THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : High-Stakes Testimony by Fuhrman Concludes : Simpson case: Attorneys focus on detective’s actions on night of murders. Ito brokers truce among the lawyers.

Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman, completing a grueling and high-stakes cross-examination at the hands of one of O.J. Simpson’s lawyers, left the witness stand in the murder trial Thursday after the lead prosecutor crisply tried to establish that the policeman knew almost nothing about the case at the time that defense lawyers allege he was planting a key piece of evidence.

Simpson lawyer F. Lee Bailey finished his cross-examination Thursday morning by broaching just a few new topics with the detective, who had been on the stand since last week. When Bailey finished, Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark consulted with her colleagues and posed a short series of questions, asking the detective how much he knew about the June 12 murders when he went looking for the source of mysterious thumping noises.

Brian (Kato) Kaelin, Simpson’s house guest, described those noises to Fuhrman early June 13 and said he had heard the thumps about 10:45 p.m. the night before; the detective went in search, he testified, primarily because he was afraid another victim might have collapsed behind the house.

Instead, Fuhrman testified, he found a bloody glove, a key piece of evidence in the murders of Ronald Lyle Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson, a double homicide to which Simpson has pleaded not guilty. Simpson’s lawyers have accused Fuhrman of planting the glove either out of racial hatred for Simpson or out of anger at being bounced from the case for more experienced detectives.

They have never produced any evidence to support that argument, however, and Fuhrman has vehemently denied it. On Thursday, Clark sought to establish with one short line of questioning that planting the glove would have been extraordinarily risky for Fuhrman because he had so little information about the case at the time he would have had to commit that act.

“At that time, sir, the first time you walked out to the south pathway at 360 N. Rockingham, did you know the time of death for Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown?”

“No, ma’am,” Fuhrman responded.

“Did you know whether Mr. Simpson had an alibi for the time of their murders?” she continued.

“No,” he said.

“Did you know whether there were any eyewitnesses to their murders?” Clark asked.

“No,” the detective answered.

“Did you know whether anyone had heard voices or any sounds or any words spoken at the crime scene at the time of their murders?” she asked.

“No, ma’am,” he said again.

“Did you know whether Kato had already gone up the south walkway before you got there?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“Did you know whether any fibers from the Bronco would be found on that glove that you ultimately found at Rockingham?” Clark questioned.

“No,” he said again.

“And did you know the cause of death?” she asked.

“No,” Fuhrman answered one last time.

With that, Clark looked directly at the detective and announced: “I have nothing further.”

*

Fuhrman strode from the room, pausing to receive a warning from Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito that he may be called upon to testify again. But for now at least, Fuhrman’s testimony is over, concluding a contentious and crucial chapter in the Simpson murder trial.

As he left the courthouse, Fuhrman told his lawyer, “It’s over,” according to the attorney, Robert Tourtelot.

Fuhrman’s testimony has highlighted the issue of race in the Simpson case, a topic that Simpson attorney Robert L. Shapiro, who built the defense team, had long said he hoped to avoid.

Shapiro reiterated his regret Thursday that race had entered the case so prominently, causing some observers to suggest a new rift between defense lawyers. A source on the defense team dismissed that contention, saying that Shapiro had not raised any objections during strategy sessions and emphasizing that the lawyers were united behind Bailey’s approach to the cross-examination.

Thursday’s court session took place without the rancor of the previous day’s hearing--a truce brokered and mandated by Ito, who asked the lawyers to apologize to each other and who backed up their promises of better behavior with a court order spelling out the conduct he expects in his courtroom and threatening fines to anyone who violated his rules.

Before court began, Ito met with the attorneys in his chambers and discussed with them his insistence on better behavior in his courtroom, as well as an issue involving alleged juror misconduct, the latest such charge to surface. Attorneys declined to discuss the issue involving the juror, but a source close to the case said it involved a member of the panel who has clashed with his colleagues and with the bailiffs.

The personality conflicts involving that juror--the same one who sources previously said was found with maps in his room--will not result in his removal from the panel, the source said, but other issues remain under investigation and still might cause his ouster. If removed, that juror would become the fifth member of the panel to be excused since the trial began.

To demonstrate his seriousness about enforcing better behavior among the lawyers, Ito released a seven-point order titled “attorney conduct” spelling out the rules in his court--specifying such things as his prohibition against lawyers rolling their eyes, laughing, whispering audibly and making personal attacks on one another.

Failure to abide by the rules, Ito warned, would subject the lawyers to punishments for disobeying a court order.

In court, meanwhile, Ito told the attorneys: “It would thrill me to death if counsel would apologize to each other for the rather high level of vitriol yesterday.”

First Clark and then Bailey grudgingly gave Ito the apologies he sought, buttering up their responses with expressions of admiration. When the proceedings resumed, both sides were on their best behavior, seeking Ito’s permission on relatively minor requests.

Bailey’s remaining cross-examination of Fuhrman lasted only a few minutes, lighting on one mysterious subject as he questioned the detective. Bailey questioned Fuhrman about whether he had ever used an expression known by the initials “NVN.”

Fuhrman appeared puzzled by the question, professing not to know what Bailey meant. According to veteran officers, NVN is old-time Los Angeles police vernacular for an assault or conflict involving two or more blacks either as suspects or victims.

No evidence has been presented that Fuhrman ever used the expression, which officers said is rarely used these days and has been replaced by other derogatory language. Such expressions can subject an officer to discipline if the officer is reported. Fuhrman has denied using a racial epithet deriding African Americans at any time during the past 10 years.

*

With that questioning and Clark’s brief redirect examination completed, the trial moved beyond Fuhrman, and the two sides quickly dispensed with a pair of relatively minor witnesses, each of them called to supply pieces of the prosecution puzzle. Lt. Frank Spangler, a commanding officer of detectives with a husky voice and a ramrod military bearing, testified that he had accompanied Fuhrman on a trip to look at one of the wounds to Goldman.

Although Fuhrman had testified that he was alone when he looked at that wound, Spangler said he watched the detective carry out that task.

“Were you able to see his hands?” Clark asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” the lieutenant answered.

“What was in his hands?” she asked.

“A flashlight,” he said.

“Anything else?” the prosecutor continued, referring obliquely to the defense allegation that Fuhrman might have reached out and grabbed a bloody glove at that point.

“No, ma’am,” Spangler answered firmly.

That testimony was elicited to help support the prosecution argument that Fuhrman had no opportunity to remove a glove from the crime scene and take it to Simpson’s house, as the former football star’s lawyers have alleged. In cross-examining Spangler, defense attorney Bailey questioned whether the lieutenant had searched for a second glove after noticing the first.

“They usually come in pairs,” Bailey noted sarcastically.

Spangler--who arrived on the scene after patrol officers, detectives and others were there--said he had shone his flashlight in the bushes and had not seen any other glove. Although he acknowledged that he had not specifically directed officers to search for a second glove, he emphasized that no other officer had ever informed him of seeing one anywhere near the murder scene.

“Has it ever been brought to your attention that anyone, whether it was the first officer or another officer after him at the scene, saw anything other than one glove?” Clark asked.

“One glove,” Spangler responded.

“Thank you, sir,” Clark said.

Spangler was followed by free-lance television cameraman Darryl Smith, who took the stand to tell jurors that a videotape of officers walking through the blood on Nicole Simpson’s front walk was shot after the crime scene was dismantled.

Under cross-examination from lead Simpson trial lawyer Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., Smith acknowledged that there was more to the tape than was being shown in court. But he had turned over the rest of the tape to his employer and thus could not show it to the jury.

The court day ended with LAPD Detective Philip L. Vannatter, the co-lead investigator in the case, back on the stand for the first time since last summer’s preliminary hearing. At that session Vannatter jousted with Shapiro, and Ito later ruled that Vannatter had prepared a search warrant for Simpson’s house that contained misstatements.

That fueled some speculation that Vannatter would not be called to the stand during the trial, but prosecutors have elected to take testimony from every officer who played any significant role in the early hours of the case. In addition to accompanying other detectives from the crime scene to Simpson’s house, Vannatter and his partner, Tom Lange, were also the detectives who interviewed Simpson on the day after the murders.

Vannatter’s testimony Thursday largely paralleled the account he gave at the preliminary hearing and echoed what other officers have described. Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher A. Darden guided the LAPD veteran through his observations first at the scene of the crimes and later at Simpson’s estate.

Like the other officers who have testified, Vannatter described the scene outside Simpson’s house before dawn June 13 as detectives rang the doorbell and got no answer. Vannatter said Fuhrman showed him a bloody spot on the door of Simpson’s Ford Bronco and added that the discovery helped convince the officers that they should jump over the wall and enter Simpson’s estate in case anyone was hurt inside.

Defense attorneys have suggested that the idea of entering the property without waiting for a warrant was Fuhrman’s idea and that he convinced the other officers of the urgency. Vannatter, who is many years Fuhrman’s senior, laughed off that suggestion: “Detective Fuhrman could not convince me of anything,” Vannatter said.

As the day neared its end, Vannatter also dismissed the suggestion that he bore any ill will toward Simpson.

“I didn’t know him,” Vannatter said. “I thought he was a great football player.”

Vannatter is scheduled to return to the witness stand this morning.

Presiding Superior Court Judge Gary Klausner has denied a request from the Board of Supervisors to charge the media for costs associated with broadcasting the Simpson trial.

The supervisors, citing Simpson trial costs that have exceeded $2.5 million, singled out the sequestration of the jury as an action that probably was driven, in part, by the gavel-to-gavel television coverage of the trial. Klausner, in a memo released by county officials, rejected that argument.

“There is no specific indication that would lead to the conclusion that the sequestration is a result of cameras in the court,” he said.

In a separate letter to Supervisor Mike Antonovich, Ito supported Klausner’s assessment.

“The impetus to sequester the jury in this case was the overall news media frenzy outside of the courtroom in general and the computer-generated ‘photograph’ of a beaten Nicole Brown Simpson on the cover of the National Enquirer in particular,” he wrote.

Antonovich said he will ask the board to seek state legislation allowing the county to charge the media for costs associated with broadcast of the trial.