Ito Rejects Defense Bid to Bar Seized Evidence : Simpson case: Ruling defeats efforts to exclude items from defendant’s estate, including glove, bloodstains.

Returning to the volatile issues of police credibility and the lawfulness of searches, Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito ruled Wednesday that new questions about whether officers lied on the stand during O.J. Simpson’s preliminary hearing cannot be used to suppress evidence they seized.

Ito also upheld the right of investigators to test blood found at Simpson’s estate, rejecting an unusual defense argument that police should have secured a separate warrant to justify those tests because they can reveal private information about the person from whom the blood was drawn.

Ito called that argument by Simpson attorney Gerald F. Uelmen “rather interesting and novel,” but said he could find no case law to support it.

The rulings Wednesday struck down the latest efforts by Simpson’s lawyers to exclude a number of potentially significant items from evidence--including a bloody glove found outside Simpson’s house and blood recovered from his driveway. Although Ito’s rulings do not guarantee that any of those items will be introduced as evidence, they remove obstacles for prosecutors.

The search that yielded the bloody glove has been contested on several grounds, each time unsuccessfully, and Simpson’s lawyers are still moving on one last front, hoping to show that they should be allowed to renew their objections to that search based on allegations that Detective Mark Fuhrman is a racist. For months, Simpson’s lawyers have waged an aggressive attack on Fuhrman’s credibility and have suggested that he might have planted the glove outside Simpson’s home.

On Wednesday, Simpson’s attorneys renewed their campaign against Fuhrman, arguing that they had only learned many of the specifics of the detective’s alleged racism after the preliminary hearing was over. Because of that, they asked Ito to let them reopen the argument about the initial search of Simpson’s estate, during which Fuhrman said he found the bloody glove on a walkway at the back of Simpson’s home.

In a sworn declaration obtained by The Times, a lawyer who alerted Simpson’s defense team to allegations about Fuhrman said he delivered a copy of a pension file involving the detective July 15, after the preliminary hearing ended. In that file, Fuhrman is quoted making racially inflammatory remarks.

The statement by lawyer Robert Deutsch could help corroborate Simpson attorneys’ contention that they became aware of new details about Fuhrman after the preliminary hearing ended, even though the file was in the public record and Deutsch said his initial contact with defense lawyer Robert L. Shapiro’s office was July 5, while the hearing was under way.

Ito deferred a ruling on reopening the issue of the search based on questions about Fuhrman’s credibility. He is expected to return to it in the coming week, however, because he is trying to resolve the lingering evidentiary issues before jury selection resumes Oct. 12.

In the meantime, Ito rejected the latest defense attempts to discredit the officers who searched Simpson’s estate after the discovery of the bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman.

Simpson has pleaded not guilty to the June 12 murders, and his attorneys maintain that he is the victim of sloppy and overzealous investigators.

In court Wednesday, defense attorney Gerald F. Uelmen said that recently obtained transcripts from a private security company raise questions about the truthfulness of sworn testimony by some officers.

Uelmen read transcripts of calls between Westec Security officials and LAPD officers in which the dispatcher from the private Westec firm said officers were at Simpson’s front door and about to force entry when they first called to see whether he was home.

According to the transcripts that Uelmen read, a Westec patrol officer informed a dispatcher at 5:23 a.m. on June 13 that police officers were “at the front door, and they are requesting entrance.”

One minute later, that dispatcher, in a conversation with an LAPD sergeant at the West Los Angeles station, said: “I am going to call the residence right now to see if anyone is there because my patrol officer said you guys are there at his front door.”

Sgt. David Rossi of the LAPD responded: “Yeah, we are.”

If true, that could contradict testimony that the police only entered the property after first trying to reach Simpson over the phone. During the preliminary hearing, officers said they had repeatedly tried to telephone Simpson from outside the estate but had only reached an answering machine.

The detectives testified that they finally decided to jump the wall after seeing a small red stain--it later turned out to be blood--on the door handle of Simpson’s Ford Bronco and after learning through Westec that Simpson had a live-in maid. Those discoveries raised their fears that additional victims could be inside the estate, the detectives testified.

Defense lawyers have disputed those statements, maintaining that the officers jumped Simpson’s fence to engage in an illegal search of the property. Citing the transcripts that he read in court Wednesday, Uelmen accused the LAPD officers of presenting a “well-orchestrated tissue of lies.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark responded by saying that the transcripts were unclear and that neither the Westec dispatcher nor the LAPD sergeant was at the scene. Moreover, she maintained that the officers could have been referring to the front gate when the officers said they were at the front door.

In addition, Clark noted that the Simpson team could have raised the issue earlier and neglected to, making it improper for them to do so now. Under California law, attorneys must choose whether to try to suppress evidence either in Municipal Court or Superior Court but may not do so in both places unless new facts emerge that were unavailable to them during the earlier hearing.

During the preliminary hearing, several officers testified about cellular phone calls between the detectives and Westec. The defense did not act on that information at that time, however, and only raised it recently because Simpson’s lawyers obtained the transcripts after prosecutors secured them through a subpoena.

Clark disputed the defense’s rationale for failing to act sooner. She said defense lawyers knew from the preliminary hearing that officers were communicating with Westec via cellular phone. “They did nothing about it,” Clark said. “They had the opportunity and they failed to do so.”

Without addressing the question of whether he believed the transcripts raised new doubts about the detectives’ credibility, Ito agreed that defense attorneys had missed their chance to raise those points.

That ended that defense challenge, but Simpson’s lawyers moved simultaneously to contest an array of other searches. One involved the seizure of a pair of Simpson’s shoes June 13, and that too was challenged Wednesday.

Although the objection to that seizure was based on vague language in a property report, attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. used his questions about the shoes to raise other issues about the search. Breaking frequently to consult with an animated Simpson, Cochran asked LAPD Detective Tom Lange whether the detective had seen a large amount of money in Simpson’s closet at the same time he took the shoes.

Lange, who said Simpson was with him with he took the shoes, said he had not seen any money. Cochran did not pursue that line of questioning, and Ito ruled that the shoes had been properly seized.

As Wednesday’s hearing continued, Simpson’s lawyers pressed ahead with their efforts to force the exclusion of certain other items of evidence, most notably papers, fibers, debris and bloodstains recovered from Simpson’s car when it was repeatedly searched at a police garage.

The difficulty with those searches is that an employee of the towing company broke into the Bronco while it was being held and stole receipts from it. That threatens the chain of custody that protects evidence from being contaminated, and Uelmen painstakingly questioned the towing service manager about gaps in the supervision of the car.

The manager, Robert B. Jones, conceded that one of his employees had apparently broken into the car, but denied that detectives had failed to place the vehicle under an “investigative hold.” Simpson’s lawyers hope to establish that the LAPD lifted that hold while the car was in the garage. If so, that would strengthen their argument that police have badly bungled the investigation.

Clark, however, countered that the Police Department had maintained its hold over the car throughout, and that the break-in did not compromise any of the evidence seized.

The defense’s courtroom efforts drew a skeptical comment from one of Nicole Brown Simpson’s sisters who has regularly attended the hearings.

Speaking briefly to reporters Wednesday, Denise Brown questioned why defense attorneys are contesting evidence if Simpson has nothing to hide. “If O.J. is so innocent, why are (his defense lawyers) trying to suppress all the evidence?”

As the debates over evidence continue, both sides are gearing up for an extensive court hearing on the admissibility of DNA tests that are being conducted on blood samples from the murder scene, as well as Simpson’s home and car. Late Wednesday, the defense filed a motion that challenges the admissibility of the DNA tests by asserting that the process is not generally accepted in the scientific community.

“The prosecution seeks to introduce DNA evidence derived from a variety of testing methods,” says the defense motion, written by DNA specialists Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld. “Many of these methods are novel: Some have never been reviewed for admissibility by an appellate court in California, some have never been reviewed by any appellate court anywhere.”

That argument has long been predicted and sets the stage for what could be the trial’s most important debate--the so-called Kelly-Frye hearing that will determine whether DNA results are admitted and, if so, how much statistical significance jurors can attach to any findings.

* THE SPIN: Pulling the plug won’t cool off trial coverage. B1

THE SIMPSON CASE. A daily update. Trial Highlights

A look at some of the key events in the O.J. Simpson murder trial on Wednesday:

* Summary: Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito considered several defense efforts to suppress evidence collected from O.J. Simpson’s home and cars.

* Court action: Ito ruled that the defense could not raise a new challenge to the detectives’ credibility by introducing transcripts of discussions among the detectives and a private security company. He also ruled that tests of certain blood drops were legal, dealing a setback to defense efforts to have the results excluded.

* On the stand: Detective Tom Lange described seizing a pair of O.J. Simpson’s shoes after Simpson told him they were the ones he had worn on the night of the slayings. Robert B. Jones of Viertel’s Automotive Service testified that one of his employees admitted to breaking in to Simpson’s car after it was seized. Receipts with the signatures of O.J. and Nicole Simpson were taken from the vehicle, Jones said. Other witnesses also described the towing and safeguarding of the Bronco.

* Outside the court: One of Nicole Simpson’s sisters, Denise Brown, met with a small group of reporters and asked: “If O.J. is so innocent, why are (his lawyers) trying to suppress all the evidence?”