THE SIMPSON LEGACY / LOS ANGELES TIMES SPECIAL REPORT : Trial & Error: FOCUS SHIFTS TO A JUSTICE SYSTEM AND ITS FLAWS : Weighing the Necessity of Change : How One Case May Reshape Criminal Justice in America : Some of the Sanctions

No lawyers were thrown in jail during the O.J. Simpson trial, but few escaped with their wallets intact. Here are some of the sanctions imposed during the “Trial of the Century.”

1995

* Feb. 23: Judge Lance A. Ito holds Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher A. Darden in contempt of court for refusing to apologize for a remark during a sidebar conference. Darden had become agitated when lead defense attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. suggested that the prosecutors did not know how to try a case. After a short recess, Darden apologizes to the court.

* March 3: Defense lawyers Cochran and Carl E. Douglas are fined $950 each for “reckless disregard of the truth” by failing to share a tape-recorded interview and a written report on a conversation with witness Rosa Lopez, a housekeeper who lived and worked next door to Simpson.

* June 21: Ito accuses Cochran and Darden of baiting each other during a heated sidebar debate in which Darden accuses Simpson of intentionally not taking his anti-inflammation medication to confound a glove demonstration and deceive the jury. Each is fined $250--later reduced to $100.

* June 23: Tempers rise again when defense lawyer Peter Neufeld attempts to question Bruce Weir, a nationally recognized professor of statistics at North Carolina State University, about a letter that a group of scientists wrote to Nature magazine. Ito had previously warned the defense about using the letter. The judge fines Neufeld $250 for raising the letter issue, but after Cochran intervenes, Ito agrees to lower the fine to $100.

* July 20: After Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark suggests that proposed defense witness Frederic Rieders cannot be relied upon to testify truthfully, a furious Ito imposes a $250 fine.

* Sept. 7: Defense attorney Robert L. Shapiro is fined $500 for violating a court order that prohibits lawyers in the Simpson case from giving interviews in the hallway outside the courtroom. In February, Cochran and Shapiro had been reprimanded by Supervising Judge James Bascue for violating the court order governing news conferences.

* Sept. 13: A member of the prosecution team oversleeps, causing the government lawyers to appear late in court. Ito fines the district attorney’s office $250, but raises it to $1,000 after Clark reminds him that Shapiro had once kept the court waiting 20 minutes--and suffered no sanction. The Court of Appeal denies Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti’s request for an emergency stay of the fine. Ito later lowers it to $250.

* Sept. 26: Ito, outraged when a television camera zooms in for a close-up of Simpson writing on a legal pad, temporarily cuts off TV coverage in the courtroom and fines a media group $1,500.

Total $4,700

Compiled by Times researcher CECILIA RASMUSSEN