Prosecutors Drop Bid to Seek Ito’s Ouster From Trial : Simpson trial: Inside court, attorneys trade bitter accusations, and outside, Goldman family angrily denounces defense team over Fuhrman tapes.

After an exhausting two days that ratcheted up emotions in the murder trial of O.J. Simpson and drove it to the brink of collapse, prosecutors backed down, withdrawing objections to Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito’s continued stewardship of the trial.

“We’ve decided it would not be the appropriate course,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark told Ito, reading from a prepared statement. “We have determined that our faith in this court’s wisdom and integrity has not been and will not be misplaced.”

That announcement restored some order to the chaos that has overwhelmed the Simpson trial this week. But it did not calm the emotions that recently have consumed the proceedings: Inside court, attorneys traded bitter accusations, and outside, Ronald Lyle Goldman’s sister and father angrily denounced Simpson’s defense team for attempts to introduce inflammatory audiotapes of former detective Mark Fuhrman of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Simpson has pleaded not guilty to the murders of Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson, but the families of both victims have become convinced that he is the culprit and are increasingly distressed by the tactics of the defense team.

“Ron and Nicole were butchered by their client,” Fred Goldman said during a courthouse news conference, his voice angry and wavering with emotion, his pale blue eyes filling with tears.

“Do any of you believe otherwise?” Goldman asked the press corps covering the case and the audience watching his comments on live television. “You have seen the evidence in this trial. It is overwhelming. This is not now the Fuhrman trial. This is a trial about the man who murdered my son.”

The prosecutors’ change of heart came after a tumultuous Tuesday in which they had first asked Ito to defer to another judge on specific issues surrounding audiotaped interviews of recently retired detective Fuhrman--tapes that feature, among other things, him using racial epithets, boasting of tampering with evidence and deriding Ito’s wife, LAPD Capt. Margaret York. After requesting that Ito pass the issue of the tapes to another judge, the prosecution then said it intended to seek Ito’s ouster from the case altogether, an idea that threatened to derail the entire trial.

When court reconvened Wednesday, however, Clark delivered a soft-spoken statement in which she retreated from that position and said prosecutors now believed that Ito could review the tapes and determine their admissibility once references to his wife had been deleted.

The new position had not been arrived at easily, she said: “This was the product of extensive discussion and hot debate. It was a very difficult and lengthy process conducted over a number of hours last night and again this morning.”

The prosecution’s revised position returned the case to an even keel a day after it had teetered on the edge of chaos, with attorneys hustling from courtroom to courtroom in an effort to determine what judge should hear the Fuhrman issue and whether Ito would have to withdraw entirely.

Nine of Simpson’s lawyers were in court for Wednesday’s hearing, huddling in a large group and nearly knocking heads as they consulted with each other. When it came time for Simpson attorney Gerald Uelmen to address the court on the latest developments, he remarked: “I think we’re back to where we started.”

“It appears that way,” Ito responded with a smile.

One potential problem still does loom despite Wednesday’s concessions. If Superior Court Judge John Reid, who is reviewing the question of whether York could be called as a witness, decides that she should take the stand, Ito would then be forced to withdraw as the trial judge. That appears unlikely, however.

‘This Was Pay-Back Time’

In presenting the prosecution’s revised position on the issue, Clark emphasized that government lawyers had an obligation to weigh the potential problems raised by Fuhrman’s derision of York during those interviews. On Tuesday, Ito expressed concern that outsiders might question his impartiality if he ruled on the tapes’ admissibility, and he reluctantly transferred that matter to another judge.

But Clark said further prosecution research suggested that Ito could sever the questions that directly bore on his wife from the other issues that the Fuhrman tapes raised.

“We’ve made our very best effort to examine all of the case law and make sure that the course we adopt is the correct one, the sound legal one that will preserve the integrity of the judicial system and of any verdict that we may obtain in this case,” Clark said. “That’s all we have done.”

Simpson’s lawyers did not accept that explanation. They accused the government team of “prosecutorial extortion” and suggested that the real reason for the aggressive maneuvering against Ito was that prosecutors were displeased by the judge’s recent upbraiding of Clark and Deputy Dist. Atty. Brian Kelberg in front of the jury.

In support of that contention, Simpson attorney Robert L. Shapiro cited a Wednesday morning conversation between Ito and Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher A. Darden in which Darden complained to the judge about Ito’s treatment of his colleagues. That conversation occurred in Ito’s chambers before the open-court hearing, and was conducted off the record. But Shapiro, in a rare break with standard courtroom decorum, received Ito’s permission to repeat the exchange in open court for inclusion in the official record of the trial.

Describing the conversation, Shapiro said the prosecutor had accused the judge of unfairly embarrassing Kelberg and vilifying Clark in front of the jury. The prosecution’s anger over those incidents, Shapiro added, was the real reason why the government lawyers had increased the pressure against Ito regarding the possible conflict of interest.

“We find that reprehensible,” Shapiro said. “And we are going to have this record clear and make sure that a complete and thorough investigation takes place as to what took place in your chambers this morning. . . . This was pay-back time.”

Furious over that accusation, Darden refused to speak from the same lectern that Shapiro had used. Instead, he addressed Ito from a few feet away and took the opportunity to deny the defense claims as well as to excoriate the Simpson team, which he accused of being responsible for the circus that he said the trial has become.

“When this case is over, I will be referring defense attorneys to the U.S. attorney’s office,” said Darden, mysteriously raising the threat of federal involvement in the Simpson case and in the process drawing a wry chuckle from Simpson lawyer Johnnie L. Cochran Jr.

Darden noticed his counterpart’s soft laugh and added: “He’s chuckling now, but will he be chuckling later on? It won’t be so funny later on. They don’t know everything that I know.”

Simpson’s attorneys were alternately amused and enraged by that remark. Cochran shrugged it off without comment, but Barry Scheck, one of Simpson’s DNA lawyers, called the prosecutors “thugs” and labeled their courtroom comments “scandalous.”

Officials from the district attorney’s office declined to elaborate on Darden’s threat, but legal analysts were surprised both by that vitriol and by the defense team’s decision to present in open court comments that Darden made in an off-the-record conversation with the judge.

Gigi Gordon, a Santa Monica defense attorney, said the exchange proved that “there’s no Geneva Convention in this case. This is war.”

LAPD Seeks Copies of Tapes

The legal machinations and heightened tension of the past two days have spilled beyond the courtroom, taking a toll on the families of the victims and raising new and troubling questions for the LAPD.

According to sources and comments made by attorneys for both sides during the past three days, the tapes include Fuhrman using racial epithets, disparaging a variety of people--from black and female police officers to City Council members, judges and others--and boasting of evidence tampering, excessive force and lying, among other things.

Cochran has said the former detective names other officers, and though Fuhrman retired from the department earlier this month, others still on the force could be implicated. That is assuming Fuhrman is telling the truth on the tapes, however, and his attorney maintains that the remarks only were meant in the context of providing the basis for a character in a fictional work, the screenplay being developed by Laura Hart McKinny.

Attorney Robert H. Tourtelot reiterated that position Wednesday, saying in a telephone interview that he does not believe his client lied on the witness stand or that he needs to fear being called back to testify again in the Simpson trial. Cochran has suggested that Fuhrman might invoke his right under the 5th Amendment not to testify for fear of facing a perjury prosecution, but Tourtelot said he did not think that was necessary.

“At this point, I don’t believe that [Fuhrman] has any reason for concern,” said Tourtelot. “Based on what he has told me, all of this was conferences for a screenplay. That’s all.”

Addressing the issue of the Fuhrman tapes for the first time Wednesday, Police Chief Willie L. Williams emphasized that there has never been any evidence of any police conspiracy to frame Simpson and said police have requested copies of the tapes and transcripts so that the department can investigate the allegations contained in them.

“I have a responsibility,” Williams said, “to investigate and follow up on these things and find out: Are they true? Are they not true? And what are the ramifications?”

Williams declined to say how much work already has been done, but sources said police have begun scrutinizing their files to determine whether any incidents match the details that have so far leaked out regarding Fuhrman’s interviews.

Police Commission President Deirdre Hill accompanied Williams at the briefing and said she was deeply troubled by the remarks attributed to the former detective.

“We are extremely concerned,” Hill said. “The vast majority of people in this department understand that their charge is to work within the law to . . . apprehend criminals and not to do so [with] bias or impropriety.”

A full Police Department inquiry cannot proceed immediately, however, because prosecutors are reluctant to relinquish copies of the tapes to the LAPD. Once the department gets the tapes, Williams said, investigators will be able to more confidently assess them. City Councilman Nate Holden, who was in the audience during Williams’ news conference, said he will ask the council to launch its own inquiry regardless of what action is taken by the LAPD and the city’s Police Commission.

Jury Seems Unperturbed by Delays

The extraordinary developments of the past two days all have taken place outside the presence of the jury, whose members received only the slightest taste of the turmoil in the form of a cryptic comment by Ito informing them that the issue involved him and could affect his continued oversight of the case.

Jurors learned that news at the end of the day Tuesday, but returned Wednesday afternoon to find the same judge--and even the same witness--as when they broke off two days earlier. The panelists seemed unperturbed by the interruptions, returning to the courtroom and retaking their seats in a calm, businesslike manner.

When Ito apologized to them for the delays, a few smiled thinly but none spoke.

In contrast to the catapulting developments that have occurred away from the jury, the testimony in front of it was plodding and methodical, and jurors took few notes. Peter Neufeld, one of Simpson’s lawyers, spent the afternoon session questioning LAPD lab director Michele Kestler about her staff’s handling of the Simpson case and the care taken to preserve and log evidence collected by Police Department criminalists.

Despite the urging of Cochran and Simpson himself to speed along his questioning, Neufeld proceeded at his customary pace and elicited some minor concessions from the witness about areas in which criminalists did not take precautions that Neufeld implied they should have.

When, for instance, Kestler said she did not see any problem with analysts taking evidence from one crime scene to another, as long as it was handled carefully and kept inside the bag in which it was packaged, Neufeld challenged her.

“What about other hair and trace evidence that may be in the area where all these police officers are moving around when the bag is open?” he asked. After an objection, he amplified by asking whether “evidence can land on an object if it is brought into the crime scene from another crime scene and it is not in a closed pack at all times?”

“It’s a remote possibility,” Kestler acknowledged.

Despite a few such admissions, Darden complained outside the jury’s presence that the examination was repetitive and losing the attention of the panel.

“Unless it’s something new, why put the jury through this again?” Darden asked. “They’re bored. I’m bored.”

Ito declined to cut Neufeld off, however, and the attorney kept up his inquiry for most of the afternoon. Although jurors seemed to perk up near the end of the day, they rarely took notes.

Neufeld concluded by eliciting Kestler’s acknowledgment that she did not see blood on a pair of socks discovered in Simpson’s bedroom when she first examined them weeks after the murders. Under questioning from Darden, however, she noted that “we weren’t looking for blood” during that cursory evidence inventory.

The remaining agenda for this week is in flux, complicated by the defense’s difficulty scheduling its upcoming witnesses. Ito did say, however, that he still wants to take the jury on a Sunday night tour of the crime scene and the grounds of Simpson’s house, an event that he has spent considerable time organizing.

Prosecutors want the tour, in part to show the jury how dark it is in the area where the murders took place. Defense attorneys object to that tour, which they contend will be an expensive and unnecessary foray. Ito said he would hear arguments today.

Times staff writer Jean Merl contributed to this story.