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The State Journal-Register (Springfield, IL)

February 28, 1995, Sunday, EARLY AND CITY EDITIONS

O.J. Defense Reveals It Withheld Audiotape State Has Witness To Contradict Alibi

BYLINE: MATT KRASNOWSKI and NORMA MEYER Copley News Service

SECTION: NEWS, Pg. 1

LENGTH: 792 words

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES

A key witness for O.J. Simpson testified Monday she saw his Bronco at home about the time his ex-wife was killed, as a defense investigator stunned the court by revealing the existence of an audiotape that the defense said didn’t exist.

Speaking before a video camera and to an empty jury box, Rosa Lopez, the for-mer maid of Simpson’s neighbor, said she saw the Bronco while walking her em-ployer’s dog shortly after 10 p.m. on June 12. She said she recalled seeing Simpson’s car parked slightly askew from the curve.

“Were you able to see any cars parked out on Rockingham there?” defense law-yer Johnnie Cochran Jr. asked.

“Si. Yes,” said Lopez, who spoke through a Spanish interpreter.

“And what car did you see parked out there?” he inquired.

“El Bronco,” she replied.
After Lopez was excused for the day, a defense investigator jolted the court-room by acknowledging he had tape-recorded an undisclosed interview with Lopez last July. Hours earlier, defense attorney Carl Douglas repeatedly told Superior Court Judge Lance Ito that no interviews were recorded. Prosecutors contend the statement made no mention of the Bronco.

In another dramatic development, prosecutors produced a surprise witness, a housekeeper named Sylvia Guerra, who they claim can contradict Lopez’s account. Lopez and Guerra were ordered back to court today.

Under questioning by Cochran, Lopez said her employers were in Europe on June 12 and her main task that day was taking care of their golden retriever. She said she walked the dog at 8:15 p.m. and “shortly after” 10 p.m.

The time is critical for Simpson’s defense because prosecutors contend his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman, were killed around 10:15 p.m. about two miles away.

Lopez said she wasn’t wearing a watch on the night, but checked her bedroom clock every time she left her room to go outside.  Prosecutors are expected to seize on that point today in their cross-examination. Lopez in court didn’t have her glasses and could not read a monitor less than two feet away.  She had to borrow two different pairs of spectacles, one from defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey and another from her own attorney.
The former maid, however, appeared to have a detailed recollection of the events nine months ago.  She testified that about 9 p.m., she saw Simpson drive off in his black Bentley with a blonde-haired person.

Simpson house guest Brian “Kato” Kaelin has said he and the Hall of Famer went to get hamburgers at McDonalds about that time.

About 9:30 p.m., Lopez said she heard footsteps coming from Simpson’s drive-way, became frightened that it was a burglar and closed her drapes.  “I was really afraid,” Lopez said.  “I looked out and duckeddown.” After midnight, she said she heard men’s voices and Simpson’s black Akita dog howling and barking.

“It barked and cried,” she said, adding she did not fall asleep until 2 a.m.

Testimony during Simpson’s preliminary hearing indicated he had left his home in a limousine for a flight to Chicago about 11 p.m.

The next morning, Lopez said Detective Mark Fuhrman came to her door and she told him what she heard.  She said Fuhrman told her police would get back to her.

“I’m still waiting for them,” Lopez said.

The defense contends Fuhrman, who is expected to take the stand later this week, is a racist who planted the bloody glove at Simpson’s estate to frame.

Earlier Monday, Douglas told Ito there were no notes or taped interviews of Lopez to give prosecutors, after revealing the defense failed to turn over a July 28 statement with her as required under evidence laws.  Deputy District At-torney Marcia Clark told the judge that the July 28 interview varied considera-bly from an Aug. 18 statement Lopez made in which the Bronco was mentioned.

As the battle over the undisclosed interview heated up, prosecutors asked that defense investigator Bill Pavelic, who interviewed Lopez, be brought into court and put under oath.  Under questioning by Ito, Pavelic said he believed he had some notes about his conversations with Lopez.

“Do you have any tape recordings of any statements?” Ito asked.

“I tape recorded the first statement, which was the July statement,” Pavelic said.  Gasps filled the room.

“Tomorrow morning, I’m going to order you to come to court with those items, Ito said.
“I shall do my best to get those items,” Pavelic said.

“No, don’t do your best, have them here tomorrow,” an irked Ito said.

Before the revelation, Clark suggested the defense attorneys should be dis-barred for failing to turn over the statement.  She asked Ito to punish the de-fense in a number of ways, including admonishing jurors that Simpson’s attorneys had committed misconduct.

LOAD-DATE: March 1, 1995

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

TYPE: NEWS

CNN

February 28, 1995

SHOW: NEWS 11:18 am ET

New Witness May Destroy Rosa Lopez’s Credibility

GUESTS: LEXIS-NEXIS Related Topics Full Article  Related Topics Overview
 
This document contains no targeted Topics.

BYLINE: GREG LaMOTTE

SECTION: News; Domestic

LENGTH: 1191 words

HIGHLIGHT: Another housekeeper may testify in the O.J. Simpson case, and she is expected to undermine the testimony of Rosa Lopez. A courtroom insidertells of attorneys’ reactions to the presentation of this new witness.

DONNA KELLEY, Anchor: When the O.J. Simpson trial resumes at the top of the hour, there will be more testimony, and the only people barred from listening are the jurors.  CNN’s Marc Watts joins us from Los Angeles with more on the double murder trial.  Marc?
 
MARC WATTS, Anchor: Good morning, Donna.  The subtitle for today’s session in the O.J. Simpson trial could be ‘Maid to Order.’ Judge Lance Ito has ordered two housekeepers to be in court today, and they may have different stories to tell.  With more on that, let’s go live to the courthouse and CNN’s Greg LaMotte.  Greg?
 
GREG LaMOTTE, Correspondent: Well, Marc, late yesterday prosecutor Christopher Darden introduced a women names Sylvia Guerra in the courtroom.  The prosecution says she, too, is a maid in Brentwood who can undercut part of Rosa Lopez’s tes-timony by showing that she lied about her actions the night of the killings.
 
Lopez, testifying on videotape yesterday, said she saw O.J. Simpson’s Ford Bronco parked in front of Simpson’s estate at about the time the prosecution be-lieves the killings occurred.  Lopez’s testimony may be critical to Simpson’s alibi that he was at home at the time of the killings.  Lopez was Simpson’s next-door maid, who says she heard O.J. Simpson on the night of the killings, and then later around midnight says she heard men’s voices coming from Simpson’s property.
 
Now, yesterday, Lopez was cool, calm and collected on the witness stand, but you can rest assured that prosecutor Christopher Darden will try to change all of that today. Last week under cross-examination, she was caught in several incon-sistencies that even Judge Lance Ito made mention of.  Today, Darden is expected to begin his cross examination of Lopez, but first she will answer some more questions from defense attorney Johnnie Cochran.
 
But before Lopez returns to the stand, defense investigator Bill Pavelic will be before the judge.  He will presenting a tape recording and some notes regarding Lopez’s testimony.  The prosecution says those materials may help to impeach the testimony given by Lopez yesterday.  Mark?
 
MARC WATTS: All right, Greg LaMotte at the courthouse.  Thanks much.  We’ll see what happens later today in the courthouse.
 
Well, we may see some sanctions handed out and more fireworks today over the de-fense team’s failure to provide full disclosure about Rosa Lopez.  Judge Ito wants all tapes in courts, all notes and all tapes and notes in court today.  And yesterday, Simpson attorney Carl Douglas admitted one statement had been withheld from the prosecution, but denied the existence of any other notes or tapes.
 
Judge LANCE ITO, Los Angeles Superior Court: What’s your response to their re-quests for these four sanctions?
 
CARL DOUGLAS, Simpson Attorney: I do not think, Your Honor, that it justifies bringing in investigators and having investigators share intimate attorney-client work product with the prosecution.  There are no notes that have not been turned over, there are no tape recorded statements of Ms. Lopez.  I’m not sure, Your Honor, how the prosecution speaks to a witness that they are going to call when there are attorneys present.  We sit in a conference room and basically discuss questions that’ll be asked, answers that are going to be given, but we’re not taking down notes such that it would be the kind of thing that they’re talking about.  So, I’m not sure what they are talking about.  There is no tape recording of Ms. Lopez by any of our investigators.
 
MARC WATTS: But not long after that, Simpson team investigator William Pavelic contradicted Douglas saying he did have notes and tapes.
 
Judge LANCE ITO: Are there any other notes with regards to interviews of Rosa Lopez?
 
BILL PAVELIC: When you say ‘notes,’ I’m not sure what you mean.
 
Judge LANCE ITO: Any rough notes, anything you wrote down, anything handwritten?
 
BILL PAVELIC: I may possibly have some notes in regards to the statement that I took.
 
Judge LANCE ITO: All right, do you have any taped recordings of any statements?
 
BILL PAVELIC: I tape recorded the first statement, which was the July statement.
 
Judge LANCE ITO: All right. All right, Mr. Pavelic, where are these items - these notes and tape recordings?
 
BILL PAVELIC: I believe that it’s either in the office or at my residence.  When I-
 
Judge LANCE ITO: -All right, tomorrow morning, I’m going to order you to come to court with those items.
 
BILL PAVELIC: I shall do my best to get those items.
 
Judge LANCE ITO: All right- no, don’t do your best - have them here tomorrow.
 
BILL PAVELIC: I shall have them here tomorrow, Your Honor.
 
Judge LANCE ITO: All right, thank you.
 
MARC WATTS: Let’s talk some more about the Rosa Lopez situation with one of our regular guests, journalist, the reporter in the courtroom for New York Newsday, Shirley Perlman.  Good morning, Shirley.
 
SHIRLEY PERLMAN, ‘New York Newsday’: Good morning.
 
MARC WATTS: Shirley, yesterday, by most accounts, Rosa Lopez did fairly well un-der direct examination.  What kind of witness can we expect today under cross-examination?
 
SHIRLEY PERLMAN: Well, if Friday is any example, Christopher Darden is expected to really try to expose her as someone who is not telling the truth about this.  So it’s going to be very tense and very confrontational, and- difficult.
 
MARC WATTS: Well, the prosecution had hinted that it was not quite ready to bring on rebuttal witnesses, but it appeared to have succeeded yesterday in pro-ducing Sylvia Guerra.  Did you happen to catch Marcia Clark’s reaction when Syl- Sylvia Guerra was introduced?
 
SHIRLEY PERLMAN: I did not catch Marcia Clark’s reaction, but Sylvia Guerra ap-peared frightened in the courtroom.  Judge Ito seemed surprised, and, of course, the defense table became very, very quiet when she appeared in the courtroom.
 
MARC WATTS: Judge Ito was contemplating sanctions yesterday.  Do you think this revelation from Bill Pavelic about the tape recording of Rosa Lopez’s first in-terview all but ensures that some sort of sanctions or punishments will be is-sued out today.
 
SHIRLEY PERLMAN: I think it may well persuade him to lift the sanctions against the prosecution and allow them to call some of these domestic violence witnesses that they wanted to call earlier.
 
MARC WATTS: All right, Shirley Perlman, New York Newsday reporter in the court-room, thank you for joining us.  Thanks for your observations.
 
SHIRLEY PERLMAN: Thank you.
 
MARC WATTS: We will resume our live coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial again at the top of the hour.  Rosa Lopez returns to the witness stand.  We’ll be back at 12:00 noon Eastern, 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time with CNN’s Jim Moret, in which cer-tainly [sic] is shaping up to be a very interesting day in the courtroom.
 
The preceding text has been professionally transcribed.  However, although the text has been checked against an audio track, in order to meet rigid distri-bution and transmission deadlines, it may not have been proofread against tape.

LOAD-DATE: February 28, 1995

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Transcript # 877-11

TYPE: Live Report

TRIAL: ROSA LOPEZ TESTIFIES ON TAPE WITHOUT JURY PRESENT AFTER PROSECUTORS COMPLAIN. DEFENSE REVEALS STATEMENT IT TOOK FROM HER IN JULY.

Los Angeles Times
February 28, 1995, Tuesday, Home Edition

BYLINE: By ANDREA FORD and JIM NEWTON, TIMES STAFF WRITERS
SECTION: Part A; Page 1; Column 2; Metro Desk
LENGTH: 2192 words

A Salvadoran housekeeper who has emerged as a central witness on behalf of murder defendant O.J. Simpson testified Monday that she saw Simpson’s car in front of his house about the time prosecutors believe he was two miles away killing his ex-wife and her friend.

Rosa Lopez said she took her employer’s dog for a walk shortly after 10 p.m. on June 12, the night that Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman were knifed to death in Brentwood. Simpson has pleaded not guilty to the crimes, which prosecutors believe were committed about 10:15 p.m.

Testifying without the jury present but with a videotape recorder capturing the event, Lopez described what she said she saw outside Simpson’s Rockingham Avenue home on that cool June evening. Lopez said she glanced at a clock in her room and saw that it was 10 p.m. before she put on some water for tea, grabbed the dog’s leash and headed outside. Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., Simpson’s lead trial attorney, asked what she saw outside.

“Were you able to see any cars parked out there?” he asked.

“Yes,” Lopez responded.

“What cars were you able to see, if any?” Cochran continued.

“The Bronco,” Lopez answered.

Lopez’s testimony is potentially of huge significance to Simpson, because it bolsters his alibi on the night of the killings. Simpson’s lawyers have said their client was home chipping golf balls in his front yard and possibly napping during the period that prosecutors allege the crimes were committed.

With so much possibly at stake in the Lopez testimony, the two sides have fought furiously over her appearance. They debated how and when she would take the stand, and before she was allowed to testify Monday, another disagreement erupted over whether prosecutors had been provided with statements of hers in the possession of the defense team.

At first, defense lawyers said they had only one statement, given in August. Then, after being pressed by prosecutors, they admitted there was an earlier statement, taken July 29 but never shared with government lawyers. Then, at the end of the court day, defense investigator Bill Pavelic said he had tape-recorded the July 29 session, despite assurances earlier in the day by defense attorneys that Lopez had never given a taped statement. No tape ever has been provided to the prosecution.

Those revelations stoked an already intense debate over evidence-sharing. Even before learning that there might be a tape of Lopez describing her observa-tions, Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark asked that defense lawyers be severely sanctioned for what she said was an “effort to sandbag the prosecution, to blindside us.”

The revelation of a tape recording or notes of the July 29 session only re-doubled the prosecution’s complaints.

Smiling in disbelief and staring intently at the judge, Clark stood off to one side as Pavelic acknowledged that he might have notes and a tape recording of his July 29 interview with Lopez. Clark did not get a chance to respond to that admission, but Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito promised her that there would be a chance to discuss that issue first thing today.

At a news conference after the court day ended, Clark said Pavelic’s comments about the existence of the tape would strengthen the prosecution’s request that the defense be punished for its behavior, an argument that the government law-yers plan to make in court today.

“That’s going to make the request (for sanctions) even more strident,” Clark said. “I think the judge will be even more upset.”

Ito, who had been promised that all materials already had been shared with the prosecution, gruffly responded to the latest revelation.

“Tomorrow morning, I’m going to order you to come to court with those items,” Ito said to Pavelic, a former Los Angeles Police Department detective who was brought into the Simpson case by attorney Robert L. Shapiro just two days after the murders and who has worked on it since.

“I shall do my best to get those items,” Pavelic responded.

“No,” Ito said. “Don’t do your best. Have them here tomorrow.”

“I shall have them here tomorrow,” a chastened Pavelic answered.

Lopez, who struggled on the stand last week and was caught in several contra-dictions by prosecutors, appeared far more collected during her questioning Mon-day by Cochran. She smiled slightly as the questioning got under way, and was cooperative with Cochran as he politely elicited her account of her observations June 12.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher A. Darden often objected during Lopez’s testi-mony, and Ito often sustained the objections.

Simpson’s lawyers have not produced anyone other than Lopez to bolster her account about spotting Simpson’s car in the street that night, but if the jury believes her, it would strongly support Simpson’s contention that he could not be the murderer.

But Lopez’s credibility is certain to come under attack by prosecutors, who are expected to cross-examine her at length today. Before Monday’s hearing be-gan, Clark referred to Lopez as a liar, and during a session Friday, Darden ag-gressively ferreted out contradictions in Lopez’s explanation regarding her al-leged plans to leave the country.

By the time Friday’s session had ended, even Ito, who rarely ventures opin-ions about witnesses, had noted that her testimony contained a number of contra-dictions.

Nevertheless, the judge had ruled that she would testify out of order, ap-pearing before the jury this morning to tell her story so Simpson would not be denied her account in the event that she leaves for her native El Salvador and refuses to return if called to the stand during the defense case.

Ito arrived Monday expecting that the questioning would be conducted, but prosecutors lodged a last-minute objection, saying that calling her to the stand in the midst of their case would disrupt their presentation and deny them a fair trial. They filed a motion protesting the plan to have Lopez testify before the jury Monday, and they convinced Ito that he should employ the videotape tech-nique instead.

Cochran was furious, asking Ito not to let himself be “snookered” by the prosecution. The lawyer accused Clark of saying Friday that she needed to care for her two young children that night — and thus could not be present for pro-posed evening testimony by Lopez — as a ruse to delay the housekeeper’s appear-ance on the stand. An indignant Clark retorted that she was “offended as a woman, as a single parent, as a prosecutor and as an officer of the court.”

Ito ruled in her favor, as he generally does when the defense and prosecution clash.

Defense attorneys fumed about Ito’s change of mind, but some legal experts praised him.

“It’s to his credit that he made a reasoned decision,” said Gigi Gordon, a Santa Monica criminal defense lawyer, “rather than being worried about people criticizing him for changing his mind.” As a result of that last-minute switch, Lopez’s testimony was recorded on videotape — to be used only if she flees to El Salvador. Defense attorneys were concerned that if a special examination were not held and she failed to return, they would forever lose her testimony.

That account’s most obvious benefit for Simpson is Lopez’s alleged 10:15 p.m. sighting of the car on the evening of June 12. But other elements of her testi-mony also are potentially valuable to the defense.

She said Monday, for instance, that she had seen Simpson’s car about 8 p.m. and again the following morning, and that it appeared to be parked in the same, slightly haphazard way both times. That suggested that it was not moved between those times, again bolstering Simpson’s contention that he did not drive to the murder scene in that vehicle, as prosecutors allege.

Moreover, Lopez said she heard voices on Simpson’s property sometime around midnight. By then, Simpson was en route to Chicago. Defense attorneys have al-leged that Simpson may have been framed for the murders, and the presence of unidentified people on his estate after he left might strengthen that argument.

Testifying Monday, Lopez said she heard Simpson’s dog barking and crying shortly before 1 a.m. on June 13. That was about the same time she recalled hearing the voices, which she said she could hear for “a long time” that night.

But Lopez has not always given precisely the same version of what she saw and heard that night, according to prosecutors. Clark said that in the July 29 statement prepared by Pavelic, for instance, there is no mention of Lopez seeing Simpson’s car outside his house about 10:15 p.m., arguably the single most im-portant element of her account for Simpson. That is the report not given to prosecutors until Monday.

The information about Lopez spotting the car at that key time first surfaces in a report taken several weeks later, Clark said. That was the only report pro-vided to the government team, which has repeatedly and sometimes successfully argued that defense attorneys are violating the law by not sharing information with their counterparts.

Carl Douglas, one of Simpson’s defense lawyers, acknowledged that the defense had failed to turn over the earlier statement but said that he too was surprised to discover the report and stressed that defense lawyers had brought it to the court’s attention.

“This was not intentional,” Douglas said. “It was not willful.”

The July 29 report was taken just one week after Cochran and Douglas joined the defense team, and Douglas suggested that part of the reason for the lapse might have been a breakdown in communications among the lawyers.

The second report also is notable for a piece of information that it does not include, lawyers on both sides said. Lopez allegedly told the defense investiga-tor that another housekeeper, whom she named only as Sylvia, could back up her version of events, but that housekeeper’s name does not appear in the later re-port.

Douglas said it had been omitted because Sylvia was in the country illegally and Lopez wanted to protect her. But Clark accused the defense of deleting her name because she would not corroborate Lopez’s version of events. As the court day ended Monday, Darden introduced a witness named Sylvia Guerra and asked Ito to order her to appear in court today.

Ito did. Darden also asked that Lopez be directed not to contact Guerra over-night. Ito declined to make that order, but he did remind Lopez before she left the stand that she was not allowed to discuss her testimony with anyone other than her lawyers.

While the attorneys wrangled over Lopez’s testimony, defense attorneys con-tinued to lay the groundwork for one of their main lines of assault on the prosecution case: the anticipated testimony of Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman, who could take the stand as early as this week.

Fuhrman was only assigned to the Simpson case briefly, but he testified dur-ing last summer’s preliminary hearing that he found a bloody glove outside Simp-son’s estate. That glove is a potentially key piece of prosecution evidence: It matches one found at the murder scene, and DNA tests of blood on the glove sug-gest that the stains could have come from the two victims and the defendant.

In a motion filed Monday, Simpson’s team sought access to LAPD records that might relate to Fuhrman. They want to know if Fuhrman made comments suggesting that he knew Nicole Simpson and if he ever possessed a swastika or other symbol that might suggest racism. They also want to see any Police Department files re-flecting the LAPD’s efforts to determine whether Fuhrman could have removed a bloody glove from the crime scene and taken it to Simpson’s house.

Ito already has reviewed Fuhrman’s Police Department records and ruled that nothing in them is relevant to the case. Before he did that, the LAPD had com-pleted its interviews with police officers who were at the crime scene the night of the murders about whether Fuhrman could have planted evidence.

As The Times reported last fall, LAPD officials concluded that it would have been all but impossible for Fuhrman to have carried out such a deception.

The other allegations against Fuhrman — that he possessed fascist parapher-nalia and that he boasted of a relationship with Nicole Simpson — long have been rumored and have been investigated by the defense and others. But so far, at least, no evidence has surfaced to support either allegation.

Robert Tourtelot, Fuhrman’s lawyer, repeatedly has denied that his client is a racist and has said Fuhrman met Nicole Simpson only once, when the officer re-sponded to a 1985 domestic-abuse call at Simpson’s home.

The next time Fuhrman saw her, according to Tourtelot, was when he saw her body in the early morning of June 13, after he and other detectives were called to the murder scene.

Assuming she obeys Ito’s order not to leave the country, Lopez will return to the witness stand today . Before court adjourned Monday, she told Ito that she had a ticket to fly to El Salvador this morning, but the judge ordered her not to leave, telling her that his clerk would coordinate the change in travel plans.

Times staff writer Henry Weinstein contributed to this article.

LOAD-DATE: March 1, 1995

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo, COLOR, O.J. Simpson greets Brentwood neighbors in the courtroom where he is being tried for murder. ; Photo, COLOR, Rosa Lopez during testimony. KEN LUBAS / Los Angeles Times

TYPE: INTERVIEW