Fingerprints Don't Link O.J. to Scene / But expert also can't exclude him

O. J. Simpson's lawyers called a police fingerprint expert yesterday to show that no prints from the former football hero were found at the crime scene and that nine prints recovered could not be identified, suggesting the possibility of an unknown killer.

But prosecutors pointed out that the Los Angeles Police Department expert had not checked the nine prints against fingerprints from Nicole Brown Simpson's children and sisters and that the expert could not rule out that three unidentifiable prints lifted at the scene had come from O. J. Simpson.

The fingerprint specialist, Gilbert Aguilar, testified that 17 prints were lifted from surfaces inside and outside Nicole Simpson's town house at 875 South Bundy Drive, where she and Ronald Goldman were killed June 12, 1994.

Of those prints, Aguilar said, five were identified as coming from Nicole Simpson, her friend Faye Resnick and police personnel involved in the investigation.

Nine prints were identifiable but did not match prints from O. J. Simpson, the victims, friends, family or any investigators, Aguilar said.

But on cross-examination, Aguilar acknowledged that he had not checked the prints against those of Simpson's two young children, two of Nicole Simpson's sisters, her housekeeper or groundskeeper.

As for the three remaining prints, which were not clear enough to identify positively, prosecutor Chris Darden asked: "Can you tell us whether or not the defendant left those prints?"

"No," Aguilar answered.

In another development, Judge Lance Ito tentatively agreed, over defense objections, that the jury should make a second visit to the Bundy Drive town house.

Prosecutors requested a visit Sunday night so that jurors can see the lighting conditions about the same time the slayings occurred. The jury's first visit took place on a bright, sunlit day.

Ito said that he and attorneys for both sides will make a "dry run" to the site tonight and that if a broken "landscape light" near where the victims' bodies were found cannot be restored to its position on the night of the slayings, the jury visit will be canceled.

Also yesterday, a private investigator working for former Los Angeles Detective Mark Fuhrman said his client had a "mental block" when he denied on the witness stand that he had used the word "nigger" in the past 10 years.

The investigator, Anthony Pellicano, said that when Fuhrman was testifying he forgot about the taped interviews he had given to North Carolina screenwriter Laura McKinny over a 10-year period between 1985 and 1994. The 12 to 13 hours of recordings, on which Fuhrman reportedly uses the racial slur at least 30 times, landed like a bombshell in the middle of the Simpson case this week.

In March, when Fuhrman testified, defense attorney F. Lee Bailey asked him specifically about his use of the racial epithet. "And you say under oath that you have not addressed any black person as a 'nigger' or spoken about black people as 'niggers' in the past 10 years, Detective Fuhrman?" the lawyer asked.

"That's what I'm saying, sir," answered Fuhrman.