THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : Ito Considers Using Person to Represent Body : Courts: Scene will be set for jurors’ nighttime tour of Nicole Simpson’s condominium and the Rockingham home on Aug. 20.

Judge Lance A. Ito is pondering whether a person or an inanimate object should represent the body of Nicole Brown Simpson this month when jurors in the O.J. Simpson double-murder trial travel, for the second time, to the scene of the crime.

Ito floated the proposal in private meetings with prosecutors and defense lawyers, prompting opposition from Simpson’s defense team and support from the prosecution, sources said.

In an order that he issued Wednesday about the upcoming nighttime jury tour, Ito did not specifically mention the proposal. He did, however, seem to allude to it.

“The attorneys for both sides are instructed to file with this court their respective positions . . . [on] the use of a model, live or otherwise, during the field session,” the judge wrote.

Simpson’s lead lawyers could not be reached for comment, nor could lead prosecutors.

Ito has directed the lawyers on both sides not to publicly discuss the upcoming jury tour, which is scheduled Aug. 20.

The first tour of the scene where the wife of the ex-football great and Ronald Lyle Goldman were killed occurred in daylight Feb. 12. Its purpose was to acquaint jurors, firsthand, with the murder scene outside Nicole Simpson’s Bundy Avenue condominium and Simpson’s Rockingham Avenue estate, where prosecutors contend that police found key evidence.

The jurors also were driven past Goldman’s apartment building and by the restaurant where he worked and where Nicole Simpson had her last meal. In addition to inspecting the areas outside those sites, the jurors toured the interiors of the Bundy and Rockingham residences.

The night tour will be different in that jurors will inspect only the outside of the condominium and Simpson’s home.

Ito wants the panelists to be able to determine what a passerby could have seen from the sidewalk in front of the murder scene and whether a limousine driver who picked Simpson up on the night of the slayings could see someone walk across the yard at the Rockingham address and enter the house, as the driver testified.