Transcripts Show Early Efforts to Alter Jury : Trial: Defense won dismissal of Latina who did not disclose beating by ex-boyfriend. Prosecutors targeted a man who allegedly met Simpson.

Even before the jury in the O.J. Simpson murder trial was sequestered, both sides tried to alter the panel to their advantage, transcripts released Friday reveal.

A Latina was dismissed from the panel, at the behest of defense lawyers, a week before opening statements because she had failed to disclose that she had been beaten by her ex-boyfriend. In addition, a black man was removed at the urging of prosecutors, who said he lied when he said he had never met Simpson.

At a session in Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito’s chambers, the 38-year-old woman acknowledged that she had been pummeled by her estranged boyfriend after she had been selected to serve in the high-profile case.

“He beat . . . me,” she said at a hearing in the judge’s chambers Jan. 9. “And I don’t know if you guys had noticed.

“My face was pretty bruised, and I wanted to say something to you, but I just didn’t want it to affect my position so I just kept it to myself,” the woman said.

The woman, identified only as Juror 320, insisted she could be fair, despite the fact that a key contention in the prosecution’s case is that Simpson had beaten beat his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson. “I have an open mind,” she said.

Although sources earlier divulged sketchy information on why these jurors were dismissed, a bevy of details emerged in hundreds of pages of transcripts released by Ito on Friday at the request of the American Civil Liberties Union, news media organizations and a juror dismissed in May. Transcripts of hearings concerning eight other dismissed jurors are scheduled to be released next week.

Juror 320 also denied her ex-boyfriend’s accusations that she was a racist. Defense lawyer Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. clearly wanted her off the jury. But prosecutor Marcia Clark tried strenuously to keep the woman on the panel.

At the first hearing concerning the woman in December, Clark said she had thought the woman’s bruise was “a cold sore.”

Clark accused the defense of changing their minds about the panel: “They don’t like the bargain they struck in accepting her.” Clark said the woman admitted that she had been mentally abused but denied physical abuse. Since there was no physical injury, Clark said, “She did not consider pushing and shoving to be physical abuse.”

Although Clark had been informed about the woman’s beating, the prosecutor maintained that the juror’s original response was a “very understandable and normal and plausible reason for not concluding that there was abuse in the relationship.

“I wonder if there’s anyone present who hasn’t had physical contact with someone they’ve been intimate with, of the nature where there’s no physical injury involved,” Clark said.

“Mr. Shapiro raised his hand [that he hadn’t], but you’ll notice no one else did, myself included,” she added.

But Ito rejected Clark’s plea and dismissed the woman Jan. 18. He urged her to get help from a battered women’s program and said that his clerk could assist.

The judge, almost apologetically, told the juror that he had stayed up all night thinking about her situation and said he felt compelled to dismiss her. “The situation that you were in with Mr. R [the unnamed former boyfriend] is a horrible situation too close to the facts in the Simpson case.”

Ito stressed that he was not dismissing her because of anything she had done. However, he expressed fear that she could wind up as “a victim of a very similar situation to the facts of this case.”

Ito also dismissed the black man, a Hertz Corp. employee, on Jan. 18. Ito’s action stemmed from a lengthy probe launched after prosecutors were notified by the Star tabloid newspaper that the panelist, identified only as Juror 228, might have met Simpson, a Hertz spokesman for many years, and shaken his hand at a 1982 company function.

On his jury questionnaire and during repeated questioning over a month of investigation, the 48-year-old man denied ever having met the former football star.

“I spoke the truth at the beginning,” the man said. “If I had to say this a thousand times, it still remains the same.”

Including these two, 10 jurors have been dismissed from the Simpson panel, leaving only two alternates. Numerous details were excised from the transcripts released Friday in an attempt to hide identities of witnesses who testified at juror hearings.

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The most explosive material in Friday’s transcripts dealt with the Latina postal worker whose estranged former boyfriend called both the prosecution and the defense in an attempt to get her off the jury.

The man accused the juror of loathing African Americans, being emotionally unfit to serve on the high-profile case and of prejudging Simpson guilty. Both the juror and her ex-boyfriend were interviewed on Jan. 9.

The ex-boyfriend, who said he lived with the woman for 14 years and had a daughter with her, told Ito and attorneys that she had been prejudiced against blacks since she was “accosted” by a black man as a child. He added that she had even avoided living in certain neighborhoods because there were too many black people.

The woman denied being a racist and said she had not prejudged Simpson. But she acknowledged that she had been beaten by her former boyfriend--whom she saw periodically because they have joint custody of their child--even after being selected to the jury.

Clark subjected the estranged boyfriend to withering questioning, including asking him: “You have a substantial number of whiskey bottles on your porch, don’t you?”

The man retorted: “Those aren’t whiskey bottles. They are actually tequila bottles.”

The transcripts show Ito as very mindful of the welfare of the jurors. The documents also show that the sort of acrimony that has frequently characterized the courtroom in the Simpson case also was evident in Ito’s chambers, with prosecutors and defense lawyers nastily accusing one another of misconduct.

In early December, Shapiro accused prosecutors of targeting the juror from Hertz after they alleged that he had lied when he said he never met Simpson.

“This is nothing more than another attempt by the prosecutors to conduct a witch hunt against jurors to investigate people,” Shapiro said in a Dec. 8, 1994, hearing.

The judge met with several current and former Hertz employees during the probe. Several of them said they had talked about juror 228 with the Star magazine, and one said there were negotiations for payments of up to $80,000 if any of them could divulge details about any contacts between the juror and Simpson. But they said they never received any money and one praised Star writer Tony Frost for not running a story on the juror.

Prosecutor Christopher A. Darden said he began to look into the juror after the Star contacted him.

Cochran said he was astonished that Darden had talked to a tabloid about the case: “Never in my career have I ever thought I would hear the district attorney’s office cite the Star as a basis for us doing something.”

He accused the prosecutor of improperly investigating jurors, and Ito reprimanded Darden for launching a probe without notifying him. “If there’s a problem, I think you ought to come to me first,” the judge said, “rather than create problems . . . by sending investigators out and stirring up the pot and creating innuendo where it’s not necessary.”

One Hertz worker who was not identified by name said the juror was on a committee to arrange a Hertz open house in June, 1982. The woman said Simpson attended with Marcus Allen, his friend and fellow football star, and greeted most of the employees, signing autographs for many.

Ultimately, Ito dismissed the man after telling him it was “an unfortunate situation” and “certainly not your fault. But . . . the appearance of a problem here is enough to give us all a problem.”

During one of the closed door meetings, a Hertz employee apologized to Ito for going to a tabloid. “I know it got carried away. A lot of people got involved in this and this is a very bizarre kind of situation. I have never seen anything like it.”

Ito responded: “I don’t think bizarre even begins to cover it.”