Simpson Civil Trial Opens With Judge Limiting Defense

The O.J. Simpson civil trial opened Tuesday with a flurry of rulings that significantly restrict the defense’s strategy of attacking the Los Angeles Police Department as a group of inept bunglers and corrupt, racist cops who sought to frame Simpson for murder.

“The point to be addressed to the jury is whether the evidence that was collected tends to prove Mr. Simpson’s culpability or not,” Superior Court Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki said. “This is not a case about did the LAPD commit malpractice.”

As a few anti-Simpson demonstrators preened for the television cameras that swarmed the lawn of the Santa Monica courthouse and about 50 reporters packed the benches inside Department Q, Fujisaki served notice that he will not tolerate what he considers to be distractions.

He sped through a stack of pretrial motions several feet thick in just two hours on the bench, issuing 39 rulings and sometimes cutting off the lawyers when they sought to argue their points.

Fujisaki made clear he intends to keep the trial tightly focused on the key issue: Did O.J. Simpson kill Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman in a nighttime knife attack on June 12, 1994?

He agreed to allow the plaintiffs to introduce at least some evidence that the Simpsons’ 17-year relationship sometimes flared into violence.

But the defense, he said, will not be allowed to swerve into topics he deems irrelevant or speculative. That means Simpson’s lawyers will not be able to argue that the LAPD failed to examine all the blood from the crime scene, or that Colombian drug lords could have been behind the killings. More important, Fujisaki blocked them from introducing evidence that former LAPD Det. Mark Fuhrman is a racist--a linchpin of the defense theory that police conspired to frame Simpson.

Fujisaki explicitly ruled out the defense effort to turn the case into an attack on the Police Department, pointing out that “Mr. Simpson is not suing the LAPD.”

In the criminal trial, the defense successfully beat back murder charges by charging that police officers botched the investigation; contaminated, compromised or planted evidence; and rushed to judge Simpson as a vicious killer without considering alternatives. But reprising those allegations in the civil trial will be tough given Fujisaki’s opening-day rulings, according to legal analysts.

“What [the judge] is clearly saying here is that he is not going to let anyone speculate about anything,” said civil attorney Larry Feldman, a well-respected Los Angeles litigator. “He’s not going to let people try the fringes of the lawsuit. That generally does not bode well for the defense.”

Oakland civil rights attorney John Burris, who has closely followed the Simpson case from the beginning, agreed. “In the criminal trial, the defense presented a collage made up of the specter of racism and contamination which they said ultimately led to the identification of the wrong person as the perpetrator,” Burris said. Fujisaki’s rulings strip away some key elements of that collage. “That’s going to hurt,” Burris said.

The defense did get a few tidbits of good news Tuesday.

The judge ruled that it will be able to introduce videotaped testimony from their star forensic witness, criminalist Henry Lee, even though Lee refuses to take the stand in person. Fujisaki also decided that defense DNA expert John Gerdes can testify in general about contamination at the LAPD lab, though Gerdes did not observe flaws in the Simpson case in particular.

But the bulk of Fujisaki’s rulings clearly favored the plaintiffs. Goldman’s parents, Patti and Fred, and his sister, Kim, looked pleased as they chatted with their attorneys after the hearing. O.J. Simpson and relatives of Nicole Simpson could not attend the hearing in Santa Monica because they were fighting for custody of the couple’s children in an Orange County court.

Juditha and Louis Brown of Dana Point, Nicole’s parents, are seeking custody in Family Court in Orange. Those hearings are expected to continue throughout the week.

Action in the Simpson case also unfolded Tuesday in a third venue: the 2nd District Court of Appeal.

The appeals court found that two aspects of Fujisaki’s sweeping gag order were so broad and vague that they “present grave constitutional doubt as to their validity.” The justices temporarily lifted those two provisions: one banning witnesses from discussing the case with the press or in public, and one prohibiting lawyers from expressing opinions about trial proceedings. But rather than strike them altogether, the justices said they would ponder the issues further.

In separate rulings, the appeals court denied the media’s plea for cameras in the courtroom, but said a sketch artist should be allowed to draw anything in court except the jurors. The court also ordered Fujisaki to permit a closed-circuit audio feed to a pressroom so reporters not in court could listen to the trial. If Fujisaki wants to contest the ruling, he must appear before the appeals court on Oct. 18.

In Santa Monica today, Fujisaki will start jury selection at 10:30 a.m. But first he will hear one debate about blood evidence.

Among his most significant rulings Tuesday, Fujisaki:

* Ordered the defense not to refer to Fuhrman’s allegedly racist attitudes, including his repeated use of ethnic slurs during taped interviews with an aspiring screenwriter.

* Decided that jurors will not be told that Fuhrman invoked his 5th Amendment protection against self-incrimination when asked whether he had planted evidence against Simpson.

* Vetoed a defense request to take jurors on a field trip to the Brentwood crime scene or Simpson’s house.

* Allowed the plaintiffs to bypass some of their weakest witnesses--criminalists Dennis Fung and Andrea Mazzola--in introducing physical evidence. Although Fung and Mazzola collected most of the blood, fiber and hairs from the crime scene, the plaintiffs will not have to put them on the stand. Instead, they can call other criminalists who handled the evidence--and who made far fewer mistakes, making them less vulnerable to cross-examination.

* Blocked Simpson’s lawyers from criticizing the LAPD’s evidence collection techniques. Fujisaki said lawyers can attack specific actions taken in this case if they can show that sloppy procedures may have contaminated evidence. But they can’t use their experts, including Lee, to disparage the LAPD in general.

Fujisaki also renewed his warning that Simpson’s lawyers must cite, in detail, all facts supporting their contention that evidence in the case was planted if they hope to raise the frame-up theory to jurors. The defense team has until 5 p.m. Monday to come up with the information.

Legal analysts said they could not imagine that Fujisaki would actually deprive Simpson of his main theory of defense. But the judge was certainly talking tough Tuesday. Fujisaki noted that a previous judge had ordered the defense months ago to spell out its planting theory and told the five lawyers representing Simpson that they had “done nothing to comply.”

Gazing down sternly, Fujisaki said: “You must supply chapter and verse, and you haven’t done that.”

Defense lawyer Bob Blaiser, the lone holdover from Simpson’s criminal trial “Dream Team,” tried to protest that he had detailed the frame-up theory. “No, you haven’t,” Fujisaki said, and changed the subject.

Fujisaki’s brusque style presents a striking contrast with the conversational approach that Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito took in the criminal trial. Whereas Ito seemed to enjoy give-and-take with the lawyers, Fujisaki did not invite oral arguments, except on a few issues that troubled him.

In a clear example of how differently he will run this trial, Fujisaki settled in about 30 seconds the issue of whether experts will be allowed to use the term “match” when comparing hair and fiber samples with trace evidence from the crime scene. The concept of a “match” had bedeviled Ito’s court, as lawyers debated the appropriateness of using such a precise term and tried to dance around it while questioning witnesses. Fujisaki ruled the term was acceptable.

While Fujisaki issued dozens of explicit rulings Tuesday, he did not spell out exactly what evidence about domestic violence he would permit at the trial.

He indicated that the plaintiffs will definitely be able to play, as criminal prosecutors did, tapes of the 911 calls that Nicole Simpson made in 1993 as her ex-husband banged on her door and shouted obscenities. And he denied a defense motion to exclude all references to “battering” or “stalking.”

But Fujisaki did not determine whether jurors would hear police officers testify about Nicole Simpson’s statements that she feared that Simpson would kill her, or whether they would see excerpts from a diary that she kept to record instances of alleged abuse. Both the diary and the statements to police are technically considered hearsay, since Nicole Simpson cannot be cross-examined about them. Fujisaki hinted, however, that they would be admissible under various exceptions to the hearsay code.

“I believe the statements are relevant to show the decedent’s state of mind and to show the plaintiffs’ contention of [Simpson’s] motive” to kill her, Fujisaki said. He will rule about the admissibility of hearsay evidence on a case-by-case basis as the trial progresses.

Fujisaki also indicated that he would be willing to reconsider his ruling on Fuhrman if the defense lawyers can make a strong showing that the issue of racism is directly relevant to the case.

Trial lawyer Brian Lysaght said he believes they can. Fuhrman, he said, “is in play”--he was involved in so many aspects of the initial homicide investigation that his motivations are clearly relevant.

Excluding Fuhrman from the trial, Lysaght said, “taints the verdict and makes it very vulnerable to appeal.”

But other attorneys predicted that the defense would get around the ruling if Fujisaki does not change his mind. Fuhrman is not expected to testify in the trial. Because he lives out of state, he cannot be subpoenaed to appear in a civil action. Still, the defense will be able to drop his name liberally at the trial. And that, some analysts said, might be good enough.

“When the name Mark Fuhrman comes up--and it will come up--it’s synonymous with racism and planting of evidence,” Feldman agreed. “So this ruling isn’t a mortal blow.”

Taken together, however, Fujisaki’s rulings do knock out a significant chunk of the defense case, Feldman said. To overcome the restrictions on their argument, analysts said defense lawyers will have to rely even more heavily on one witness: their client.

Trial watchers have always wondered whether Simpson would be able to “talk his way out of all the circumstantial evidence that exists against him,” Burris said. The judge’s ruling, he added, “probably puts an even greater responsibility on him.”