2A - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, September 6, 1995
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racist
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Glt Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES - Jurors in the
murder trial of O.J. Simpson returned
to work for the first time in a week
yesterday and were immediately con-
fronted with electrifying evidence that
Detective Mark Fuhrman disparaged
interracial couples, bragged about mak-
ing up charges and repeatedly used a
vicious racial epithet.
One witness, Kathleen Bell, fought
back tears while telling the jury that
Fuhrman told her during theirfirst meet-
ing that blacks should be "gathered
together and burned." Then a second
witness, Natalie Singer, recalled a 1987
conversation in which Fuhrman told
her: "The only good nigger is a dead
nigger."
Yesterday marked the first time ju-
rors have heard evidence of Fuhrman's
alleged racism and willingness to lie
under oath.
Bell and Singer took the stand to start
the session, which ended on a note
likely to end any lingering doubt in
jutors' minds about whether Fuhrman
everuttered the racial epithet--apoint
that even prosecutors concede at the
same time they dismiss its signficance
in the Simpson case.
Near the conclusion of the court day,
defense attorneys at last played for the
jury an excerpt from a tape-recorded
interview in which Fuhrman could be
heard using the word, which aspiring
screenwriter Laura Hart McKinny tes-
tified he said 42 times.
"They don't do anything," Furhman
said of women police officers during
the excerpt played for the jury. "They
don't go out there and initiate a con-
tact with some 6-5 nigger who's been
in prison seven years pumping
weights."
"That was his voice?" Simpson attor-
ney Johnnie Cochran Jr. said after the
tape was played.
"That's his voice," McKinny an-
swered. "No doubt about it."
Just before that, a second excerpt was
read to the jury, one in which Fuhrman
said, "We have no niggers where I grew
up." McKinny began to say she consid-
ered that Fuhrman's "least inflamma-
tory and offensive" usage of the word,
but Judge Lance Ito, who has come
Judge stops indictment of Gov. Tucker
WASHINGTON - In a far-reaching decision that could narrow the duties of
all independent prosecutors, a U.S. district court judge yesterday quashed a
Whitewater independent counsel indictment brought by Independent Counsel
Kenneth Starr against Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Henry Woods in Little Rock marked the first
time a defendant has ever successfully challenged the scope of an independent
counsel probe, even though politicians have debated the issue since the position
was first created in response to Watergate more than 20 years ago.
Tucker, a Democrat who succeeded President Clinton as governor of Arkansas
in January 1993, hailed the ruling as a major victory in his bitter legal wrangle with
Starr. But in reality, the riling may mean more for the Clinton administration than
it does for Tucker, who still must answer a second indictment brought against him
by Starr,
Currently, there are four independent prosecutors investigating Clinton and his
appointees, and the administration has often complained about the prosecutors'
ability to conduct unfettered, wide-ranging inquiries. If the ruling causes the
courts to more narrowly define the jurisdiction of the independent counsel - as
Woods ruled - it could have an impact on all of these probes.
White House officials declined to comment.
AP' PHOTO
Defense attorney F. Lee Bailey questions witness Kathleen Bell yesterday during the 0.1. Simpson trial.
Yesterday's testmon marked the
centerpiece of the defense atakon
Fuhrman, who testified he found a
bloody ,glove outside Simpson'shose,.
under fire for sanitizing thejury presen-
tation, sternly cut her off and ordered
the jury to disregard that comment.
Yesterday's testimony marked the
centerpiece of the defense attack on
Fuhrman, who testified he found a
bloody glove outside Simpson's
house. It was unveiled in court even
as new information was coming to
light regarding an explosive element
of the inquiry into Fuhrman's back-
ground.
According to materials obtained by
the Los Angeles Times under the Cali-
fornia Public Records Act, an attorney
wrote to state and federal prosecutors in
1978 accusing Fuhrman of being one of
several officers involved in beating sus-
pects after a Boyle Heights incident in
which two police officers were shot.
Intheletter, dated Dec. 5, 1978, well-
known civil rights lawyer Antonio
Rodriguez describes beatings he said
occurred in the wake of a Nov. 18, 1978
shooting - an inci dent that Fuhrman
appears to have alluded to in his inter-
views with McKinny.
Rodriguez's letter described "a con-
fused mass of beatings and unjustified
false arrests," most of them by unnamed
police officers. One officer, however,
was identified by his last name,
"As they (two suspects) exited the
police car in back ofthe station, without
any reason or provocation on their part,
they were assaulted and battered by
several officers," Rodriguezwrote,"in-
cluding one by the name of Furman
(sic)."
In court, jurors recoiled visibly at the
accounts delivered by the three women,
portraying Fuhrman as a liar and racist.
Throughout their testimony, panel-
ists wrote furiously in their notepads,
documenting evidence the defense
hopes will lead to Simpson's acquittal.
All listened attentively as the
detective's voice filled the room. Some
took notes, but most listened and stared
at the overhead display that reduced the
audiotape to a transcript.
GAO report s
Social Secunty s
handling of disability
Despite nearly a decade of warnings,
the Social Security Administration has
done little to stop scam artists from
securing millions of dollars in illegal or
questionable disability payments for
immigrants, government investigators
reported yesterday.
In a report to Congress, the General
Accounting Office concluded that So-
cial Security has failed to hire enough
bilingual caseworkers or investigators
to stop the so-called "middlemen" from
steering immigrants into the agency's
biggest program for the disabled,
Known as Supplemental Security In-
come, or SSI, the $25 billion program
was set up two decades ago to provide
a basic living allowance to poor Ameri-
cans who are too old, handicapped or
disabled to work for a living. But a
loophole written into the law by Con-,
gress allows certain immigrants to
qualify as soon as they set foot on U.S.
soil.
The result has been a sharp increase
in the number of foreign-born people
receiving SSI benefits. Today, more
than 700,000 immigrants are drawing
checks worth $4 billion a year. It is
double the number just five years ago,
making immigrants one of the fastest
growing segments of SSI.
Lewis' Labor Day
Telethon raises
record funds for MD
LOS ANGELES - Jerry Lewis'
annual Labor Day telethon raised
record $47.8 million for the battle
against muscular dystrophy, official
said yesterday.
The 30th annual telethon, which be
gan Sunday and ended Monday, w
broadcast live to 80 million viewers
from CBS' studios in Hollywood, with
segments from New York, Branson
Mo., Nashville and Hawaii.
A handful ofdemonstrators pickete
in wheelchairs outside the studio Mon
day, arguing that the donations don'
got where the money is needed.
Jim Brown, an MDA spokesman, sai
more than 80 percent of the proceeds g
directly into research or patient care,
HURRICANE
Continued from Pageg A
onto a pier to take pictures of heavy
surf.
Hurricane Luis, its winds diminish-
ing to near 130 mph late yesterday, is
forecast to veer slightly northeast of
Puerto Rico-perhaps sparing the U.S.
commonwealth island a direct hit. But
because the storm's counter-clockwise
winds are so broad and strong, Puerto
Rico, was bracing for hurricane-force
winds early today.
The storm's strength is not expected
to decrease. Luis is a Category Three
storm - Hugo and Hurricane Andrew,
which leveled the suburbs and farm-
lands south of Miami in 1992, were
both stronger, Category Four storms.
Citizens in low-lying and coastal
towns here spent yesterday boarding up
their homes and businesses,.
Perhaps thousands of tourists were
stranded on the islands, which were
hard-hit by Hurricane Hugo in 1989.
Officials told those without confirmed
F 4IW xs ." .dt .v.'. r t FJ'
reservations to not even bother coming
to the airport, as almost all flights off
the islands were overbooked.
And Luis's path has been eerily simi-
larto Hugo, which raked overthenorth-
east coast of Puerto Rico killing one
person and causing $2 billion in dam-
age, before slamming into South Caro-
lina, where high waters and winds
caused wrecked havoc. Puerto Rico's
young and sea-loving governor, Pedro
Rossello,spent yesterday urging coastal
dwellers to move to shelters. Many
Puerto Ricans live in shaky wooden
houses or concrete homes topped with
flimsy tin roofs.
in addition to the possible high
winds, there is the danger of wide-
spread flooding and mudslides.
Rossello warned that Luis could be
the worst hurricane that Puerto Rico
experiences in decades.
Civil-defense officials, monitoring
the storm from the inside of a 16th-
century Spanish fort in the colonial
quarter of old San Juan, were telling
their fellow-islanders to expect the worst
- even as the computer models used
by the National Hurricane Center were
predicting the storm to pass slightly
north of the commonwealth of 3.5 mil-
lion people.
In Loiza, a small seaside town east
of San Juan, it looked as if hundreds
of homeowners had evacuated their
dwellings - though only a handful
showed up at local hurricane shelters.
Many residents said they were plan-
ning to take refuge in the better-built
homes of their neighbors or were driv-
ing to relatives or friends further in-
land.
Ana Molina, a nursing student in Loiza,
stood in the yard of a neighbor and said
she was going to leave her wooden home
near the beach and spend the night with
her husband and three children at her
brother-in-law's. Molina knows hurri-
canes. Hugo ripped off the roof of her
house and soaked and destroyed most of
the family's belongings.
"We sold out of plywood yesterday,"
s aid Carmen Marquis, owner of
Gon zalez L umber Y ard in Loiza, where
workers were covering the stores with
wood yesterday afternoon.
At a nearby hurricane shelter, lo-
cated in a three-story high school,
Carmen Alvarez struggled to tie her
pillows and possessions in a plastic bag
and admitted that she was scared-but
felt secure. Only a dozen people had
appeared at the shelter by mid-day, but
workers said they expected some 500
evacuees by nightfall.
A cross the island here, grocery stores,
gas stations, fast-food joints, as well as
governmen t Offices, banks and schools,
ivere shuttered by noon. Residents were
advised to store water and food.
- DuringHugo in 1989, waterand sew-
AROUND THE WORLD
A .
Qatari foreign
Mmster apparently
shot i royal feud
NICOSIA, Cyprus - Qatar's for-
eign minister has been shot in the legs
by a daughter of the emirate's former
ruler, who was ousted in a coup in June,
diplomatic sources said yesterday.
Sheik Hamad bin Jasim Al Thani was
rushed to London for treatment after
the shooting last week, said the sources
in Qatar, who spoke on condition of
anonymity. The sources said they did
not know how seriously he was
wounded.
The minister had reportedly been
singled out as the key man behind the
coup against Sheik Khalifa bin Hamad
Al Thani, who was overthrown by his
45-year-old son, Sheik Hamad bin
Khalifa Al Thani.
The minister is a distant relative of
the deposed ruler and his family.
The 65-year-old former emir was in
Switzerland when his son seized power
in a bloodless coup.
The feud within the Al Thani family
has raged behind the scenes since be-
fore Qatar gained independence from
Britain in 1971. Several family mem-
bers have been living abroad in self-
exile for years.
The shooting has not been official)
reported in Qatar.
N. Ireland peace
sumitostponed as
Ish p out
DUBLIN, Ireland - Pleading for a
few days to settle differences with Brit-
ain, the Irish government withdrewyes-
terday from a summit intended to pave
the way forNorthern Ireland peacetalks.
The key issue was Britain's insis-
tence that the Irish Republican Army
make some commitment on disarma-
ment before its allies in the Sinn Feir
party could join all-party negotiations.
Sinn Fein has rejected the demand.
British Prime Minister John Majoi
had planned to meet Irish Premier Johr
Bruton at Chequers, Major's official
country residence near London.
Those plans collapsed as civil ser-
vants from both governments deadlocked
on the precise terms for talks and the
Irish Cabinet agreed in Dublin that the
summit would have to be postponed.
"The purpose is to allow some more
time to attempt to resolve outstanding
differences," said a statement from
Bruton's office.
- From Daily wire service.
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