Ito Will Allow Gory Photos at Deliberations

When jurors deliberate O.J. Simpson’s fate later this year, they will be able to study scores of gory crime-scene and autopsy photographs, Judge Lance A. Ito decided Friday--overruling a defense objection that the grisly evidence would unfairly tug at panelists’ emotions.

In a brief but critical session outside the jury’s presence, Ito allowed prosecutors to enter several powerful pieces of evidence into the formal trial record. He rejected the defense contention that because jurors had already seen the photos in court, granting them further access during deliberations would prejudice them.

The evidence includes:

* Two Polaroids of a bruised, puffy-faced Nicole Brown Simpson that prosecutors used to illustrate the spousal abuse they contend escalated to murder.

* Snapshots of an unused butcher knife found on a counter in Nicole Simpson’s tidy kitchen. Prosecutors suggest she may have grabbed the knife in fear upon hearing her assailant creep through the back gate, then put it down before she went outside.

* Police and coroner’s photos that demonstrate the vicious nature of the crime.

“These photographs show premeditation, they show deliberation, they show express malice, they show [what] one person with the power to murder two human beings could accomplish,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Brian Kelberg said, his voice rising dramatically.

Pointing at Simpson, who sat reading from a laptop computer, Kelberg added: “The jury will have to consider: Is this the man who murdered those two people?”

Simpson, who will turn 48 on Sunday, has pleaded not guilty to the June, 1994, slayings of his ex-wife and Ronald Lyle Goldman. On Friday, his lawyers previewed aspects of the defense that they will mount starting Monday at 9 a.m.

Lead defense attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. signaled that he will pursue several strategies: suggesting that the killings might be linked to drug abuse by one of Nicole Simpson’s friends, arguing that police rushed to judgment and hustled Simpson into handcuffs without checking out other leads, and presenting evidence that Simpson was calm and friendly in the days before the murders.

Cochran also said the defense may call his client’s 9-year-old daughter, Sydney, who told police officers that she heard her mother, Nicole, crying on the phone during a conversation with an unnamed friend shortly before the killings. Rather than put Sydney through the intimidating process of testifying in court, Cochran said, he hopes to read aloud a statement from her, if prosecutors will agree.

Friday’s two-hour court session flared into acrimony several times.

Prosecutor Christopher A. Darden complained to Ito that the defense team had failed to turn over data about its witnesses. Darden also accused Simpson’s lawyers of deliberately not taking notes while interviewing witnesses, just so the defense would have no papers to hand the prosecution.

The only lighthearted moment took place when Cochran filed a standard defense motion asking that charges against his client be dismissed because the prosecution had not presented enough evidence. In a trial notable for long-winded lawyering, Cochran confined his written motion to just two paragraphs and his oral argument to two sentences: “This motion is submitted. Thank you kindly.”

Audience members and other lawyers chuckled with delight. And, as expected, Ito promptly rejected the motion.

Lawyers Clash

With jurors dismissed for a long weekend, Ito had set aside Friday to review the 488 exhibits prosecutors introduced during their case. Each item must be formally entered into evidence so jurors can have access to them during their closed-door deliberations.

Defense lawyers and prosecutors agreed to exclude some irrelevant exhibits: Nicole Simpson’s will, for example, and a photo of O.J. Simpson in fake handcuffs taken on a movie set. But the two sides jousted vigorously over the crime scene and autopsy photographs.

“The ends of justice would be better served by excluding these photos and not allowing them to be displayed in the jury room, where the overwhelming horror of the photos . . . might take on some unfair resonance,” defense lawyer Carl Douglas argued.

But one legal analyst, defense attorney Harland W. Braun, suggested later that in fact the photos could help Simpson’s cause. “There is a savagery to the crime, illustrated by the photos, which would be inconsistent with the public image of O.J.,” Braun said. “Some prosecutors think if you shock the jury enough they’ll want someone to convict, but . . . the jury [may] say O.J. just couldn’t have done it.”

For their part, prosecutors argued that the photos were critical to explain their theory of how a single murderer could have killed two healthy young adults and why he left so many clues behind.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark said crime-scene photos clearly depict how the assailant backed Goldman into a corner. They also show that the cramped walkway was dimly lit, suggesting that the killer may not have been able to find the bloody glove and knit cap dropped during the attack.

As for the butcher knife, Clark suggested Nicole Simpson might have grabbed it for protection after hearing an intruder sneaking through her back gate. When the noise faded, she might have put down the knife and walked out the front door to meet Goldman, who was returning a pair of eyeglasses. The murderer could then have jumped out of the bushes and surprised them, Clark said.

Douglas dismissed that elaborate scenario as “rank speculation.” But Ito overruled his objection and, because the knife snapshots were the only photos of the inside of Nicole Simpson’s condominium, allowed jurors access to them during deliberations.

The judge also permitted two Polaroid snapshots of Nicole Simpson with a swollen, blackened right eye, red face and bruised arm--the result, according to testimony, of a 1989 battering by her then-husband, O.J. Simpson.

More Squabbles Seen

When Ito adjourned court at noon and announced that the defense would launch its case Monday, Cochran flashed a thumbs-up sign and grinned.

But Darden predicted that squabbling between lawyers would resume next week, because the prosecution plans to object to several defense witnesses. “I suspect there won’t be much testimony taken Monday,” he said grimly.

Defense attorneys, however, insisted they would move through their case swiftly. In a not-too-subtle jab at his opponents’ exhaustively detailed case, Cochran assured Ito that he would never take eight days to grill a witness, as prosecutors did with the county coroner.

Cochran also complained that the defense team lacked the “250 investigators” and other resources of the district attorney’s office. If prosecutors ever join the private sector, he said, they will discover the hardships defense lawyers endure.

Her voice dripping with disdain, Deputy Dist. Atty. Cheri Lewis responded: “I am never going to be doing criminal defense work.”

Sources said the defense’s first witness will be Simpson’s 26-year-old daughter, Arnelle.

She let police into her father’s Rockingham Avenue estate shortly after they discovered the bodies in the pre-dawn hours of June 13. She helped detectives contact O.J. Simpson, who was in Chicago. And she picked up her half siblings, Sydney and Justin, from the police station where officers had tried in vain to distract them from asking about their mother.

Another early defense witness will be Helen Connor, who sat near Simpson and his girlfriend at a $25,000-a-plate fund-raising dinner on the eve of the slayings. Connor will testify about Simpson’s demeanor--presumably because he did not strike her as anxious, angry or murderous. In a similar vein, interior decorator Mary Collins will testify that Simpson discussed redesigning his bedroom just a few days before the killings, Cochran said.

To address the defense contention that Simpson was the victim of a “premature rush to judgment,” Cochran said he hopes to show a videotape of police handcuffing the former football great.

That video could be powerful, UCLA law professor Peter Arenella said: “The defense might hope that the image of O.J. Simpson in handcuffs--before any formal decision had been made to arrest him--might evoke the same reaction among jurors that the infamous, darkened Time magazine cover photo of O.J. evoked across the nation: that racism infected this case from its outset.”

As further evidence of racism, defense lawyers have said they will call Kathleen Bell, a real estate agent who has accused LAPD Detective Mark Fuhrman of making bigoted comments. The defense already has suggested that Fuhrman planted the bloody glove at Simpson’s house out of prejudice against African Americans or interracial couples.

Cochran made it clear Friday that the defense will not be limited to the frame-up theory. He already has suggested that DNA evidence against Simpson was contaminated by police bungling. And in coming weeks, he will argue that the slayings might have been connected to drugs.

Cochran plans to call Christian Reichardt, the former boyfriend of one of Nicole Simpson’s close friends, Faye Resnick. He said Reichardt will testify that he broke up with Resnick because she free-based cocaine. Resnick lived with Nicole Simpson in the weeks before the murder--and the defense has suggested that the killer might actually have been after her, perhaps because of a soured drug deal.

“In a normal case, [Reichardt’s] testimony wouldn’t be permitted because the judge would say it’s too remote,” legal analyst Braun said. “But this is a highly public trial of a national hero, and if you leave something unexplored, we could end up with another Oliver Stone movie. So I think it will come in.”

Juror Flap Revisited

Although most of Friday’s court session focused on witnesses and evidence, Cochran and Clark also moved to clear up confusion about the unrelated issue of juror misconduct.

Ito had interviewed all 14 jurors and alternates Thursday after he learned that one panelist received a note from a juror who had been excused from the case. Most reporters pegged the note-writer as Farron Chavarria. But Cochran and Clark said Friday that she was not the culprit.

In fact, ex-juror Francine Florio-Bunten said Friday that she apparently caused the flap. Shortly after her ouster May 22, several panelists wrote to say, “We’ll miss you,” and she responded with a thank-you note, she said. Later, she wrote a friend on the panel a letter commiserating about an injury.

None of her letters contained any information or questions about the trial, Florio-Bunten said, adding that sheriff’s deputies screen all jurors’ mail. She expressed dismay that an innocuous note sparked a major court probe.

“Everything in this case has gotten so blown out of proportion,” she said. “I’m not used to having everything I say mean something. I wish someone would have said, ‘Don’t write a letter,’ or told me what the rules are in advance.”

Her attorney, Rex Reeves, said neither he nor Florio-Bunten had been contacted by any court official. “Really, it’s much ado about nothing,” he said, “but I could see why the judge would be concerned.”