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EspañolMARK FUHRMAN
'Mark Fuhrman' (born February 5, 1952) is a best-selling book author, conservative talk radio host and a former detective in the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) who found the bloody glove at the scene of the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson. He also found a matching glove in the yard of O.J. Simpson's home.
In 1970, Fuhrman enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps at the age of eighteen. He was honorably discharged in 1975, having attained the rank of sergeant. He later joined the LAPD as a police officer and became a police detective. He served on the force for twenty years and earned more than fifty-five commendations. However, he is best known for his no contest to perjury during testimony in Simpson's murder trial.
Fuhrman was the officer who found both gloves--one at the murder scene, the other at Simpson's home--as well as a number of blood drops at the home. He entered Simpson's estate without a search warrant due to exigent circumstances--specifically, concern that Simpson himself might have been harmed.
During the infamous "slow speed pursuit," Fuhrman was tapped to be one of the "shooters" prepared to take down Simpson in the event he arrived at Simpson's estate before the SWAT team. He had a reputation as one of the most accurate marksmen in the LAPD.
Shortly after the preliminary hearing, Simpson's defense team alleged Fuhrman had planted the glove found at the estate as part of a racist-motivated effort to frame Simpson for the murders. This was a potentially serious charge; in California (as in most states), anyone who fabricates evidence in a death penalty case can be sentenced to death himself. As part of that strategy, Simpson's attorneys questioned Fuhrman about his use of racially insensitive language. The prosecution tried to stop the defense from pursuing this line of questioning by arguing that it was too inflammatory (most common-law jurisdictions require evidence to be excluded if its relevance to the case is outweighed by the potential of prejudice to the other side's case). Judge Lance Ito initially ruled that there had to be some evidence that Fuhrman planted the glove before the defense could question Fuhrman on racial slurs; eventually, however, Ito changed his mind and allowed the defense to cross-examine Fuhrman on the issue of racial animosity.
During cross-examination, Fuhrman denied using the word "nigger" in the previous ten years. In response, the defense produced four witnesses as well as an audiotape flatly contradicting his testimony. In one 1985 recording, Fuhrman gave a taped interview to Laura Hart McKinny, a writer working on a screenplay about female police officers. In the recording, Fuhrman bragged about his membership in the secret organization within the LAPD known as MAW (Men Against Women).[1] In further interviews, Fuhrman bragged about beating and torturing gang members and was quoted as saying, "Yeah we work with niggers and gangs. You can take one of these niggers, drag 'em into the alley and beat the shit out of them and kick them. You can see them twitch. It really relieves your tension."[2] He went on to say "we had them begging that they'd never be gang members again, begging us". He said that he would tell black people, "You do what you're told, understand, nigger?"."[3]
Although very limited excerpts of the tapes were admitted as evidence in the Simpson trial--and though the defense never proved anyone fabricated evidence in the case--the admitted portions of the tapes were strong enough to cast doubts on Fuhrman's motives and credibility.
With the jury absent on September 6, 1995, the defense asked Fuhrman whether or not he had ever falsified police reports or if he had planted or manufactured evidence in the Simpson case. He invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
After the trial, Los Angeles County district attorney Gil Garcetti initially said that Furhman did not commit perjury because the "nigger" quote was "not material to the case"--a key element of proving perjury.[1] However, many members of Garcetti's office took public stances on the issue, and Garcetti, citing the high level of emotionalism in his office about the Simpson case, opted to turn the decision to prosecute over to Attorney General Dan Lungren to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.[2]
On July 5 1996, Lungren announced that he would file perjury charges against Fuhrman. On October 2, Fuhrman pleaded no contest to the charges. He was sentenced to three years' probation and fined $200. As a result, Fuhrman is a convicted felon (a no-contest plea subjects the pleader to the same penalties as a guilty plea, but cannot be used to prove malice or whether the act was committed in a civil proceeding). Several investigations have since turned up no suspect complaints on any issue (including racial bias) or instances of evidence planting, but as of 2007 Fuhrman has never been publicly exonerated.
After the trial, Fuhrman retired to Sandpoint, Idaho. In 1997, he wrote a book about the Simpson case, called ''Murder in Brentwood''. It includes a foreword by Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor of the Charles Manson case.
In the book, Fuhrman apologized for making the remarks, calling them "immature, irresponsible ramblings" made out of a desire to make money. He also said that while Lungren's case was "flimsy at best," he pleaded no contest largely to protect his family from being hassled by the press. Fuhrman also claimed he could not afford to mount an effective defense; he already owed thousands of dollars in legal bills, and the area's Police Protective League would not help him with these expenses. He also claimed he could not afford living expenses for a trial that would take several months (or years, in case of an appeal). He also did not think that he could get a fair trial in the racially charged climate of the time, and feared it would cause a riot similar to the events of 1992.
Fuhrman believes that the LAPD could have arrested Simpson on the afternoon of June 13, based on the blood evidence and his apparently contradictory statements during questioning. However, he believes that senior LAPD officials didn't want to take a chance on being wrong about Simpson, and wanted to wait until the preliminary genetic evidence came in.
Fuhrman argues that several errors made by his LAPD colleagues opened the door for the defense to allege that there was suspicious police conduct at Nicole Brown Simpson's house. For instance, Fuhrman claims that the initial search warrant submitted by the lead detective on the case, Phillip Vanatter, was too short and didn't include enough details of the probable cause and evidence on hand at the time. He also argues that key pieces of evidence were mishandled. Fuhrman believes that his colleagues didn't realize that their every move would be scrutinized in court due to the nature of the case.
Fuhrman also argues that the police and the prosecution made other errors that reduced the chances of a guilty verdict. For example, Fuhrman and his partner, Brad Roberts, found a bloody fingerprint on the north walkway gate of Nicole Brown Simpson's house. According to Fuhrman, at least some of it belonged to the suspect, as there was enough blood at the scene to suggest the suspect was bleeding. This was potentially critical evidence; Simpson claimed that he'd cut himself on the night of the murders, but hadn't been to his ex-wife's house in a week. If the fingerprint could have been tied to Simpson in any fashion, it would have been a fatal blow to his defense. It also could have contradicted the defense's allegations that Fuhrman planted the glove, since he did not know or have reason to know that it was Simpson's blood.
However, the fingerprint was destroyed at some point, and was only mentioned superficially at trial. In fact, Fuhrman later found out Vanatter and his partner, Tom Lange, didn't even know the fingerprint was there because they never read Fuhrman's notes. Roberts could have offered testimony to corroborate that the fingerprint was there, but was never called to testify--something that rankled Fuhrman almost as much as the fact that Vanatter and Lange never read his notes. Fuhrman also claimed that Roberts could have corroborated many of his other observations, but Marcia Clark didn't call him to avoid embarrassing Vanatter on the stand.
Fuhrman feels the prosecution abandoned him once the tapes were made public. He said that he pleaded the Fifth after he couldn't get the prosecution to call him to the stand for a redirect prior to the tapes being played for the jury. Once the tapes came out, Fuhrman said, he would have been nearly beyond rehabilitation.
Like many critics of the prosecution, Fuhrman felt that Ito allowed the defense to control the trial. For instance, like Bugliosi, he insists that relevant case law demanded that Ito foreclose the defense from asking him about racial slurs because of the possibility of prejudice to the prosecution's case. However, Fuhrman goes as far to say that Ito should have never been put on the case in the first place. Ito was married to Margaret York, an LAPD captain who had worked with Fuhrman in the past, and Fuhrman felt that Ito should have been recused on that basis.
For his next book, ''Murder in Greenwich'', he investigated the then-unsolved 1975 murder of Martha Moxley and presented his theory that the murderer was Michael Skakel, nephew of Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Senator Robert Kennedy, which helped to re-open the case. Skakel was subsequently convicted of murder in June 2002. The book was made into a TV movie in 2002, starring Christopher Meloni ('', ''Oz'') as Fuhrman.
More recently, Fuhrman has written books on the controversial subjects of capital punishment and the medical treatment and death of Terri Schiavo.
Most recently, he has written a book on the John F. Kennedy assassination. In it he advances a theory debunking the Single Bullet Theory while still maintaining that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. He claims that the Warren Commission was forced to adopt the Single Bullet Theory for political reasons. However, he says that a dent in the presidential limousine used that day in the chrome above the windshield vindicates the story told by John Connally that a first shot at President John Kennedy did not hit him.
The divorced father of a son, Cole, and a daughter, Hayley, Fuhrman is a frequent guest of conservative commentator Sean Hannity for FOX News. He is also the host of the popular "Mark Fuhrman Show" on KGA in Spokane between the hours of 8am-11am Pacific. The show covers local and national topics and includes many guest callers and listeners.
In response to the proposed book ''If I Did It'' written by O.J. Simpson to be published by ReganBooks (an imprint of HarperCollins), Fuhrman stated that he would drop HarperCollins as the publisher of his own books in the future. However, the Simpson deal book was then cancelled.
1. Murder in Brentwood, , Mark, Fuhrman, Regnery Publishing, 1997,
2. http://www-tech.mit.edu/V115/N59/briefs2.59w.html
★ ''Murder in Brentwood'' (February 1, 1997), ISBN
★ ''Murder in Greenwich: Who Killed Martha Moxley?'' (June 1, 1998), ISBN 0-06-019141-4
★ ''Murder in Spokane: Catching a Serial Killer'' (May 22, 2001), ISBN 0-06-019437-5
★ ''Death and Justice: An Expose of Oklahoma's Death Row Machine'' (September 2, 2003), ISBN 0-06-000917-9
★ ''Silent Witness: The Untold Story of Terri Schiavo's Death'' (July 1, 2005), ISBN 0-06-085337-9
★ ''A Simple Act of Murder: November 22, 1963'' (May 2, 2006), ISBN 0-06-072154-5
Fuhrman tapes
In 1970, Fuhrman enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps at the age of eighteen. He was honorably discharged in 1975, having attained the rank of sergeant. He later joined the LAPD as a police officer and became a police detective. He served on the force for twenty years and earned more than fifty-five commendations. However, he is best known for his no contest to perjury during testimony in Simpson's murder trial.
| Contents |
| Role in O.J. Simpson murder trial |
| Post-Trial |
| ''Murder in Brentwood'' |
| Other books |
| Radio commentary |
| References |
| Books |
| See also |
Role in O.J. Simpson murder trial
Fuhrman was the officer who found both gloves--one at the murder scene, the other at Simpson's home--as well as a number of blood drops at the home. He entered Simpson's estate without a search warrant due to exigent circumstances--specifically, concern that Simpson himself might have been harmed.
During the infamous "slow speed pursuit," Fuhrman was tapped to be one of the "shooters" prepared to take down Simpson in the event he arrived at Simpson's estate before the SWAT team. He had a reputation as one of the most accurate marksmen in the LAPD.
Shortly after the preliminary hearing, Simpson's defense team alleged Fuhrman had planted the glove found at the estate as part of a racist-motivated effort to frame Simpson for the murders. This was a potentially serious charge; in California (as in most states), anyone who fabricates evidence in a death penalty case can be sentenced to death himself. As part of that strategy, Simpson's attorneys questioned Fuhrman about his use of racially insensitive language. The prosecution tried to stop the defense from pursuing this line of questioning by arguing that it was too inflammatory (most common-law jurisdictions require evidence to be excluded if its relevance to the case is outweighed by the potential of prejudice to the other side's case). Judge Lance Ito initially ruled that there had to be some evidence that Fuhrman planted the glove before the defense could question Fuhrman on racial slurs; eventually, however, Ito changed his mind and allowed the defense to cross-examine Fuhrman on the issue of racial animosity.
During cross-examination, Fuhrman denied using the word "nigger" in the previous ten years. In response, the defense produced four witnesses as well as an audiotape flatly contradicting his testimony. In one 1985 recording, Fuhrman gave a taped interview to Laura Hart McKinny, a writer working on a screenplay about female police officers. In the recording, Fuhrman bragged about his membership in the secret organization within the LAPD known as MAW (Men Against Women).[1] In further interviews, Fuhrman bragged about beating and torturing gang members and was quoted as saying, "Yeah we work with niggers and gangs. You can take one of these niggers, drag 'em into the alley and beat the shit out of them and kick them. You can see them twitch. It really relieves your tension."[2] He went on to say "we had them begging that they'd never be gang members again, begging us". He said that he would tell black people, "You do what you're told, understand, nigger?"."[3]
Although very limited excerpts of the tapes were admitted as evidence in the Simpson trial--and though the defense never proved anyone fabricated evidence in the case--the admitted portions of the tapes were strong enough to cast doubts on Fuhrman's motives and credibility.
With the jury absent on September 6, 1995, the defense asked Fuhrman whether or not he had ever falsified police reports or if he had planted or manufactured evidence in the Simpson case. He invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
After the trial, Los Angeles County district attorney Gil Garcetti initially said that Furhman did not commit perjury because the "nigger" quote was "not material to the case"--a key element of proving perjury.[1] However, many members of Garcetti's office took public stances on the issue, and Garcetti, citing the high level of emotionalism in his office about the Simpson case, opted to turn the decision to prosecute over to Attorney General Dan Lungren to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.[2]
On July 5 1996, Lungren announced that he would file perjury charges against Fuhrman. On October 2, Fuhrman pleaded no contest to the charges. He was sentenced to three years' probation and fined $200. As a result, Fuhrman is a convicted felon (a no-contest plea subjects the pleader to the same penalties as a guilty plea, but cannot be used to prove malice or whether the act was committed in a civil proceeding). Several investigations have since turned up no suspect complaints on any issue (including racial bias) or instances of evidence planting, but as of 2007 Fuhrman has never been publicly exonerated.
Post-Trial
''Murder in Brentwood''
After the trial, Fuhrman retired to Sandpoint, Idaho. In 1997, he wrote a book about the Simpson case, called ''Murder in Brentwood''. It includes a foreword by Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor of the Charles Manson case.
In the book, Fuhrman apologized for making the remarks, calling them "immature, irresponsible ramblings" made out of a desire to make money. He also said that while Lungren's case was "flimsy at best," he pleaded no contest largely to protect his family from being hassled by the press. Fuhrman also claimed he could not afford to mount an effective defense; he already owed thousands of dollars in legal bills, and the area's Police Protective League would not help him with these expenses. He also claimed he could not afford living expenses for a trial that would take several months (or years, in case of an appeal). He also did not think that he could get a fair trial in the racially charged climate of the time, and feared it would cause a riot similar to the events of 1992.
Fuhrman believes that the LAPD could have arrested Simpson on the afternoon of June 13, based on the blood evidence and his apparently contradictory statements during questioning. However, he believes that senior LAPD officials didn't want to take a chance on being wrong about Simpson, and wanted to wait until the preliminary genetic evidence came in.
Fuhrman argues that several errors made by his LAPD colleagues opened the door for the defense to allege that there was suspicious police conduct at Nicole Brown Simpson's house. For instance, Fuhrman claims that the initial search warrant submitted by the lead detective on the case, Phillip Vanatter, was too short and didn't include enough details of the probable cause and evidence on hand at the time. He also argues that key pieces of evidence were mishandled. Fuhrman believes that his colleagues didn't realize that their every move would be scrutinized in court due to the nature of the case.
Fuhrman also argues that the police and the prosecution made other errors that reduced the chances of a guilty verdict. For example, Fuhrman and his partner, Brad Roberts, found a bloody fingerprint on the north walkway gate of Nicole Brown Simpson's house. According to Fuhrman, at least some of it belonged to the suspect, as there was enough blood at the scene to suggest the suspect was bleeding. This was potentially critical evidence; Simpson claimed that he'd cut himself on the night of the murders, but hadn't been to his ex-wife's house in a week. If the fingerprint could have been tied to Simpson in any fashion, it would have been a fatal blow to his defense. It also could have contradicted the defense's allegations that Fuhrman planted the glove, since he did not know or have reason to know that it was Simpson's blood.
However, the fingerprint was destroyed at some point, and was only mentioned superficially at trial. In fact, Fuhrman later found out Vanatter and his partner, Tom Lange, didn't even know the fingerprint was there because they never read Fuhrman's notes. Roberts could have offered testimony to corroborate that the fingerprint was there, but was never called to testify--something that rankled Fuhrman almost as much as the fact that Vanatter and Lange never read his notes. Fuhrman also claimed that Roberts could have corroborated many of his other observations, but Marcia Clark didn't call him to avoid embarrassing Vanatter on the stand.
Fuhrman feels the prosecution abandoned him once the tapes were made public. He said that he pleaded the Fifth after he couldn't get the prosecution to call him to the stand for a redirect prior to the tapes being played for the jury. Once the tapes came out, Fuhrman said, he would have been nearly beyond rehabilitation.
Like many critics of the prosecution, Fuhrman felt that Ito allowed the defense to control the trial. For instance, like Bugliosi, he insists that relevant case law demanded that Ito foreclose the defense from asking him about racial slurs because of the possibility of prejudice to the prosecution's case. However, Fuhrman goes as far to say that Ito should have never been put on the case in the first place. Ito was married to Margaret York, an LAPD captain who had worked with Fuhrman in the past, and Fuhrman felt that Ito should have been recused on that basis.
Other books
''Murder in Greenwich'' by Mark Fuhrman
For his next book, ''Murder in Greenwich'', he investigated the then-unsolved 1975 murder of Martha Moxley and presented his theory that the murderer was Michael Skakel, nephew of Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Senator Robert Kennedy, which helped to re-open the case. Skakel was subsequently convicted of murder in June 2002. The book was made into a TV movie in 2002, starring Christopher Meloni ('', ''Oz'') as Fuhrman.
More recently, Fuhrman has written books on the controversial subjects of capital punishment and the medical treatment and death of Terri Schiavo.
Most recently, he has written a book on the John F. Kennedy assassination. In it he advances a theory debunking the Single Bullet Theory while still maintaining that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. He claims that the Warren Commission was forced to adopt the Single Bullet Theory for political reasons. However, he says that a dent in the presidential limousine used that day in the chrome above the windshield vindicates the story told by John Connally that a first shot at President John Kennedy did not hit him.
Radio commentary
The divorced father of a son, Cole, and a daughter, Hayley, Fuhrman is a frequent guest of conservative commentator Sean Hannity for FOX News. He is also the host of the popular "Mark Fuhrman Show" on KGA in Spokane between the hours of 8am-11am Pacific. The show covers local and national topics and includes many guest callers and listeners.
In response to the proposed book ''If I Did It'' written by O.J. Simpson to be published by ReganBooks (an imprint of HarperCollins), Fuhrman stated that he would drop HarperCollins as the publisher of his own books in the future. However, the Simpson deal book was then cancelled.
References
1. Murder in Brentwood, , Mark, Fuhrman, Regnery Publishing, 1997,
2. http://www-tech.mit.edu/V115/N59/briefs2.59w.html
Books
★ ''Murder in Brentwood'' (February 1, 1997), ISBN
★ ''Murder in Greenwich: Who Killed Martha Moxley?'' (June 1, 1998), ISBN 0-06-019141-4
★ ''Murder in Spokane: Catching a Serial Killer'' (May 22, 2001), ISBN 0-06-019437-5
★ ''Death and Justice: An Expose of Oklahoma's Death Row Machine'' (September 2, 2003), ISBN 0-06-000917-9
★ ''Silent Witness: The Untold Story of Terri Schiavo's Death'' (July 1, 2005), ISBN 0-06-085337-9
★ ''A Simple Act of Murder: November 22, 1963'' (May 2, 2006), ISBN 0-06-072154-5
See also
Fuhrman tapes
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