Simpson Ordered to Turn Over Stack of Possible Evidence

Sounding increasingly exasperated, a judge Friday ordered O.J. Simpson’s defense team to turn over potential evidence--from diary entries to dark sweatsuits to answering machine messages--that plaintiffs in the civil case have been requesting for weeks.

Superior Court Judge Jack Newman scolded a defense lawyer for complaining that it would take her team too much time to sort through the fat stack of requests and dig up, for example, every pair of gloves that Simpson owned as of June 12, 1994--the date that his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman were killed.

Newman noted that the victims’ families have the right to request information that could help them craft a case against Simpson for the trial scheduled to start Sept. 9.

The victims’ families have requested potentially incriminating items such as sharp knives or angry letters he may have written to his ex-wife, if they exist. They have also asked to see if Simpson has any documents he could use to exonerate himself--a receipt from a charity, for example, indicating that he gave away months before the murders a pair of gloves resembling those found at the crime scene.

“You’d serve your client much better by dealing realistically with [these requests] rather than in some fanciful way,” Newman told Simpson lawyer Melissa Bluestein, taking off his glasses and staring sternly at her.

Bluestein protested that the plaintiffs’ repeated demands for information are “part of their tactic of getting us to spend our time focusing on nonsense instead of getting ready for trial.” Nonetheless, she promised to comply.

Simpson’s lawyers have unveiled several fresh tactics of their own in the past week.

First, they filed court papers accusing the Los Angeles Police Department and the district attorney’s office of withholding crucial information, including a computer disk containing more than 500 clues about the slayings and police reports detailing obscene, harassing phone calls Nicole Simpson received in 1992.

Lead Simpson attorney Robert C. Baker has accused the LAPD of sharing information with the victims’ relatives and then withholding the same documents from the defense as part of a “sweetheart deal” with the plaintiffs. But Goldman family lawyer Daniel M. Petrocelli insisted that the defense has access to every shred of information he has received from law enforcement agencies. LAPD Cmdr. Tim McBride said Friday that “the department has shared everything that can be shared” with the defense.

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Newman, who is assigned to handle pretrial issues, has scheduled a hearing on the LAPD’s cooperation for Friday. The defense is threatening to push for holding both the Police Department and the district attorney’s office in contempt.

Even as they continue to churn out legal motions for the court, defense lawyers publicized a deposition in which Dominique Brown acknowledged that she sold topless photos of her slain sister to the National Enquirer. Brown said she earned $25,000 for the beach photos and $7,500 for snapshots of the Simpson children, including one of their son mourning at his mother’s grave.

The revelations drew a furious rebuttal from Brown family spokeswoman Gloria Allred. “Dominique is not on trial,” she said. Attempts to smear the Brown family’s reputation, she added, “would be unsuccessful.”

When Brown agreed to share her family album with the tabloids, Allred said, she made certain the photos would not actually show Nicole topless (the Enquirer placed a black line across her chest). Allred also suggested that Brown had peddled snapshots “to provide some financial security” for the Simpson children. Although she did not know whether the checks had been deposited in a special account for the children, Allred said, “the money has not been spent.”

For all the hullabaloo about Brown’s testimony, legal analysts said jurors in the civil case would probably never hear it in court.

“It would be a stretch bordering on acrobatics to get that in [as evidence], though I suppose that’s any attorney’s job,” said Los Angeles attorney Mark Holscher.

Dominique Brown is not a key witness in the case.

The defense would be allowed to call Brown to testify only for the purpose of impeaching her credibility UCLA law professor John Wiley said.