"Don't forget, we have an airline expert sitting here," he said. Last week, when an airline ticket stub came into evidence, Ito tried a friendly remark about Hampton's expertise on airline matters. Ito, who has fought to keep the jury intact despite claims of possible juror misconduct and a rebellion last month, held a one-hour meeting with attorneys in his chambers before granting Hampton's request to be dismissed.Īt the outset of jury selection, Ito had welcomed her warmly as a panelist who was used to living in hotels for her job and might not mind life in sequestration. "I feel like a criminal," reporter Shelley Smith said. During a break, a Sports Illustrated reporter discovered it was her phone that had gone off and said she would confess to the judge. When nobody stood up, Ito banned all pagers and phones from the courtroom and ordered that everyone be searched as they enter. Ito asked that the phone's owner hand it over. He refused a prosecution request for an evidentiary hearing about blood outside the jury's presence, and he reacted angrily when a cellular phone rang out.
JYDGE ITO ADVISE CAUTION TRIAL
The woman was quickly ushered out the judge and attorneys made no notice of her, and jurors had not returned from lunch.Īside from that, Ito continued his attempt to run a tight ship and move the trial along. She knelt down about eight feet from Simpson and prayed, "Father, in Jesus' name, I ask you to open the heavens to give peace and strength to this court. In an odd twist, a woman without an admission pass made her way into the courtroom and up to the gate that separates the audience from trial participants. Matheson said that even sloppily collected evidence is still useful and does not "turn into someone else's blood." Prosecutors have said Simpson's blood was found at the slaying scene. Goldberg also elicited testimony designed to answer a central defense theory - that blood evidence was contaminated to the point of uselessness. Simpson stared at the ceiling during the photo display of his ex- wife's bloody body. Matheson said that it was clear that the blood was coming from Nicole Simpson's body and that vast amounts of testing were not needed. It showed Nicole Simpson's body huddled at the foot of her steps with a dark pool of blood around her head and bright red streams of blood flowing down the walkway. The defense objected to the photo as overly gruesome, but it was allowed. In conjunction with the testimony, prosecutor Hank Goldberg projected onto a seven-foot courtroom screen one of the bloodiest photos seen so far. The change shifted the ethnic configuration of the jury to seven African Americans, three whites and two Latinos.Īfter the new juror was selected by lot and took her seat, testimony resumed with police chemist Gregory Matheson offering explanations of why only small amounts of the blood spilled at Nicole Simpson's condominium were tested by the police crime lab. Hampton was the seventh juror dismissed, leaving five alternates with months to go.
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