Simpson Attorney Indicates He’ll Play LAPD Card at Trial

Signaling plans for a hard-charging assault on the Los Angeles Police Department, O.J. Simpson’s lead attorney warned alternate jurors Monday to expect stinging exchanges when testimony in the civil wrongful-death suit begins later this week.

“There may be some pretty confrontational moments between attorneys for Mr. Simpson and representatives of the LAPD in this courtroom,” defense lawyer Robert C. Baker said as he questioned potential alternates on the final day of jury selection.

Five men and three women were sworn in as alternate jurors Monday, and Superior Court Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki scheduled opening statements for Wednesday morning.

In the end, Baker accepted several alternate jurors who leaned toward supporting the police. He did not challenge a Latino man who deemed the defense theory of a police frame-up implausible. Nor did he seek to oust a white man who said he had great respect for Det. Philip Vannatter, a lead investigator and chief defense target in the Simpson case.

Baker also accepted a white man who said that the notion of a police conspiracy against Simpson “seems ridiculous” and a black woman who said she thought LAPD criminalist Dennis Fung “did a good job collecting all the evidence,” given his experience handling crime scenes.

Although he did not move to dismiss all jurors who sympathized with the police, Baker did remind everyone that his main strategy is to attack the LAPD--or at least, to blast away at the individuals he believes to be corrupt, incompetent or racist. Thus, when the black woman juror said she assumed that the police “are there to help us,” Baker jumped in to disabuse her of that belief. “Part of our case,” he told her, “is that the police weren’t there to help Mr. Simpson” during their investigation of the 1994 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. “They were there to convict him.”

Voice somber, Baker asked her: “If questioning of police officers and expert witnesses becomes hostile in this courtroom, can you deal with that?”

The woman answered with a crisp “yes, sir”--and was accepted by both sides.

The eight alternates sworn in Monday will sit through the entire trial and replace any panelist who becomes ill or is disqualified. They include three white men, two white women, a black woman, an Asian man and a Latino man. Alternates proved crucial in Simpson’s nine-month criminal trial, as 10 of them moved up to the regular panel to replace jurors who were dismissed for various reasons.

Among the alternates for the civil trial are the two citizens who, of everyone interviewed during jury selection, professed to know the least about the Simpson case: a retired medical lab worker of Serbian heritage who said he was “too preoccupied with the disintegration of Yugoslavia” to pay attention to the criminal trial, and a Santa Cruz college student who said she didn’t find out about Simpson’s acquittals until her parents called her in the dorm and happened to mention the verdicts. (The student had at least heard of O.J. Simpson--from his roles in the “Naked Gun” movies.)

The alternate who expressed perhaps the most pro-defense position was an Asian man in his 20s or 30s who said that the bloody gloves linked to the murders could not have been Simpson’s because they did not appear to fit. Asked how one of the gloves landed on Simpson’s property, he said: “Someone must have planted it there.”

On the plaintiffs’ side, a few of the alternate jurors said the main piece of evidence to stick in their minds from the criminal trial was the 911 tape of Nicole Simpson pleading for help in 1993 while O.J. Simpson banged on her door and shouted obscenities. “I can remember how her voice was,” the black woman said. “She sounded scared.” Nonetheless, the same woman argued that it was OK for a man to hit his wife “if it’s to bring her back to reality, maybe, or to get control” of a volatile situation.

The eight alternates and 12 jurors will report to court Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. for opening statements.