Judge Ito Rejects Defense’s Hypothesis

Judge Lance Ito barred pivotal testimony Thursday by a defense witness, thereby severely undercutting the ability of O.J. Simpson’s lawyers to show that his ex-wife may have been murdered by drug dealers.

Ito’s decision represented a potentially major blow to the defense attorneys’ case, since they promised the jury in opening remarks they would provide evidence of this alternate possibility of how Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were murdered on June 12, 1994.

In his ruling, the judge said a chiropractor named Christian Reichardt could not testify about narcotics use by his former fiancee, Faye Resnick, who briefly lived in the slain woman’s home. The defense had suggested hit men had actually been after Resnick when they committed the two slayings, or had killed the victims as a warning to Resnick to pay her overdue drug bills.

Simpson’s chief counsel, Johnnie Cochran, argued that Reichardt’s account would be “very relevant” because he would discuss his own initial fear that the killings had been a drug hit. But Ito accepted the prosecution’s argument that the defense had presented a “highly speculative” hypothesis, with no evidence that Resnick owed money or that drug dealers were involved.