THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : Standing Firm on Glove Issue : Despite Tapes, Fuhrman Could Not Have Planted Key Evidence, LAPD Says

The Police Department that once rallied around former Detective Mark Fuhrman now hastens to reject him. The police chief who once defended him against the charges of O.J. Simpson’s lawyers now calls him a disgrace. And the Internal Affairs investigators he once boasted of outsmarting now pore through Fuhrman’s work history to see if he was a brutal, racist police officer or merely a raging liar.

But through weeks of intensive investigation sparked by the surfacing of the so-called Fuhrman tapes, one conclusion of the LAPD remains unchanged: No matter how racist or offensive Fuhrman’s personal views may be, he simply could not have planted evidence in the murder investigation of O.J. Simpson.

“That’s not because anyone thinks he’s a model officer,” one person familiar with the Police Department investigation said Wednesday. “It’s because he couldn’t have gotten away with it.”

Lt. John Dunkin, a spokesman for the Police Department, echoed those comments in the more staid official LAPD response:

“The department’s position on the planting of evidence has not changed. There were a number of other people from the Police Department and the Fire Department at the scene, and they have all supported the contention that no evidence was planted.”

Long before the Simpson case had gone to trial, Police Department officials had investigated allegations that Fuhrman could have picked up a bloody glove near the bodies of Ronald Lyle Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson and taken it to the home of O.J. Simpson. That inquiry was launched in July, 1994, when far less was known about the case.

Even then, department officials concluded that the scenario suggested by the defense was all but impossible.

More than a dozen officers and supervisors, as well as at least one Fire Department captain, were on hand by the time Fuhrman arrived at the crime scene at 2:10 a.m. on June 13. Department investigators interviewed each of those officers, and not a single one saw a second glove that Fuhrman could have carried away.

Would all of them have lied for Fuhrman, an officer some barely even knew? LAPD officials did not believe so when they conducted their original investigation, and sources say nothing has happened since to cause the department to change that view.

But members of the defense team Wednesday dismissed the LAPD’s inquiry as a “whitewash.” The defense sources said they remain convinced that Fuhrman had both the opportunity and the motive to plant a glove behind Simpson’s house.

“The opportunity is rampant,” said one defense lawyer. “This is an officer who likes to be the center of attention and whose time that night is not well accounted for.”

Nevertheless, LAPD officials say more evidence has surfaced to reconfirm their belief that Fuhrman could not have planted the glove:

* When Fuhrman responded to the murder scene, neither he nor the other officers knew whether Simpson had an alibi, making evidence-planting a highly risky gambit.

* Testing of the glove later showed that it contained carpet fibers matching those from Simpson’s Bronco, strengthening the link between him and the glove.

* Other tests turned up evidence that some of the stains on the glove contained genetic markers matching Simpson’s. Because the glove was recovered by analysts before Simpson returned from Chicago and gave police a sample of his blood, police sources say, it is hard to fathom how Fuhrman could have put those stains on the glove.

Underlying those points is another raised in court Tuesday by Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark. At the time of Fuhrman’s brief participation in the Simpson case, investigators were gathering evidence in a bloody double homicide, a possible capital case. California law provides that any person who commits perjury in a capital case, causing the defendant to be executed, can himself be sentenced to death.

Would Fuhrman, no matter how deep his racism, have risked not only his career and freedom, but his life to frame O.J. Simpson? Again, authorities are skeptical.

But defense attorneys are not dissuaded by official skepticism. They are armed with tapes in which Fuhrman brags about police officers lying for each other and covering up each other’s misconduct. Those statements, the defense says, undermine the prosecution’s effort to rebut the evidence-planting theory by relying upon the testimony of other police officers.

In one tape, Fuhrman complains about a partner who followed department rules and was unwilling to lie for another officer.

“You’re either my partner all the way, or get the f--- out of this car,” Fuhrman said. “We die for each other. We live for each other. That’s the way it is in the car. You lie for me, up to six months suspension. Don’t ever get fired for me. Don’t get indicted for me. But you’ll take six months for me ‘cause I’ll take it for you.”

Citing that excerpt and others, defense attorney Gerald Uelmen told Judge Lance A. Ito: “I don’t think we could find a better description of the code of silence.”

If the defense contention is correct and officers covered up for each other in the Simpson case, many officers would be implicated and some would have to have committed perjury for Fuhrman. All would face at least the loss of their jobs--a sacrifice that Fuhrman said in the tapes that even loyal officers would not make for each other--and some would be facing the risk of criminal prosecution.

Officer Robert Riske was the first officer on the scene after the June 12, 1994, murders, and told the jury about the evidence he saw when he arrived--including a single glove, not two. Sgt. David Rossi said the scene was secure before Fuhrman got there. Detective Ronald Phillips said he arrived with Fuhrman and rarely was separated from him. Lt. Frank Spangler testified that he never took his eyes off Fuhrman when the detective approached Goldman’s body from behind a fence--one point where the defense suggests Fuhrman could have pocketed a glove.

And Detectives Tom Lange and Philip L. Vannatter, the lead investigators, have denied any evidence-tampering, in court and outside it.

“I can say that unequivocally,” Vannatter said when asked this week whether he remained convinced that Fuhrman did not plant evidence even after hearing the tapes and transcripts. “I know what happened out there.”

In fact, for the evidence-planting theory to square with other physical evidence in the case, such as fibers and blood on the glove, more Police Department employees might have to be involved. Three criminalists--Dennis Fung, Andrea Mazzola and Colin Yamauchi--handled much of the evidence in the police crime lab.

They might have had the opportunity to lace the glove with blood or fibers, but neither of them knew Fuhrman in anything more than a passing way.

Would they have been willing to plant evidence and lie on the witness stand for an acquaintance? Police officials dismiss the suggestion as ludicrous.

The defense, however, is not preparing to accuse any of the analysts of tampering with the glove. Instead, defense sources said, they believe Fuhrman wiped the glove on the inside of Simpson’s car, in the process picking up fibers.

As for the DNA on the glove, defense attorneys offered different theories: Either that Yamauchi inadvertently transferred Simpson’s blood to the glove or that Fuhrman picked up stray DNA when, as the defense alleges, he wiped the glove on the inside of the vehicle.

Police sources called that scenario pure hypothesis.

“They’ll say anything,” said one officer of the Simpson defense lawyers. “The trouble is, now they’ve cast such a cloud over this one officer that some people might believe them.”