Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 30, 1995 TAG: 9508300082
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FROM THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE AND NEWSDAY
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
As a nationwide television audience watched, a stunned silence fell over the O.J. Simpson courtroom while the tape-recorded voice of the key police witness boasted about routine abuses of power. His language was laced with racial epithets and forced the judge to confront what may be his biggest decision of the case.
The tapes - in which Fuhrman uses the word ``nigger'' 41 times and describes 17 incidents of misconduct - were the subject of a tense and dramatic hearing, outside the presence of the jury, for Superior Court Judge Lance Ito to determine whether they are admissible. At the end of a long day, he postponed a decision.
In the tapes, Fuhrman talks about how blacks are abused and harassed by police. He also talks about gang members, dope dealers and cop killers, saying that all should put to death.
``How do you intellectualize when you punch the hell out of a nigger?'' he asks in one example. ``He either deserves it or he doesn't.''
In another excerpt, Fuhrman was asked whether he had probable cause to arrest black suspects.
``Probable cause?'' he responded. ``You're God.''
Few others escaped Fuhrman's wrath. He told his interviewer he had no regard for judges, female police officers, liberals or the American Civil Liberties Union, among others. The ACLU, he said, should be bombed
The remarks horrified public officials, left a deep stain on the already tarnished image of the Los Angeles Police Department and threatened to tear open wounds in a city that has not overcome the trauma of deadly riots three years ago after four white police officers were acquitted of beating black motorist Rodney King.
``What I have heard made me sick,'' said Mayor Richard Riordan. ``I am saddened and outraged ... I am glad this man is no longer a member of our police department.''
Hoping to head off unrest, Police Chief Willie Williams urged city residents to ``take a deep breath,'' and announced he would launch an investigation into Fuhrman and the incidents he described.
More importantly for the Simpson double-murder case, the tapes contradict Fuhrman's testifimony that he had not used the racial epithet, even in private conversation, in the last decade.
Prosecutors and the family of victim Ronald Goldman denounced the tape-recordings as repulsive but irrelevant to the facts of the trial. Goldman's father, Fred, lashed out at Ito for letting them be played. ``He gave the defense an opportunity to enrage people everywhere,''Goldman said. ``It was an outrage.''
Prosecutor Marcia Clark said, ``The content of these tapes is so repugnant and so offensive that this may well be the most difficult thing that I've ever had to do as a prosecutor.'' She insisted she was not an advocate for Fuhrman but for a case that has produced overwhelming proof of Simpson's guilt.
She urged Ito not to let the case be derailed by ``the very serious and important but very inflammatory social issue'' of racism.
North Carolina screenwriter Laura Hart McKinny confirmed that she tape-recorded 13 to 15 conversations with Fuhrman from 1985 to 1994 for her screenplay about a female police officer facing organized male opposition on the force.
McKinny, under cross-examination by a prosecutor, said she realized Fuhrman's under-oath denial of using the slur word ``probably would have been false,'' but felt no compulsion to notify prosecutors because her interview tapes do not directly exonerate Simpson.
``There was nothing in the tapes that made me feel Officer Fuhrman could have planted evidence in this particular case, no,'' she said.
The Associated Press and Los Angeles Times contributed to this report.
by CNB