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From: Kate
T1:
Category 3: Category 1
Date: 11 Aug 1999
Time: 00:49:36
Remote Name: pm215.isomedia.com
Jasper and Charlie:
I thought you would like to read this:
LOS ANGELES - It is no secret that O.J. Simpson's lawyers suspect Mark Fuhrman tampered with some of the evidence in the former football superstar's double-murder case.
What is a secret - and a tightly-held one - is that prosecutors know Fuhrman is a rogue cop who last year destroyed a crucial piece of evidence in another murder case.
And now they are suppressing the records of that criminal proceeding out of fear that their case against Simpson will be irreparably damaged if word of what Fuhrman did gets out.
Fuhrman is the lynchpin of the prosecution's case against Simpson. He's the cop who discovered a bloody glove on Simpson's estate that prosecutors say matches one found at the crime scene. Almost from the start of this case, defense lawyers have hinted that Fuhrman planted this damning piece of evidence, a claim prosecutors have scoffed at with equal consistency.
Whether he did so, or not, is for Simpson's jurors to decide. But they may end up having to reach their conclusion on this question without knowing how Fuhrman mishandled a key piece of evidence in a murder that occurred just two months before Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were brutally slain.
And that might prove to be a real miscarriage of justice. On April 6, 1994, Mark Fuhrman was the investigating officer in the murder of Dawn Gamez. The suspect in the case was Herman Gould, her common-law husband.
Gould told police an intruder entered the West Los Angeles home he shared with Gamez and shot her while he was in an upstairs bathroom. Hearing her shriek, Gould said he rushed to Gamez's defense, struggled with the gunman and was shot in the arm before the attacker escaped.
Almost from the moment he arrived at the crime scene, Fuhrman doubted Gould's account of what happened.
The bullet that went through Gould's arm, Fuhrman testified during a preliminary hearing, appeared to have lodged in a kitchen door. But the angle at which it appeared to have entered the door made him suspect that Gould was lying.
Fuhrman arrested Gould and charged him with the slaying. The detective also got a search warrant that allowed him to seize the door as evidence.
But what Fuhrman did next with the door has allowed Gould to go free - and sent a chill up the spines of prosecutors in the Simpson case.
"The door was seized but never booked" as evidence, attorney Darryl Mounger wrote in a motion, filed January 30, that sought dismissal of the charges against his client.
According to Mounger's motion, Fuhrman tore the door apart looking for a bullet without bothering to perform any of the tests that could have determined the angle at which it entered - and possibly the guilt or innocence of Gould.
Afterward, he threw away its shattered pieces, in clear violation of state law and the Los Angeles police department's procedures for handling evidence obtained with a search warrant.
Why?
Mounger suggests that what Fuhrman found was exculpatory evidence that "is forever lost" due to the door's destruction.
On Jan. 31, the murder charge against Herman Gould was quietly "dismissed in the interest of justice" and the record of the proceedings was sealed at the prosecutor's request.
The case against O.J. Simpson is a house of cards that leans heavily on circumstantial and scientific evidence that throughout his trial will be subjected to a withering attack. It is also inextricably linked to a white cop with a bad racial attitude and a shoddy record of playing fast and loose with evidence in a criminal case.
But Judge Lance Ito has limited what Simpson's jury can hear about Fuhrman's racism. And he has yet to decide whether he will allow any testimony about his tampering with evidence in the Gouldcase - a decision that prosecutors desperately hope will go their way. Copyright 1995, Gannett News Service, a division of Gannett Satelitte Information Network, Inc. DeWAYNE WICKHAM, FUHRMAN WRONGDOING EVIDENCE SUPPRESSED BY PROSECUTION. , Gannett News Service, 03-12-1995.