ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, September 18, 1996 TAG: 9609180085
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: SANTA MONICA, CALIF.
SOURCE: Associated Press
NOTE: Below
A judge made the civil trial a tougher battle for O.J. Simpson Tuesday, allowing testimony about domestic violence and limiting his ability to claim a racist frame-up led by Detective Mark Fuhrman.
The frame-up claim carried the day at Simpson's murder trial, but Superior Court Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki decided to bar discussion of Fuhrman's alleged racism unless other testimony makes the detective's motivation an issue.
In a day of rulings favoring the plaintiffs in the wrongful death lawsuit, the judge also refused to bar testimony on domestic violence in Simpson's marriage with Nicole Brown Simpson.
Simpson won one big victory, permission to show jurors videotaped testimony from Dr. Henry Lee, the scientific expert who helped win his acquittal on criminal charges of murdering Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
But Fujisaki said he would not allow Lee to expound on how Los Angeles police could have collected more evidence.
``This is not a case of malpractice,'' the judge said. ``Whether or not additional evidence could have been collected is not the point. The point is whether evidence collection inculpates Mr. Simpson or not.''
The Fuhrman ruling may not be too significant because jurors certainly already heard about the detective's role through coverage of the criminal trial, Loyola Law School Dean Laurie Levenson said.
``You almost don't need to mention it,'' she said. ``We all know about it anyway.''
Furthermore, the jury selected to hear the lawsuit is expected to be very different from the group that heard the criminal case, chosen from the upscale seaside town of Santa Monica rather than downtown Los Angeles.
Jury selection is scheduled to begin Wednesday for the trial, which is expected to last four to six months.
Simpson was not in court Tuesday; he was in Orange County for closed-door testimony in a custody battle over the two children he had with Nicole.
The Goldman family, which is joining Nicole Simpson's estate in suing Simpson, watched Fujisaki reject defense motions by admitting domestic violence evidence, recordings of 911 tapes in which Simpson's ex-wife reported threats of violence and out-of-court statements in which she expressed a fearful state of mind.
Fujisaki also said he will not let jurors tour the murder scene or Simpson's home because he fears a media circus.
Defense attorney Robert Baker objected, saying jurors would be unable to perceive from pictures how small the area was in which the murders occurred. But the judge was unmoved.
``We're not going to do that,'' he said.
Legal experts said the plaintiffs were the day's big winners.
The judge did not immediately rule on a plaintiffs' plan to call psychologists who would use so-called ``psychological profile evidence'' to draw a portrait of Simpson as a classic spousal killer. The defense objected that the testimony is not based on any sound scientific theory.
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. A woman protests outside Los Angeles County Superiorby CNBCourt during hearings in O.J. Simpson's wrongful death case. color.