MARCH 13 - Defense attorney F. Lee Bailey set out to portray detective Mark Fuhrman as a racist cop who planted a bloody glove on O.J. Simpson's property in order to advance his career.
Fuhrman "is very definitely a suspect" in such misconduct, Bailey told Judge Lance Ito during a hearing outside the jury's presence. "And that's what we intend to show with circumstantial evidence far stronger than the people will ever offer against O.J. Simpson for the murders."
The prosecution insists the defense does not have any evidence to support its claims. Prosecutor Marcia Clark said the defense "has never and will never be able to demonstrate either the opportunity or give any kind of real offer of proof to this court that detective Fuhrman planted anything."
During his cross-examination, Bailey implied that the defense would present witnesses to contradict Fuhrman's testimony that he never met or knew a woman named Kathleen Bell. She has claimed that she heard Fuhrman make racist remarks.
Fuhrman testified that he had visited the recruiting station in 1985, but had never met Bell or a woman named Andrea Terry. Bell worked in a real estate office above the recruiting station.
"If an Andrea Terry were to testify that she was with you in Hennessy's Tavern with Kathleen Bell and heard remarks such as the ones you've seen, you would say this is a fabrication?" Bailey asked. "I don't know why she would do it, but yes I would," Fuhrman replied.
But Fuhrman eventually conceded that a woman who worked upstairs had come through the office while he was there.
"Describe the woman that you did see," Bailey asked.
"I couldn't," Fuhrman said.
"Blond, brunette, redhead?" Bailey pressed. "Short, tall, stout, slim?"
"I paid no attention," Fuhrman insisted.
"Are you now saying, sir, that if you have ever seen Kathleen Bell, you didn't recognize her, but she may have walked through that place without your knowledge? Is that your present posture?" Bailey asked.
"Well, she could have," Fuhrman said. "I'm not sure."
Bailey also suggested that Fuhrman's account would be contradicted by Marine Corps Sgt. Joseph Foss, with whom Fuhrman spoke several times at the office.
Bailey then meticulously questioned Fuhrman about his actions on June 13 in an effort to show that Fuhrman had the time and opportunity to frame Simpson.
Bailey tried to show that Fuhrman was alone looking at Ron Goldman's body at about 3:30 am -- giving him the time to pick up the left-hand glove. Fuhrman said he stayed at the body only long enough to look at Goldman's wounds.
Fuhrman also acknowledged that he spent about 10 minutes alone on the path outside Simpson's estate where he said he found the right-hand glove.
Bailey then asked Fuhrman about the blood drop he said he spotted on a door handle of Simpson's Bronco. Bailey asked Fuhrman if he knew there was blood in the Bronco. Fuhrman said he was not sure. And then out of nowhere, Bailey asked, "did you wipe a glove in the Bronco, Detective Fuhrman?"
Fuhrman smiled and said "no."
Bailey suggested that Fuhrman was upset by losing the case to the robbery/homicide detectives and decided to become an indispensable witness by planting the evidence.
"I was disappointed in losing a case that looked very interesting and very complex," Fuhrman said.
"Weren't you a fellow that had spent a good part of his career waiting for an opportunity to make, quote, the big arrest?" Bailey said at another point, suggesting that Fuhrman might have planted evidence to advance his career.
"No," Fuhrman said.
Earlier in the day, defense lawyers argued that Clark's decision to introduce Bell's affidavit opened the door for them to question Fuhrman more broadly about his racial attitudes, including episodes that Judge Ito had earlier ruled inadmissible. The judge stood by his original decision.
Prior to the start of cross-examination, Fuhrman testified how he found the bloody glove. Fuhrman said he stepped out of Simpson's house to the front yard, heading south around the garage, then eastward down the walkway toward the point where Brian "Kato" Kaelin had said he heard thumps several hours earlier.
"When I got approximately 15-20 feet away, I saw a dark object and I continued walking toward that object," he said, pointing to a poster marked "Glove Found at Rear of 360 N. Rockingham Ave. "At some point you could tell that it was a glove."
Fuhrman told prosecutor Clark that he approached the glove but did not touch it. The glove, he said, was dark leather and appeared to be moist and sticky. "It looked similar to the glove on the Bundy scene," he said.
The direct examination began with an embarrassing moment for the prosecution as Fuhrman acknowledged that the large plastic bag he found in the Bronco - and was displayed for the jury Friday - was standard equipment in the Bronco for carrying spare tires.
Meanwhile, Court TV learned that Mary Ann Gerchas is no longer on the defense witness list. Defense lawyer Johnnie Cochran said in his opening statement that Gerchas would testify to seeing four men near Nicole Brown Simpson's home at about 10:45 pm on the night of the murders. The prosecution has called Gerchas a lair and she was recently arrested for allegedly failing to pay thousands of dollars in hotel bills.
MARCH 14 - Judge Lance Ito ruled the defense could introduce new allegations that Detective Mark Fuhrman once called a black Marine a "nigger."
Famed defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey said Marine Sgt. Max Cordoba would testify that Fuhrman uttered the racial slur at a Marine recruiting office in 1985. Judge Ito ruled that Bailey could ask the detective about Cordoba's allegations after prosecutors have a chance to interview him.
With the jury absent from the courtroom, Bailey told Ito that Cordoba was at the recruiting center in 1985 when Fuhrman came in to apply to join a Marine reserve unit. Cordoba turned to another sergeant who was handling Fuhrman's application and said, "Your boy is here," Bailey said.
"And Fuhrman turns on Cordova and says, 'Let's get something straight. The only boy here is you, nigger,'" Bailey said. "And then Cordova leaves the building and Fuhrman follows him out into the parking lot and repeats the same epithet."
In arguing against allowing the jury to hear about the incident, prosecutor Marcia Clark said, "these allegations get more outrageous by the minute."
Ito also said he would allow testimony by a woman named Andrea Terry. The defense says Terry can corroborate Kathleen Bell's claims that she heard Fuhrman make racist remarks in 1985 or 1986.
MARCH 15 - Defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey and prosecutor Marcia Clark engaged in a bitter exchange over defense allegations that Detective Mark Fuhrman uttered racial epithets to a black Marine sergeant.
The dispute centered around Bailey's claims on Tuesday that Maximo Cordoba would testify that Fuhrman called him a "nigger." Bailey told the court that he had spoken "Marine to Marine" with Cordoba.
But Cordoba told a television show Tuesday night that he never spoke to Bailey. That comment prompted Clark to call Bailey a liar during arguments before Judge Lance Ito.
The judge declined to let the defense immediately question Fuhrman about Cordoba. Judge Ito also barred the defense from questioning Fuhrman about whether he showed racist behavior while interviewing the victim of a carjacking. He said the defense had not presented proof that the incident was relevant in the Simpson trial.
Once testimony began, Fuhrman again denied ever making racial slurs.
"You say under oath that you have not addressed any black person as a nigger or spoken about black people as niggers in the past ten years, Detective Fuhrman?" Bailey asked.
"That's what I'm saying, sir," responded Fuhrman.
MARCH 16 - Detective Mark Fuhrman ended five days on the witness stand. and two other police investigators testified that Fuhrman never had an opportunity to take a glove from the murder scene in order to plant it on a narrow walk way behind O.J. Simpson's home.
Before ending his testimony, Fuhrman was asked by defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey about a psychiatrist he had met in the District Attorney's office. The defense suspects that psychiatrist Mark Goulson, a friend of Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti, had helped Fuhrman prepare for his testimony. Fuhrman testified that the only thing Goulston, who was in court for two days of Fuhrman's testimony, said to him was "good job, keep it up."
On redirect, Prosecutor Marcia Clark asked Fuhrman a few questions to determine his state of mind when he was at Simpson's estate. Fuhrman said that at the time he found the glove, he did not know the time of the murders, whether Simpson had an alibi, whether there were any witnesses or that fibers would be found in Simpson's Bronco. Clark was trying to show that Fuhrman did not know enough about the murders to frame Simpsoin.
Fuhrman was followed to the stand by Lt. Frank Spangler, commander of the west Los Angeles station. Spangler testified that he never saw Fuhrman alone near the bloody glove found near Ronald Goldman's body and never saw more than one glove at the crime scene.
Detective Philip Vannatter, the lead investigator in the case, testified that Fuhrman led him to a bloody glove he said he had found on a walkway behind Simpson's mansion. Vannatter said it was his decision, and not Fuhrman's, that they should go on to Simpson's estate when there was no response from inside the house to a buzzer at the gate to the estate.
Vannatter said he was concerned that someone on the premises might be hurt because he had just left an "extremely bloody murder scene," and he had seen what appeared to be blood on Simpson's white Ford Bronco which was parked on the street. He said Fuhrman was asked to climb over the wall into the estate because he was the youngest, fittest and most junior ranking of the four investigating detectives.
MARCH 17 - The jury underwent its fifth change when Judge Lance Ito dismissed a 52-year-old Amtrak manager and replaced him with a 60-year-old woman.
The jury is now composed of nine women and three men. There are eight blacks, three whites and one Hispanic.
The dwindling alternate pool now consists of six women and one man.
The judge did not give a reason for the panelist's removal, but the juror was suspected to be writing a book. His hotel room was searched and a laptop computer was found.
When testimony resumed, Detective Philip Vannatter described finding eight blood drops at Simpson's home between the Ford Bronco and the main entrance. Vannatter also said he found two more blood drops in the foyer.
