Saturday September 2 7:27 a.m. EDT

Simpson Defense Begins New Attack on Fuhrman

LOS ANGELES (Reuter) - O.J. Simpson's defense team, stunned by Judge Lance Ito's decision limiting them to presenting to jurors only two taped instances of Mark Fuhrman using a racial slur, has begun a new assault on the former police detective.

Attorney F. Lee Bailey said Friday the defense wanted to introduce two new witnesses who would testify that Fuhrman frequently used the word ``nigger,'' and lead defense lawyer Johnnie Cochran accused the prosecution of deliberately covering up Fuhrman's racial animosity.

Defense attorney Gerald Uelmen said there was new evidence that cast doubt on testimony by Fuhrman and fellow detectives that they had probable cause to enter the former football star's mansion the morning after his ex-wife and her friend were stabbed to death outside her condominium.

Fuhrman testified that he found a bloody glove on Simpson's estate, only two miles from the scene of the killings. The defense says Fuhrman is a racist who planted the glove in order to frame the black football player. Fuhrman is white, as were both victims.

Uelmen, in a verbal motion to the court to have all the evidence found at Simpson's estate suppressed, said the new evidence was contained in the now infamous ``Fuhrman tapes.''

Ito said he was prepared to allow the new witnesses, black former Marine Roderick Hodge and a woman named Natalie Singer whose roommate had befriended Fuhrman in 1987.

Bailey said Hodge would testify that Fuhrman arrested him in 1986 on a drug conspiracy charge of which he was later acquitted. While he was being taken to the police station in a patrol car, Bailey said, Fuhrman turned to him and said, ``I told you I'd get you, nigger.'' He also made disparaging remarks about Hodge's mother, who is white.

The attack on the prosecution was launched by Cochran, who told Ito outside the presence of the jury that the District Attorney's office, and lead prosecutor Marcia Clark in particular, had tried to cover up Fuhrman's racism.

He said Deputy District Attorney Lucy Anne Coleman had told Clark and Deputy District Attorney William Hodgman, who was working with Clark on the Simpson case, in August of last year that Fuhrman's colleagues were saying he was a racist who was capable of planting the glove on Simpson's estate.