NEWS ANALYSIS : Both Sides in Trial Face Dilemma With Fuhrman : Court: Prosecutors must confront and fend off racism allegations. For the defense, it is vital that he be discredited.

Prosecutors frequently are forced to take testimony concerning crimes from witnesses with unsavory pasts.

They even have a saying to cover such situations: “There are,” they say, “no swans in a sewer.”

It’s not usually a dilemma they face when they call a Los Angeles police officer to the stand. But, in one of the strangest twists in O.J. Simpson’s strange double murder trial, it is exactly the problem Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher A. Darden will confront when Detective Mark Fuhrman takes the oath, probably sometime today.

When the defense gets its chance to question the detective--who discovered a bloody glove on the grounds of Simpson’s Brentwood estate, matching one found at the murder scene--they are expected to ask him about allegations that he has made racist remarks and harbors a particular animosity toward African Americans.

“Fuhrman is like a ticking bomb that could blow up in anybody’s face,” said defense attorney Gerald L. Chaleff. “If he is able to fend off defense accusations that he’s a racist who planted evidence, then it’s a severe blow to their case. Conversely, if he blows up, then the prosecution has to worry whether the shrapnel will wound all their other police witnesses.”

Former Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, however, thinks Fuhrman presents the prosecution with the greater peril. “This is a big-time problem for the prosecution,” he said. “There are no problems here for the defense. They are playing the race card--and the prosecution is scared to death it will work.

“The ostensible purpose of introducing evidence about Fuhrman’s alleged racist behavior in the past is to raise the question of whether he had a motive to plant evidence. The defense wants to introduce something that will have such an inflammatory impact on the black jurors that it will obscure objective evidence,” Reiner said.

“The prosecution’s fear is that the eight black jurors won’t just squint at Fuhrman, but at all the police officer testimony. Fuhrman was the prosecution’s best witness during the preliminary hearing, but if the racial stuff comes out, he’s a goner.”

That possibility clearly has preoccupied the prosecution. A little more than a week ago, according to sources, a number of deputy district attorneys put Fuhrman through a mock cross-examination in which his racial attitudes came up at least once.

Police sources confirm that such an examination occurred. A member of the defense team told The Times that it, too, had learned of the mock examination, and would make a motion that prosecutors be compelled to disclose its contents.

Anxiety over race has a familiar ring to lawyers who were on opposite sides in one of the most racially charged trials in recent Los Angeles history.

“One of the problems in life is to recognize where there are no choices,” mused defense attorney Harland W. Braun, who represented one of the Los Angeles police officers acquitted of violating Rodney G. King’s civil rights.

“The prosecutors have been backed into a corner. They must put this guy on because he found the glove. The defense has to go after him because, if he’s telling the truth, their client is guilty. They have to give him a motive for planting evidence, and all they have is the implication that he had a racial motive.

“Since a majority of the jurors are black, this may have some resonance.”

Steven D. Clymer, now a law professor at Cornell University, was one of the federal prosecutors who won the conviction of two LAPD officers for violating King’s civil rights. If he were handling the Simpson case, he said, he would meet the issue of Fuhrman’s racial attitude head on.

“I would want to determine which, if any, of the allegations against Fuhrman are true. Then, I would bring out every one of them and have Fuhrman concede them in the direct examination. You have to be honestly concerned about the truth, rather than just saying, ‘He’s my witness and I have to protect him.’

“If he is a racist, you have to deal with it. You want the jury to hear it from you first.”

Clymer said he doubted the prosecution would benefit by trying to limit the scope of the defense’s cross-examination. Such “an attempt to avoid Fuhrman’s problems,” he said, “will make the prosecutors look like they are trying to hide something. If this stuff is true, it is something the prosecutor ought to be telling the jury about.

“The last thing they want to do is appear to be apologists for Fuhrman.”

Veteran Deputy Dist. Atty. Sterling Norris also believes that the King case is instructive. The district attorneys, he pointed out, didn’t put the victim on the stand because they feared that the conduct of King--who was on parole and driving drunk when he was stopped--would become the focus of the case. “To me,” Norris said, “that reflected a naive belief that, somehow, they were going to hide him. It’s the same thing with Fuhrman.

“If he has liabilities, you’ve got to be out front about it. It looks like you’ll have some evidence pointing to him as a racist. You just have to say that he may be a racist, but that doesn’t mean he planted evidence.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Harvey Giss agrees with that approach: “When most good defense lawyers have a star witness with prior felony convictions, they bring it out themselves. Otherwise, they look deceitful. It’s just practical street smarts.”

Other prosecutors believe that Fuhrman may be a better witness than some in their office expect. “I think he is a good cop, and all my experience with him tells me he’s not a racist,” said veteran Deputy Dist. Atty. Steve Barshop. “I tried a felony case in which he was a key witness. He handled it professionally and competently, as cops are supposed to. He is definitely not a bigot, and I base that on my observations of him on a daily basis.”

Defense lawyer Gigi Gordon thinks the defense will have to make an indirect approach to Fuhrman. “There is no question that a witness can be impeached with evidence of racial animus,” she said, “but that animosity has to be reflected in conduct relevant to the case. Free-floating attitudes are not fair game for a cross-examiner because everybody has them. Not even cops can be convicted of thought crime.

“I think the issue is not racism, but credibility, which is not the same thing.”

“What you’ll see the prosecution doing is minimizing Fuhrman’s role in the investigation,” predicted defense lawyer Barry Levin, a former Los Angeles police officer. “They’ll try to show that he wasn’t the only person who checked the Bundy (Drive) crime scene for evidence, that many other people checked it and found only one glove. They’ll show that, at (Simpson’s) Rockingham (Avenue estate), no other detective saw Fuhrman do anything unusual.

“The prosecutors better not ask him, ‘Are you a racist?’ If they ask him that, and he says, ‘No,’ then they’re opening a Pandora’s box. On cross-examination, the defense could elicit from Fuhrman all those things that might indicate he is a racist.”

Defense attorney Albert De Blanc Jr., also a former LAPD officer, agreed. “The prosecution is at risk if the jury concludes Fuhrman has a racial hatred for blacks and that he, in fact, did something with the evidence.

“But I don’t believe that they will make the leap and conclude he planted the glove or tampered with this investigation simply because Kathleen Bell (who has said the detective made racist remarks in her presence) recites a negative contact with Fuhrman back in 1986. The defense has to show something more to the jury.”