Fuhrman Denies Having Used Racial Epithet

F. Lee Bailey, his cross-examination of Detective Mark Fuhrman interrupted by accusations that he lied in court, sputtered toward the conclusion of that questioning Wednesday by grilling the policeman about his preparations to testify and asking for the first time whether he had ever used an explosive racial slur.

When Bailey asked Fuhrman directly whether he had ever used a racial epithet disparaging to blacks, prosecutors objected. But once Fuhrman was allowed to answer, he insisted he had never used the word, at least during the past decade; in fact, he avoided using it in his answers while Bailey said it several times in the course of questioning him.

“You say under oath that you have not addressed any black person as a nigger or spoken about black people as niggers in the past 10 years, Detective Fuhrman?” Bailey thundered from behind a courtroom lectern.

“That’s what I’m saying, sir,” Fuhrman answered.

“So that anyone who comes to this court and quotes you as using that word in dealing with African Americans would be a liar, would they not, Detective Fuhrman?” Bailey continued.

“Yes, they would,” the detective responded.

“All of them?” Bailey asked, hinting at the witnesses that the defense maintains will challenge Fuhrman’s testimony.

“All of them,” Fuhrman said.

Fuhrman’s racial attitudes have come into play as part of the Simpson case because defense lawyers argue that the detective is a racist who may have planted a bloody glove outside Simpson’s house in order to implicate a black man who had once been married to a white woman. Simpson, who is black, has pleaded not guilty to the June 12 murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Lyle Goldman. Both victims were white.

Bailey’s cross-examination, which has ranged over the past few days from gentle and solicitous to confrontational and condescending, appeared to falter Wednesday after a vitriolic exchange with Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark. Their exchange set the tone for a combative court day, much of it outside the jury’s presence, that featured lawyers accusing each other of lying and Bailey at one point charging that Fuhrman’s attorney was guilty of mail fraud for a fund-raising letter he sent out last fall.

By day’s end, even the normally patient Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito was taken aback by the vitriol between the lawyers.

“Today,” he said, “has been a pretty contentious day.”

Before the jury was brought in Wednesday, the prosecutor and defense lawyer faced off in a bizarre confrontation over a television news report; by the time their argument was over Bailey was shouting in anger and Clark was icily chiding her counterpart to hold his tongue.

The fight erupted over Bailey’s contention Tuesday that he had spoken “Marine-to-Marine” with a Marine Corps sergeant, Maximo Cordoba, and was convinced that Cordoba would testify that Fuhrman used a racial epithet in his presence.

Tuesday night, however, NBC’s “Dateline” aired an interview with Cordoba in which the sergeant denied ever speaking with Bailey. Confronted with that statement, Bailey expressed his indignation, saying NBC had failed to contact him prior to airing the report. If the network had done so, Bailey said, he would have explained his conversation with Cordoba and cleared up any misunderstanding.

In fact, Cordoba appeared again on the program Wednesday night and this time did concede that he had spoken with Bailey. He also alleged that Fuhrman had used a racial slur in his presence. That comment, however, contradicts statements he made during a Sept. 21 interview with The Times.

In that interview, Cordoba said: “At no time when Mark was with me or in our office did he speak in any racist manner about blacks or anyone. . . . If I had heard that said in my presence, I would have (been) pretty upset, and I would have removed the person from the office.”

Armed with Cordoba’s initial denial of speaking to Bailey, Clark argued to the judge that her counterpart had lied to the court about conversing with Cordoba; later, she said Bailey misled the court about the extent of that conversation.

“This is the kind of nonsense that gives lawyers a bad name,” Clark said, turning her back to Bailey, who flushed and fidgeted in his chair.

Without turning to face him, Clark continued, coolly adding at one point: “Mr. Bailey--you can see how agitated he is--has been caught in a lie.”

Clark then began playing a videotape of Cordoba’s interview, prompting the famed defense lawyer to jump in with an objection as the tape began to roll.

“Excuse me!” he shouted at Clark when she did not immediately turn off the videotape machine, “don’t play the tape while there is an objection.”

After it was played, Clark accused Bailey of lying. That infuriated Bailey even further, and he brusquely urged Ito to cut off the prosecutor.

“I object to this, Your Honor,” Bailey said, rising from his seat and jabbing his finger at Clark, who stood just a few feet away. “And I ask that you put a stop to it.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Bailey,” Clark responded without turning to look at him. “Stand up and speak when it’s your turn.”

Ito also declined to come to Bailey’s defense. Instead, the judge asked Bailey to sit down and “to control yourself, sir.”

At the end of the fracas, Ito ruled that defense lawyers could not raise the issue of Cordoba’s testimony until the sergeant has been brought into court and questioned about whether he spoke to Bailey. Since Cordoba was out of town, that is not likely to occur until after Fuhrman has finished testifying, and Bailey protested that the delay was unfair to the defense. Ito was unmoved.

Later, outside court, Bailey said the defense was receiving calls from people who allege that Fuhrman used racial slurs in their presence. And he vowed to pursue those allegations when it comes time for the defense to present its case.

The Cordoba controversy, however, has few appealing outcomes for the defense: The Marine gave numerous interviews denying that Fuhrman used racial slurs, and prosecutors can be expected to question him about them if he takes the stand. If he does not testify, a cloud will remain over Bailey, who has now been publicly accused of lying and who might want Cordoba’s testimony to clear his reputation.

“Both Bailey and Cordoba, his prospective witness, looked bad during the morning argument,” said Paul Harris, a San Francisco defense lawyer. “Bailey clearly exaggerated to such an extent Tuesday that he misled the judge. When he explained Wednesday his brief conversation with Cordoba he was believable, but that made Cordoba’s comments on ‘Dateline’ look less credible.”

Other legal experts, even those who have grown accustomed to the contentious tone of the Simpson trial, were surprised by the personal attacks in Wednesday’s session. Some worried that they will reflect poorly on the legal profession at large.

“When Bailey’s ambiguous comments about his conversation with Cordoba are combined with prior acts of defense misconduct in this case, one could be left with the impression that this is how defense attorneys normally act,” UCLA law professor Peter Arenella said. “Nothing could be further from the truth. But unfortunately the Simpson case has come to represent what our criminal justice system stands for.”

Barred from questioning Fuhrman about Cordoba, at least for now, the defense tried to ask him about another witness, Alwyn D. Martin, a San Fernando Valley woman who was the victim of a carjacking in 1993 and whose case Fuhrman investigated. Defense attorneys accused Fuhrman of trying to persuade Martin to implicate black suspects in that case and of dropping the investigation when she insisted the suspects were white.

That line of argument ran aground when Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher A. Darden produced copies of police reports showing that Fuhrman had followed up on the case, fingerprinting her car, presenting her with mug shots and filing a supplemental report. Bailey seemed surprised by the report, and Darden mocked his counterpart for raising the issue without first researching it.

“He ought to check out the facts,” Darden said. “He ought to know what he’s talking about.”

Bracing for Martin’s possible testimony, prosecutors scrambled to assemble information on her background and interviewed her Monday night.

Public documents show that Alwyn Darla Martin pleaded guilty last year to a forgery charge stemming from writing a $2,000 check in another person’s name. She was sentenced to one day in jail by a Torrance Superior Court judge and three years’ formal probation. She also was ordered to pay restitution and to cooperate with a probation officer in a plan for substance abuse treatment, according to court records from that case.

Martin declined comment when a Times reporter reached her at her San Fernando Valley residence.

Although Ito did not permit Fuhrman to be cross-examined about his contacts with Martin, Bailey did win the right to use a small flashlight as a prop for cross-examining Fuhrman. Using the light, which matched one carried by Fuhrman at the murder scene, Bailey argued that the detective could have spied a second glove near Goldman’s body, pocketed it and carried it to Simpson’s house, where the defense alleges that he planted it.

He clashed with Clark again, however, when he proposed to display a leather glove in a plastic bag. Bailey said the defense would argue that Fuhrman could have placed a bloody glove in such a bag and carried the package in his sock to Simpson’s home.

Bailey, an ex-Marine, said it was common for Marines to carry items in their socks. Fuhrman also served in the Marine Corps.

That, Bailey said, would account for why the glove at Simpson’s house still was sticky when Fuhrman allegedly discovered it more than seven hours after the murders.

Despite their allegations of planted evidence, defense lawyers have not said how they will explain DNA tests that prosecutors say have revealed blood containing the genetic characteristics of both victims and the defendant on the glove found at Simpson’s house.

Responding to Bailey’s request to display the glove he brought with him to court Wednesday, Clark vigorously protested and injected a personal jab at Bailey. Clark pointed out that the gloves found at the crime scene and Simpson’s home were extra large, and noted that the one Bailey proposed to show the jury was much smaller.

“Size small,” she said. “I guess it’s Mr. Bailey’s.”

More importantly, Clark emphasized that neither Bailey nor any other defense attorney has ever produced any evidence to support such a theory.

“There is no offer of proof,” Clark said. “There will never be any proof. There will never be anything but Mr. Bailey’s theatrics, dramatic, albeit eloquent, statements to this court that are absolutely empty of any evidence or any factual support. . . . He doesn’t like the truth, so he’s manufacturing his own.”

Ito allowed Bailey to use the plastic bag in questioning Fuhrman but barred him from using the glove, at least until he could find an extra-large version to present.

Once that issue was resolved, the jury was brought into the courtroom, and the cross-examination of Fuhrman continued, nearly reaching its conclusion by the end of the day. As Bailey wound up toward his finish, both he and the detective appeared to struggle.

Although he did not raise his voice or lose his temper, Fuhrman snapped at some of Bailey’s more pointed questions. For his part, Bailey’s questioning appeared less focused than it had a day before, languishing in a long exchange over the detective’s preparation at the hands of prosecutors.

In response to Bailey’s questions, Fuhrman denied being able to remember anything that any prosecutor asked him during a recent practice cross-examination. Bailey expressed his disbelief at that, especially after the detective said he only was asked a total of about 10 questions by three different prosecutors.

“Do you know of any lawyer on this earth who is capable of asking only three questions?” Bailey asked.

“Not currently,” Fuhrman answered, smiling mischievously and drawing laughter from the audience.

“Touche,” Bailey responded.

Fuhrman’s conduct is at the heart of the defense’s allegation that the police investigation of Simpson has been racially biased, and both sides have spent considerable time researching the detective’s background. Determined to let no avenue of possible impeachment go by, Bailey proposed to ask Fuhrman a series of questions about a fund-raising letter that the detective’s attorney sent out on Sept. 21.

In the letter, lawyer Robert Tourtelot solicited contributions to what he called the “Mark Fuhrman Justice Fund.”

“Our law firm, Tourtelot & Butler, has been fronting all of Mark’s out-of-pocket costs which have already reached over $100,000,” the letter states. “But to clear his good name, the costs of experts, investigators and paralegals continue to mount at a rate we can no longer sustain.”

Bailey said he doubted that such a large bill had been rung up for Fuhrman’s legal expenses. He argued that the letter constituted mail fraud and suggested that it was evidence that Fuhrman had a financial stake in the Simpson prosecution. As a result, Bailey asked Ito for permission to cross-examine the detective about it, but Ito ruled that it was irrelevant to the murder charges against the former football star.

That argument consumed much of the afternoon, preventing Bailey from concluding his cross-examination on schedule. But Bailey said he has just one more question for the detective, and he expects to finish with him this morning. Prosectors will then have a chance to repair any damage they believe Bailey’s cross-examination has done.

Once Fuhrman has finished testifying, probably either today or Friday, more police officers are expected to take the stand. But even that will not mark the last of Fuhrman in the case: Bailey said outside court that the Simpson lawyers expect to recall Fuhrman during the defense case.

Times staff writers Henry Weinstein and Vivien Lou Chen and correspondent Jeff Kass contributed to this story.