remember.

She also wavered on whether she had told a former employer that she thought Simpson was a “great guy” and would testify to “anything, anytime.”

Asked by Cochran whether she had ever said such a thing, Lopez first testified that she had not. But then, as he continued questioning her, she offered a more equivocal response: “Maybe I said that to her. I don’t remember.”

That answer was far less definitive than defense lawyers would have preferred, but Cochran signaled another possible line of attack in challenging the employer’s statement. Lopez testified that the woman to whom she allegedly made the remark was her employer for nine years but never paid her Social Security taxes. Defense attorneys may use that to question the employer’s truthfulness.

Lopez faced a potentially tricky set of questions when prosecutors asked about the names and birth dates she had used to obtain a driver’s license and to apply for unemployment insurance. She gave different birth dates on the forms, which are completed under penalty of perjury, and Ito ended court early Thursday so Lopez could consult with her lawyer about the risk of saying something that could result in her prosecution, according to a sidebar transcript released Friday.

“It’s not something we normally prosecute a whole lot of people for, but I’m just saying it’s happened before, especially if it’s a different name,” Ito said during that sidebar. Prosecutors said the names were the same, and Lopez was allowed to consult with her lawyers. When court resumed Friday, prosecutors did not pursue that line of questioning.

The combination of Lopez’s observations and the questions about her credibility made her testimony a mixed bag for the defense, which must weigh the pros and cons of calling her to the stand, or of introducing her videotaped testimony in the event that she is called as a witness but refuses to take the stand.

Outside court, Simpson lawyer Robert L. Shapiro conceded there were some inconsistencies in her statements, and he said the defense will review her testimony in detail before deciding how to proceed.

“To date she has been very consistent on some issues,” Shapiro told reporters as he entered the courthouse Friday. “And on some others, she has clearly been inconsistent, and it’s an evaluation that will have to be made after we see all of her testimony.”

After the day in court, Simpson lawyer F. Lee Bailey appeared on the “Larry King Live” TV show and pledged that defense lawyers would use the videotape. Lopez’s “integrity is rock solid,” he said.

Lopez’s testimony dragged on over a week in which the jury made just one brief appearance in the courtroom--and that was so Ito could dismiss one of the panelists. Monday, jurors are to return to court for continuation of the cross-examination of LAPD Detective Tom Lange.

Times staff writer Henry Weinstein contributed to this article.