Ito Cracks Down On Courtroom Judge Calms Jurors, Reels In Attorneys In Attempt To Speed Up Simpson Trial

Judge Lance Ito brought down a metaphorical gavel in his courtroom Tuesday, unveiling a tougher and testier style that, should it last, might prod lawyers in the O.J. Simpson case into moving more quickly and assure restless jurors their service is not permanent.

Testimony resumed after a two-day hiatus in which Ito quelled a mini-rebellion among the jurors. The dispute, over the judge’s decision to reassign three sheriff’s deputies accused of fomenting racial discord on the panel, led testimony to be canceled Friday and Monday. And, together with the glacial progress of the case, it intensified complaints that Ito had lost control of his courtroom.

Coincidentally or not, even before court convened Tuesday with a police evidence collector named Andrea Mazzola back on the stand, the judge seemed intent on asserting his authority, and visibly.

As of May 1, he announced, lunch hours will be just that, and no longer a leisurely 90 minutes. Minutes into Mazzola’s testimony, he ordered that two spectators be removed for whispering.

And when one defense lawyer, Peter Neufeld, began his interrogation, the judge displayed a short fuse and wielded an equally short leash. He eyed Neufeld warily, spoke to him with exasperation and prodded him repeatedly, hauling him to the bench when his questions got repetitious.

Neufeld nonetheless managed a belligerent and sarcastic attack on Mazzola, who, as a rookie, had the bad fortune to step into one of history’s most closely scrutinized crime scenes in only her third case.

He said she had kept poor notes, failed to reach the crime scene quickly enough and failed to inquire about how substantially the crime scene had been altered by the time she and her superior, Dennis Fung, arrived there.

For much of the afternoon, Neufeld used a videotape prepared by the prosecution - starring Mazzola - to highlight what he maintained were her sloppy evidence-collecting techniques. The 34-year-old witness appeared frail, even a little unworldly. It was not significant that her police training had omitted the subject of evidence tampering, she said, because neither she nor anyone she worked with would ever do such a thing.

“You’re saying that there’s nobody who you know at the Los Angeles Police Department who would ever tamper with that evidence?” Neufeld asked incredulously.

“The people I know wouldn’t,” she insisted.