Ito Ousts 2 More Simpson Jurors; 2 Alternates Left : Trial: A woman accused of passing a note and a man she said intimidated her are dismissed. An emergency appeal by the defense to keep the male panelist is denied.

In a stunning move that halved the number of remaining alternate jurors in the murder trial of O.J. Simpson and brought testimony temporarily to a halt, Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito dismissed two panelists Monday. His decision touched off a flurry of legal activity as Simpson’s lawyers filed an emergency appeal, only to have it denied late in the day.

In all, 10 panelists have been dismissed from the case since the jury was impaneled in January.

With the Simpson team rushing Monday morning to prepare its appeal, a 28-year-old Latina named Farron Chavarria, who was accused of passing a note to a fellow panelist, was sent home, while a 54-year-old black man--whom Chavarria said intimidated her--initially returned to the jury’s hotel to await word of his fate. That man, Willie Cravin, remained in limbo until day’s end, when the appellate court denied the defense attempt to interrupt the trial and allowed the panelist to leave.

In their appeal, filed Monday afternoon, Simpson’s lawyers accused the prosecution both of targeting African American jurors and trying to force a mistrial. Prosecutors have previously denied both accusations, and state appeals court Justice Paul A. Turner released a three-sentence order denying the defense’s request for a stay of the trial.

“It may come back to haunt everybody,” Simpson’s appellate attorney, Dennis Fischer, said of the court’s ruling. “We probably haven’t heard the last word. If two more jurors are excused, we definitely haven’t heard the last word with regard to excusal of jurors and its double jeopardy implications.”

A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said prosecutors would have no comment on the ruling or the allegations raised by the defense in its appeal.

The decision to oust both panelists leaves the trial with just two alternates for a case that has been shedding panelists every few weeks and is expected to last into the fall. As a result, Monday’s double blow dramatically raised the possibility that this jury will not decide the question of Simpson’s guilt or innocence: He has vigorously denied committing the June 12 murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Lyle Goldman.

Ito’s decision took the defense team by surprise and, according to sources, came after vigorous arguments by Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark, who insisted that good cause existed to remove Cravin. Clark has told associates that she believes Cravin, a postal operations manager, was potentially sympathetic to Simpson.

According to sources, after the Latina real estate appraiser complained that she felt intimidated by the postal employee, prosecutors urged his ouster. Defense attorneys countered by arguing that removing Chavarria would solve the problem, urging Ito not to remove Cravin.

In a declaration accompanying the defense appeal, attorney Carl E. Douglas also minimized the seriousness of Cravin’s alleged intimidation.

“He was accused of having stared at her early on May 25,” Douglas wrote, identifying the two jurors only by their court-assigned numbers. “Additionally, [Chavarria] accused [Cravin] of brushing against her in the elevator in an attempt to intimidate her.”

Cravin, the lawyer wrote, denied brushing the other juror. He admitted looking at her, but only “after she had first begun staring at him.”

Arriving at his Carson home later, Cravin told a gaggle of reporters he had not been trying to intimidate anyone. He said he was not allowed to defend himself against the allegation before being dismissed and that he had an open mind about the trial’s outcome.

Although Chavarria was released Monday morning, she did not immediately return home, choosing instead to avoid reporters and photographers staked out in front of her family’s Pico Rivera residence. Family members said they expected her to stay away for now, but to release a statement sometime in the next few days.

“She’s just fine,” Martha Chavarria said of her sister. “She wished not to talk about it.”

The complaints against the latest two jurors were prompted by the investigation of another panelist, Francine Florio-Bunten, who was excused last month. That inquiry spread outward when jurors were questioned, sources said, and the investigation eventually led to the ouster of the three latest panelists and the extraordinary stoppage in the trial.

Legal analysts, who concede that there are few precedents for much of the Simpson case, were at a loss Monday to cite any other case that had featured the rapid-fire chain of events that surrounded the latest juror dismissals.

“I cannot recall a case in which a trial was stopped over the removal of a juror,” said Lois Haney, a trial consultant with the National Jury Project. “The question now is: Can Judge Ito possibly get to deliberations with this jury?”

Prosecutors Pleased, Defense Grim

Ito resolved the latest round of juror investigation during an hour-long private conference with the attorneys for both sides Monday morning. As the session broke up, it was immediately clear that prosecutors had scored a victory: Clark emerged beaming; she declined to comment but danced a jig in the courthouse hallway.

Simpson attorney Robert L. Shapiro, by contrast, appeared grim. When Ito retook the bench after the closed-door session, Shapiro and defense attorney Douglas already were working the courtroom telephones to line up help in preparing the appeal.

Ito, who has conducted the jury matters in private, gave only the briefest outline of what was happening when he opened the week’s public court session.

“The court found good cause to dismiss two of the jurors presently seated,” Ito announced, breaking more than a week of mounting suspicion that he would excuse at least one juror. “After the court made that ruling, Mr. Shapiro, on behalf of Mr. Simpson, requested leave of the court to file a writ with the court of appeal. . . . The court has granted that request, and the juror in question is at the hotel at this moment.”

The defense team, which already has Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz on board to help with appellate issues, hired Fisher, a respected Santa Monica appellate lawyer, to prepare the document. Granted until the end of the day to prepare their appeal, the lawyers frantically faxed drafts back and forth across the country.

Although legal experts generally--and correctly--predicted that the appellate court would not overturn Ito’s decision, the issue could give Simpson’s lawyers a mechanism for arguing later that Simpson should not be tried again.

In their brief filed Monday afternoon, the defense suggested that the dismissal of Cravin was improper and that if a mistrial occurs, Simpson should be protected from a second trial.

“By reason of the previous unanticipated excusals of numerous jurors sworn to try this celebrated cause, the extraordinary number of alternate jurors remaining to try this case--originally [12]--is down to two,” the defense brief stated. “It is likely that at least three more months will be required to complete the trial, and the probability is imminent that further jurors will be excused. In that event, the list of available alternate jurors will be exhausted; that in turn will implicate [Simpson’s] federal and state constitutional protections against being placed twice in jeopardy for the same offense. . . .”

Justice Turner did not rule on the defense’s claim that Ito overstepped his authority in dismissing Cravin. But Turner, who was supplied sealed transcripts of Ito’s juror interviews, allowed the trial to go ahead without the panelist. In his brief order, Justice Turner cited a case which held that a trial judge’s decision should only be overturned when there has been an abuse of discretion.

Trial resumes today with only two alternate jurors and the escalating possibility that nine months of legal maneuvering--jury selection in the Simpson case began last September--will have been for naught.

“We’re in the dangerously close zone of a mistrial,” said Karen Smith, a Southwestern University law professor. “If that happens, we’ll have: ‘Simpson, the Sequel.’ ”

After Battle, Juror Released

As with previous dismissals, the latest shift was accompanied by a burst of media interest: Dozens of cameras and reporters descended on the Pico Rivera home of Chavarria. Neighbors in the tidy community gamely weathered the onslaught, but Chavarria stayed away.

Her sister, Martha, said Farron had seen pictures of her home on television and had decided to avoid the media by not returning immediately. Martha Chavarria added that she expected her sister to make a statement in a few days, once the furor had begun to subside.

Elsewhere, both sides focused their interest on Cravin, the postal operations manager who was the subject of the defense appeal. That man--a former Navy medic who once worked at the psychiatric ward of the Veterans Administration hospital in Brentwood, less than a mile from the site of the June 12 murders--had described himself on a written questionnaire as “shocked” to learn that Simpson had been arrested for the killings.

But at the same time, he expressed few opinions about the case.

Asked what he thought of the internationally televised police pursuit of Simpson and friend Al Cowlings on the evening of June 17, Cravin responded: “A waste of a good basketball game,” referring to an NBA championship game interrupted for the pursuit.

Later, he elaborated by saying that he had been bowling during the basketball game and had set his videotape machine to record the game. He returned home and was disappointed to find that the game had been preempted by the chase.

Simpson and the Photos

Although the legal issues surrounding the jury dominated Monday’s activity, Simpson’s lawyers also tried to lay the groundwork for a fast-upcoming emotional flash-point of the trial, the presentation of grisly autopsy photographs.

Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., Simpson’s lead trial lawyer, said in court that Simpson may not be able to stay in the courtroom while the photographs are displayed or even listen to an audio feed of that portion of the proceedings. Cochran asked the judge to prepare an instruction to the jury in case Simpson feels compelled to get up and leave.

Fred and Patti Goldman, whose son is pictured in many of the photographs, sat a few feet away as Cochran argued that point; they held hands tightly, but said nothing.

The families of the two victims have increasingly voiced their distaste for Simpson and his legal team, and at the same time have forged closer bonds with the prosecutors. On Monday, Clark several times approached the Goldmans and huddled with them in private conversations.

The question of whether Simpson should attend the sessions where the autopsy photographs are presented marks one of the relatively rare issues where prosecutors and defense attorneys have no quarrel. Lawyers for both sides said they believed Simpson could waive his right to be present for any session--all criminal defendants have a constitutional right to be present during all phases of their trial--but Ito questioned whether he could legally allow Simpson to leave.

The prosecution provided Ito with a few court cases supporting the contention that Simpson could waive his right to be present, but even the government’s agreement with the defense on that point did not dampen the rancor between the two sides.

“One might argue whether this is a performance by Mr. Simpson, the actor, or truly a reflection of Mr. Simpson’s alleged grief for his deceased wife,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Brian Kelberg said. Addressing the court next, Clark echoed those remarks, asking Ito not to “turn this into a circus sideshow for maudlin displays by the defendant.”

Simpson rolled his eyes and glared angrily at Clark when she made that statement. Cochran, sitting next to his client, placed one hand on his arm.

When it was again his turn to speak, Cochran vehemently denied that Simpson’s reluctance to attend the session was an attempt to drum up sympathy from jurors.

“This idea of some maudlin display is foreign to me,” Cochran said. “This is not any act by Mr. Simpson.”

Cochran said Simpson wanted to attend the trial but was concerned that he would be so overwhelmed by the photographs of his murdered ex-wife that he might need to abruptly leave. In the event that Simpson was forced to depart, Cochran asked Ito to read an instruction to the jury, which already has been warned about the gruesome pictures that will soon be presented in court--photographs so graphic that Ito has barred them from being shown even to the courtroom audience.

“Some of these autopsy pictures are very disturbing,” the proposed defense instruction read. “They are especially disturbing to anyone who knew and loved these victims.”

The instruction further advised jurors that they should not infer Simpson’s guilt from his reaction, but prosecutors said they would not support the proposed defense language. Instead, Clark suggested that if Simpson wants to avoid seeing the pictures, he should leave when the jury is not present, and the panel should be read a neutral instruction stating merely that jurors should not infer either guilt or innocence from the defendant’s decision to skip the session.

Ito said he would take the matter under advisement.

Times staff writer John Hurst contributed to this article.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Changing Panel

The jury in the O.J. Simpson double murder case changed again. Two alternate jurors remain, and one juror’s status is under dispute. Here’s a look at who they are and why they were released.

* JUROR: Unidentified black man, 48

* JOB: Works for Hertz Corp.

* DATE DISMISSED: Jan. 18

* REASON: Allegedly attended the same party as Simpson years ago and failed to disclose it.

*

* JUROR: Unidentified Latina, 38

* JOB: Letter carrier

* DATE DISMISSED: Jan. 18

* REASON: Allegedly experienced domestic violence since being place on panel.

*

* JUROR: Catherine Murdock, white, 63

* JOB: Legal secretary

* DATE DISMISSED: Feb. 7

* REASON: She and Simpson have the same arthritis doctor.

*

* JUROR: Michael Knox, black, 46

* JOB: Courier

* DATE DISMISSED: March 1

* REASON: Allegedly failed to disclose a past incident involving domestic violence, specifically an arrest on suspicion of kidnaping. Prosecutors had expressed concerns about Knox before, especially after a tour of Simpson’s home. Knox wore a San Francisco 49ers cap--Simpson ended his football career with the 49ers--and lingered over photographs despite admonitions.

*

* JUROR: Tracy Kennedy, Native American and white, 52

* JOB: Amtrak manager

* DATE DISMISSED: March 17

* REASON: Investigation of the juror’s hotel room allegedly turned up evidence that he was keeping notes about the case, possibly for a book. Sources also said Kennedy had clashed with fellow jurors and sheriff’s deputies.

*

* JUROR: Jeanette Harris, black, 38

* JOB: Job counselor

* DATE DISMISSED: April 5

* REASON: Allegedly failed to disclose her involvement in an incident of domestic abuse. After being released, she charged that the jury was torn by racial tension and that sheriff’s deputies guarding the panel promoted it.

*

* JUROR: Tracy S. Hampton, black, 27

* JOB: Flight attendant

* DATE DISMISSED: May 1

* REASON: Complained about the growing strain of serving on the panel and raised fierce criticism of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. At one point complained, “I can’t take it anymore.”

*

* JUROR: Francine Florio-Bunten, white, 38

* JOB: Telephone worker

* DATE DISMISSED: May 25

* REASON: Sources said Judge Lance A. Ito received a letter from an employee of a Los Angeles-based literary agency who said the agency had been approached by the juror’s husband. The husband reportedly said his wife intended to write a book entitled “Standing Alone for Nicole.” Florio-Bunten denied contracting to write any such book.

*

* JUROR: Farron Chevarria, Latina, 28

* JOB: L.A. County real estate appraiser

* DATE DISMISSED: June 5

* REASON: Supposedly passed a note to a juror dismissed last month, warning her that Ito planned to quiz her about whether she was writing a book, then denied sending the note.

*

* JUROR: Willie Cravin, black, 54

* JOB: Postal manager

* DATE DISMISSED: June 5

* REASON: At least one fellow juror, Chevarria, allegedly found him intimidating.

Researched by CECILIA RASMUSSEN / Los Angeles Times