Simpson Court Hears Fuhrman's Racist Slurs -- Ito To Decide If Jury Will Hear Tapes

LOS ANGELES - The voice of Detective Mark Fuhrman repeatedly using a racial slur and declaring police can stop anybody because "you're God" filled the courtroom today as the judge sought to determine whether the statements were relevant to the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

The explosive tapes were played for the first time in public over the strong objections of prosecutors. The scratchy recordings have Fuhrman, in a seemingly normal, casual tone, repeatedly using an epithet against blacks.

When asked on the tape by interviewer Laura Hart McKinny whether police need probable cause to stop blacks, Fuhrman answers: "Probable cause. You're God."

The tapes were played as McKinny, a North Carolina screenwriting professor, sat on the witness stand. She often looked on the verge of tears. In the audience, Kim Goldman, sister of murder victim Ronald Goldman, sat crying in the front row.

The jury was not present.

Attorneys for Simpson played portions of the tapes and projected onto courtroom screens transcripts of sections that are no longer on tape in an effort to persuade Judge Lance Ito to allow the majority-black jury hear the recordings.

The defense contends the tapes portray Fuhrman as a liar - he testified earlier in the trial that he hadn't used the racial slur in the last decade - and show he is capable of planting evidence against Simpson. It was Fuhrman who reported finding the bloody glove behind Simpson's house the morning after the June 12, 1994, murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Goldman.

Spokesmen for Fuhrman, who is now retired, have said he was just playing the role of a rogue cop to impress McKinny and make for a better story for her fictional project about the Los Angeles Police Department.

The tapes had to be played so McKinny could authenticate them. Prosecutor Marcia Clark objected, saying she would concede that the voice was Fuhrman's.

Ito said he needed to hear McKinny place the sections in context.

The first interview, conducted April 2, 1985, was inadvertently taped over, McKinny said, but a transcription she made two days later remains.

"This is ... an actual event"

In one transcript, Fuhrman was describing real-life police work when he told McKinny about a confrontation he'd had with a black man the night before, she testified.

"Is the excerpt a description of an actual event?" defense attorney Gerald Uelmen asked.

"This is a description of an actual event that took place the previous night," McKinny relied.

Transcripts show that Fuhrman told McKinny: "He was a (racial slur). He didn't belong. Two questions. And you're going: `Where do you live?' `Twenty-second and Western.' `Where were you going?' `Well, I'm going to Fatburger.' `Where's Fatburger?' He didn't know where Fatburger was. `Get in the car.' "

McKinny, who interviewed Fuhrman 12 to 15 times for what she called "a fictional screenplay based on reality," said she found some of Fuhrman's comments offensive.

But she said Fuhrman's role was to help give her ideas from the point of view of some male Los Angeles police officers who might belong to the informal group Men Against Women.

"It was around that time that he told me he was an officer and had strong feelings about whether or not women should be on the Los Angeles Police Department, and working specifically in areas of high crime," McKinny said.

"Did he tell you anything about any organization he was active in with respect to that issue?" Uelmen asked.

"Yes. He mentioned Men Against Women, which is actually policemen against policewomen, commonly called MAW," McKinny said.

The Los Angeles Times reported today that the tapes also suggest Fuhrman lied to police investigators in the 1980s who were probing Men Against Women.

For instance, Fuhrman reportedly said a tribunal of officers inflicted punishment on those they felt were compromising the ideals of Men Against Women. His comments could call into question the entire Men Against Women investigation, which ended without official action against Fuhrman, the Times said, citing unidentified sources.

A rambling interrogation

Today's hearing came a day after the defense's final scientific witness completed his testimony. Deputy District Attorney Hank Goldberg questioned Henry Lee almost all day yesterday in a rambling interrogation that reached its nadir when the two sparred over whether a white splatter at the murder scene came from a bird or a squirrel.

Lee acknowledged that his own lab uses a form of DNA testing called PCR that another defense expert called unreliable. He also said he could not eliminate two police officers as the source of suspicious shoe prints on a walkway at the murder scene.

"Most of it was incomprehensible," Loyola Law School professor Laurie Levenson said of the cross-examination of one of Simpson's most important witnesses.

Jurors, sequestered for more than seven months, didn't hide their fatigue. Although they took copious notes during Lee's direct examination under the theatrical Barry Scheck last week, most of them wrote hardly a word during the cross-examination.

Tapes `vital,' says Ito

The judge has been studying 16 hours of tapes and transcripts, and the defense has asked for jurors to hear about an hour's worth of material.

During a break this morning, Ito said he believed the transcripts were "vital public information" and he was unsealing documents that had been filed about them by the defense.

The tapes have set off a furor outside the courtroom. A group of black community leaders yesterday called upon U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and California Attorney General Dan Lungren to investigate alleged police misconduct and abuses "noted or implied" in the interviews Fuhrman gave to the screenwriter from 1984 to 1994.

Tapes key to frame

The tapes are key to Simpson's claim that he was framed by police looking to nab a big prize.

Defense attorney Harland Braun said he saw was little chance that Ito would bar the jury from hearing the tapes and little chance the tapes won't destroy the prosecution's case.

"They're devastating," Braun said of the tapes. "That word just cuts through the core of every black, in a way that's difficult for a white person to understand."