Mar 04 1995
Judge fines 2 on Simpson team for “disregard of truth”
Tampa Tribune (Florida)
March 4, 1995, Saturday, FINAL EDITION
Judge fines 2 on Simpson team for “disregard of truth’
BYLINE: A Tribune Wire Service Report
SECTION: NATION/WORLD, Pg. 2
LENGTH: 1032 words
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES
Judge Lance Ito, asserting that defense lawyers had tried to deceive the court “in reckless disregard of the truth,” Friday imposed $ 950 fines on two of them and said he intends to tell the jury about their “violation of the law.”
The punishment against the two lawyers, Johnnie Cochran and Carl Douglas, was imposed because they failed to notify prosecutors of a taped interview with a potentially crucial witness, as required by California law.
The witness, Rosa Lopez, concluded her testimony Friday, a week after saying she wanted to leave the country for her native El Salvador.
“The false representations by Mr. Cochran and Mr. Douglas that no such tape recording existed lends credence to a finding that this was at the very least a representation made with reckless disregard for the truth if not a deliberate attempt to mislead both the prosecution and the court,” Ito said in his opinion, released late in the day.
He fined Douglas because he was directly responsible for exchanging evidence with the prosecution.
And he added in the three-page document that Cochran, who is O.J. Simpson’s lead attorney, was being fined because he is not only “responsible for the con-duct of the defense team, but he is also the trial counsel presenting the testi-mony of the witness in question and has made untrue representations to the court in reckless disregard of the truth.”
Ito left open the possibility that he will grant a request from prosecutors that they be allowed to raise the delay in the tape’s disclosure in their clos-ing statement, which is considered a vital part of any lawyer’s presentation.
In addition, the judge said that if Lopez is called to testify, he will first inform the jurors about the defense’s conduct and tell them that they may con-sider the delay in assessing the witness’ credibility.
Ito said he would instruct the jury that “this was a violation of the law.”
Lopez, a housekeeper who worked next door to Simpson, said she saw the defen-dant’s Bronco in front of his house at the time prosecutors contend he was mur-dering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.
Her testimony has been taped because she had threatened to flee the country.
Cochran later denied lying to the court and maintained it was an honest mis-take. “We did not know about the tape,” he said. “I talked to the judge and he knows I didn’t lie to him. … We’re big boys. We’re big men. We accept it.”
During her testimony Friday, Lopez appeared to undercut one of Simpson’s ali-bis, saying she had not seen him hitting golf balls outside his home the night he allegedly committed two brutal murders.
Lopez also acknowledged she gave a defense investigator some key information after he first suggested it.
“If he says yes, then I say yes,” Lopez testified under cross-examination by prosecutor Chris Darden.
Asked if she had gone along with ideas offered by the investigator, Bill Pavelic, she replied: “I never agreed on anything, sir. He would say that and I would say, “Well, OK.’ ”
This exchange referred to when Lopez had told Bill Pavelic she saw Simpson’s Bronco outside his estate the day of the slayings.
On a tape of an interview with Lopez, played in court Friday, Bill Pavelic seems to be steering her toward specific answers; at one point, for example, he asks if she hadn’t seen the Bronco “the whole time” between 8:30 p.m. and 11 p.m.
Lopez replies “yes,” as she does to most of Bill Pavelic’s questions.
Darden had implied a day earlier that a friend of Lopez, another housekeeper named Sylvia Guerra, had said that Lopez had told her she was promised $ 5,000 for her testimony and that Guerra could get a like amount if she corroborated the story. Friday, the prosecutor elaborated.
He said Guerra had told a police detective on tape that Lopez identified Simpson’s lawyers as the source of the money.
When the witness denied that, Darden asked her whether that meant her friend was lying.
“One hundred percent, sir,” Lopez said in Spanish through an interpreter.
Lopez frequently contradicted statements she made days and sometimes just mo-ments earlier. She even denied having said some things after hearing herself saying them in Bill Pavelic’s interview, which was conducted in English.
In a potentially crucial portion of the tape, the investigator asks when she took her employers’ dog out for a walk, during which she purportedly saw Simp-son’s auto parked in front of his house.
During testimony this week, Lopez has adamantly stated she only knew the time was “after 10.”
When Bill Pavelic asks that question, some paper shuffles, then there is a pause and Lopez responds “10:20 … 10:15″ - precisely when prosecutors contend Simp-son killed two people.
Darden portrayed the paper shuffling as an effort by Bill Pavelic to provide Lopez with a script, an accusation she denied.
As he asked what else she saw while out that night, Darden threw the day’s only curve-ball: He asked Lopez if she saw Simpson playing golf in front of his home, as defense attorneys have said he did at the supposed time of the murders.
“I’ve never seen him play,” Lopez replied. At that point, Simpson looked agi-tated, put his head in his hands, and talked animatedly with attorney Robert Shapiro.
Darden led Lopez through many questions designed to show her memory is flawed, and she conceded she forgets many things.
As has been the case throughout her appearances, her testimony was riddled with contradictions.
During a round of gentle questioning in which he tried to rehabilitate his witness, Cochran served notice that he will play hardball with anyone the prose-cution puts on to contradict Lopez.
For instance, he asked Lopez whether a former employer - who told prosecutors Lopez had praised Simpson and said she would testify for him anytime - had paid her Social Security taxes. Lopez said she had not.
Cochran also sought to draw from his witness explanations for some of the perceived problems with her testimony, including her propensity to answer “I don’t remember” to dozens of probing inquiries this week.
She said that, in her dialect of Spanish in El Salvador, that phrase really means “no.”
LOAD-DATE: March 6, 1995
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: SIGNATURE; PHOTO 2,
Carl Douglas
NOTES: THE SIMPSON TRIAL