Prosecutor Irks Restless Jurors in Simpson Trial

As attorneys for O.J. Simpson sifted through newly acquired audiotapes with potentially inflammatory information, a prosecutor spent Friday trying to wage an aggressive effort to undermine a prominent pathologist but succeeded mainly in drawing the ire of an impatient jury.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Brian Kelberg, whose meticulous style has become his signature during the Simpson trial, cross-examined Dr. Michael Baden for three hours. The session opened with defense attorneys accusing the prosecutor of badgering their witness, continued with the judge reminding him to keep his voice down and concluded with the jury openly expressing its disdain for the duration of Kelberg’s questioning.

Baden did concede a number of points during the cross-examination. He acknowledged, for instance, that even if he had been able to study the contents of murder victim Nicole Brown Simpson’s stomach, he could not have offered a precise time of death, and he testified that a single knife could have caused all the wounds to both victims. Baden also said that although he had looked at a pair of Simpson’s socks days after the murders, he had not inspected them closely and thus could not say for sure that there was no blood on them, only that he had not noticed any.

While testimony was under way at the courthouse, defense attorneys weighed how to proceed with a set of tape recordings that could have a dramatic impact on the Simpson case. According to sources, those tapes--interviews of Detective Mark Fuhrman by a screenwriter--feature the detective using racial epithets and, in one inflammatory segment, describing his threats to kill a person in order to extract information about who was responsible for a shooting attack on two police officers in the early 1980s.

The sources also said the tapes include Fuhrman saying that officers beat up suspects, but it was not clear whether Fuhrman’s remarks--either in that section or in his alleged threats--were made as a fictional character or as himself.

Carl E. Douglas, a member of the defense team who has heard some of the tapes, refused to divulge any information about what was contained in them. Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., Simpson’s lead trial lawyer, could not be reached for comment.

In court, jurors had been promised a noon ending Friday, and Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito had arranged for them to participate in an activity of some sort. Thus, the normally well-tailored jurors arrived in court dressed casually and showing broad smiles.

But when Kelberg kept exceeding his time estimates, Ito and the jurors grew restless. Ito interrupted the prosecutor after noon and said he was going to end the session before Kelberg could finish.

“Your honor,” Kelberg pleaded, “this is the last area as I said, hopefully five minutes.”

Several jurors shook their heads and muttered in anger.

“You just heard the reaction of the jury,” Ito said, but nevertheless extended Kelberg’s time for one last set of questions.

Although Kelberg elicited some testimony Friday that benefited the prosecution, Baden held his ground and frequently rebuffed the prosecutor’s queries with sarcasm or blunt disagreement. Simpson, who has pleaded not guilty to the June 12, 1994, murders of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman, smiled as Baden corrected the prosecutor on one point, but turned more somber when the questioning probed details of Nicole Simpson’s murder.

Sitting in the front row, Goldman’s stepmother and sister struggled for composure when Baden was asked to review photographs of Goldman and the injuries he suffered. Patti and Kim Goldman shared a package of tissues, dabbing at their eyes as they stared at the back of a photographic display featuring the pictures.

When Baden began to describe in detail the blood that had oozed from one of Goldman’s wounds, Patti Goldman brought her trembling left hand to her cheek for a moment, then sat forward in her chair and stared at Simpson. He did not turn to look at her.

Jurors, who have seen the photographs on several occasions, seemed mostly unperturbed by them, though one woman in the front row recoiled slightly as those pictures and others of Nicole Simpson were set up just a few feet from the panel.

Unlikely Defense of Deputy Coroner

In an odd turn of events Friday, Baden, the Simpson team’s principal forensic witness, came to the defense of the deputy medical examiner who performed the autopsies and who came under scathing criticism from the defense for his work.

Anticipating the defense’s attack on Deputy Medical Examiner Irwin L. Golden, Kelberg spent eight days earlier in the trial eliciting testimony from the county’s chief coroner and grilled him about dozens of mistakes made by Golden. Once that was over, prosecutors decided not to call Golden at all.

But where Golden’s boss took issue with his employee’s work, the defense’s lead expert cautiously defended the embattled pathologist--specifically over a portion of his autopsy report that dealt with a mark on Nicole Simpson’s back. Golden did not describe that mark as an injury, but the county coroner, Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran, said it appeared to be a bruise, perhaps caused by the victim’s attacker standing or kneeling on her back as he pulled her head back and slashed her throat.

Baden agreed that the autopsies were not perfect . But, he added: “I don’t want to trash Dr. Golden. Dr. Golden did a fine job as far as I’m concerned. His autopsy is better than most autopsies and better than the autopsy of President Kennedy.”

That drew chuckles from the audience and offered jurors a not-so-subtle reminder of Baden’s extensive credentials, which he described in detail Thursday. In his career, Baden was involved in the review of the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., as well other high-profile investigations.

Baden concluded his testimony Friday, offering jurors a bookend for the testimony of Sathyavagiswaran, who reached far different conclusions and whose clipped, precise delivery was in marked contrast to the enthusiastic, scattershot testimony of his former boss, Baden.

Coroner’s Comment Is Called Silly

Sathyavagiswaran offered the panel a detailed scenario based on the knife wounds, the signs of struggle and the blood evidence photographed and collected at the scene of the crimes. He said evidence pointed to a lone assailant and suggested that Nicole Simpson had been incapacitated early in the confrontation before her killer returned to her to deliver a coup de grace, slicing her throat nearly from ear to ear.

Between knocking Nicole Simpson unconscious and returning a few moments later, the killer fought with Goldman, stabbing him repeatedly, Sathyavagiswaran said, adding that some of the wounds indicated the assailant taunted Goldman with the knife.

Baden did not deliver nearly as complete an account as the chief coroner’s, but said that was because many of the details that Sathyavagiswaran gave were not supported by the evidence. Instead, they were little more than conjecture, the wispy-haired New York doctor testified.

And though Baden said Friday that he had great respect for Sathyavagiswaran, he dismissed several points made by his colleague.

Of Sathyavagiswaran’s testimony that bruises on Goldman’s hands did not appear to have been caused by a fight--an interpretation that the coroner backed up by saying Goldman logically would be expected to back away from an assailant with a knife, not strike out at one--Baden responded: “I recall that testimony. I don’t agree with it. . . . I think it’s silly.”

Baden was even more dismissive of Kelberg, repeatedly upbraiding him in front of the jury. When the prosecutor suggested that Baden had raised specious questions about the quality of photographs in the case--questions that Kelberg alleged Baden had not raised in other cases--Baden cheerfully disagreed.

“Mr. Kelberg,” he responded, “you are misinformed.”

Lawyer Calls Tapes ‘Very Relevant’

Outside court, meanwhile, the defense completed its initial review of the audiotapes recorded by screenwriter Laura Hart McKinny. The tapes feature Fuhrman, who testified for the prosecution but who may soon return to the spotlight as a defense witness to face allegations that he lied on the stand when he denied having used a racial epithet during the last 10 years.

Prosecutors, who were taken by surprise when the tapes first surfaced, have tried frantically to secure copies for themselves, going so far as to serve McKinny’s lawyer Matthew H. Schwartz with a subpoena for the recordings. Schwartz turned over the tapes to Ito, who gave them to the defense, but on Friday, Schwartz said he expected to give prosecutors copies too.

“There’s nothing preventing me from giving this material to the prosecution,” he said in an interview. “It’s the property of my client.” When Simpson’s lawyers first pursued the tapes, Schwartz said, he had attempted to enlist the help of the Los Angeles district attorney’s office in his efforts to keep McKinny from having to turn them over.

“I asked [Deputy Dist. Atty.] Alan Yochelson if they wanted to help because there was material on the tapes that is potentially adverse to their case,” Schwartz said. “Yochelson said they couldn’t do that, that they were involved in a search for truth and that if there is negative information, it would have to come out.”

Yochelson, who has assisted in the Simpson case for months, declined to comment.

McKinny’s other attorney, Ron Regwan, said in an interview Friday that “there are some references to the O.J. Simpson case” in McKinny’s last tape-recorded session with Fuhrman, an interview that took place in a Westwood restaurant in July, 1994, just weeks after the murders. Regwan declined to say what was on that tape, however.

He said that because of background noise at the restaurant, the quality of that tape is not good and that he expected Simpson’s attorneys would attempt to have it enhanced. Nonetheless, Regwan said McKinny “was able to transcribe it.”

Asked about the tapes’ potential relevance to the trial, Regwan responded: “The tapes will speak for themselves. They’re relevant; they’re very relevant. You’d be ignorant to say they are not relevant. Cochran heard enough in chambers” during the hearing in North Carolina to know their relevance, Regwan added.

“If the jury believes what is on the tapes is representative of Fuhrman’s personal beliefs, it could have a tremendous impact on the case,” Schwartz said in a separate interview.

He predicted that Ito would rule at least some of the tapes admissible because of the judge’s prior rulings that evidence could be introduced to impeach Fuhrman on the issue of bias.

“It’s going to get more interesting,” Schwartz said.

Still, both he and Regwan said they were constrained from talking about the tapes in any detail beyond what they already have put on the public record. That includes an index to the transcripts of McKinny’s tapes, with 27 references to potentially controversial comments, including use of the word nigger, and a reference to how someone could be framed.

For example, during a July 28 court hearing in North Carolina on the tapes, Cochran asked McKinny: “Did Detective Fuhrman say to you during this first interview, when you were getting his attitude, quote, that we’ve got females and dumb niggers and all your Mexicans that can’t even write the name of the car they drive. And you think I’m kidding? We have people who aren’t even citizens on the department.”

McKinny responded, “I transcribed that.”

At another point, Cochran asked McKinny, “Do you recall a quote when Detective Fuhrman was talking to you about Ethiopians in Los Angeles?” After looking at the transcripts, McKinny acknowledged that there was such a remark and then Cochran read it into the record:

“And I could care less if the whole country kind of folds up and drops into the sea. Let Ethiopia care about Ethiopia. Why don’t we care about L.A.? You know these people here, we got all this money going to Ethiopia for what? To feed a bunch of dumb niggers that their own government won’t even feed.”

During the hearing, McKinny said Fuhrman made some of his remarks to provide dialogue for a screenplay. Cochran has contended it is clear that several racially offensive remarks are an expression of Fuhrman’s own views.

How Fuhrman Tapes Came to Light

In addition to discussing the tapes themselves, Schwartz detailed in the interview the series of events that landed his client in the center of the Simpson case, a position that has suddenly thrust the North Carolina professor into a media and judicial crucible and that may land her in Ito’s courtroom as early as next week.

According to Schwartz, McKinny saw Fuhrman testify but at first did nothing. Eventually, however, she reviewed her interview materials and compared them to the detective’s testimony.

“After she reviewed her materials, it struck her that she might have some relevant evidence,” Schwartz said. “For a period of time, she may have been in denial. She did not want to have to deal with the situation. At some point, her agent Jim Preminger advised her to get a lawyer because he feared she might be hit with an obstruction of justice charge.”

For a while, Schwartz said, he was optimistic that McKinny could remain in the background. Then defense investigator Pat McKenna called his client and asked her about the tapes, Schwartz said.

Soon after he heard from McKenna, Schwartz said, he began to receive calls from tabloids expressing interest in the tapes. On behalf of his client, Schwartz said, “I gathered information about the potential market value of the tapes. I said to her, ‘You could do this, you could do that.’ She decided she didn’t want to sell the tapes.”

McKinny interviewed Fuhrman numerous times over the years, but Schwartz said he could not divulge anything about the nature of the business relationship.

“That,” the lawyer said, “is confidential.”