Shapiro Apologizes As Racial Joke Backfires
As prosecutors labored Monday to undo the damage inflicted on police criminalist Dennis Fung, one of O.J. Simpson’s lawyers apologized publicly for a joke last week that made light of Fung’s woes and his Asian surname.
“My heart has been heavy all weekend if even one person has been offended,” defense lawyer Robert Shapiro said as court resumed with Fung still on the witness stand for an eighth day. “I made a remark which was meant to be facetious. … However, I understand the sensitivities of people, and in hindsight those remarks could have been misconstrued as being something other than just in humor and being a pun.”
Shapiro was referring to an incident during a court break on Thursday, when he celebrated the defense attack on Fung by handing out fortune cookies that he said came from the “Hang Fung Restaurant.”
The remark angered some Asian Americans and prompted Police Chief Willie Williams to blast the defense for hypocrisy in making fun of Fung’s ethnic heritage while accusing police of racism in the case.
“Had this been a member of the LAPD who made that comment or an executive such as myself or others, people would have expected us to be in the unemployment line this morning,” Williams told a television interviewer Monday. “It is not a joke.”
Fung himself listened impassively to Shapiro’s “mea culpa,” then took the witness stand hoping to recoup a reputation battered by days of pointed defense questioning.
In a tedious re-examination that left some jurors struggling to stay awake, prosecutor Hank Goldberg used a newly discovered videotape to rebut defense contentions that Fung mishandled key evidence linking Simpson to the June 12 murders of his ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman.
Goldberg said the videotape seemed to support Fung’s account of receiving a vial containing Simpson’s blood sample from a detective on the day after the murders. Defense lawyers have suggested that Simpson’s blood sample was not turned over until June 14, giving detectives time to plant Simpson’s blood at the crime scene, in his Ford Bronco and at his Brentwood mansion.