PROSECUTORS DROP DEMAND THAT ITO STEP DOWN IN CASE

Prosecutors backed off today from a decision that could have crippled the trial of O. J. Simpson, announcing that they would no longer insist that Judge Lance A. Ito was ethically bound to withdraw from the case.

After an evening of frantic activity and second thoughts, Deputy District Attorney Marcia Clark told Judge Ito this morning that even though a crucial prosecution witness, Detective Mark Fuhrman, can be heard ridiculing the judge's wife in audiotapes that the jury may soon hear, prosecutors believed the judge could still render justice in the case.

Ms. Clark's somber concession, read from a text rather than spoken with her usual extemporaneous enthusiasm, spared all parties to the trial from potentially crippling delays as another judge came up to speed. It may have also spared everyone a greater debacle: a mistrial, followed by all-but-certain defense arguments that Mr. Simpson could not legally be tried again.

"Upon weighing the apparent conflict and the defense desire to make these tapes the cornerstone of their case against the ability of this court to maintain its impartiality in the face of great temptation to do otherwise," Ms. Clark said, "we have determined that our faith in this court's wisdom and integrity has not been and will not be misplaced."

On several occasions and before three different judges, including Judge Ito himself, who had conceded that any unkind words about his wife would wound him, Ms. Clark said the judge had no choice but to withdraw from the case. And Judge Ito appeared to agree, at least to a point. He conceded that the taped-recorded insults of his wife, made to a film professor in North Carolina, could make him look biased no matter how he ruled on anything related to Mr. Fuhrman.

But Ms. Clark said she would weigh such a drastic request overnight, and this morning she inched back from the precipice. She yielded to defense lawyers, who have maintained all along that Judge Ito could decide whether the jury should hear portions of Mr. Fuhrman's 13 hours of taped interviews with Laura Hart McKinny, an aspiring screenwriter in Winston-Salem, N.C.