Attorneys

Maneuvering to gut O.J. Simpson's defense, the lead lawyer pressing a civil lawsuit against the former football star has requested that jurors not hear a word about racist cops planting evidence, sloppy technicians contaminating samples or detectives rushing to frame Simpson for a gruesome double murder. Attorney Daniel M.

Shortly after he was admitted in 1978, Evan Wolfson turned down Harvard Law School. Wolfson--a New York-based civil rights attorney who is co-counsel on the landmark Hawaii gay marriage case slated for trial Sept. 10--had had a couple of "intense crushes" on male classmates at Yale college and realized he was gay. Needing time to sort out his personal life, he instead joined the Peace Corps, which assigned him to Pagouda, in Togo, Africa.

A federal judge has disqualified attorney Allan H. Stokke from representing Dr. Sergio C. Stone, one of three doctors at the center of the UC Irvine fertility clinic scandal, because of a potential conflict of interest. Stokke was ordered removed from the case in a two-page order signed by U.S. District Judge Gary L. Taylor on Tuesday. The order had been requested by federal prosecutors, who pointed out that Stokke's firm also represented Dr. Jose P. Balmaceda when the scandal erupted in 1995.

The Board of Supervisors this week agreed to extend through July 1998 the contracts of two employee associations. The Orange County Law Enforcement Managers Assn. represents captains and lieutenants in the Sheriff's Department, and the Orange County Attorneys Assn. represents county lawyers and prosecutors. The two bargaining groups have a total of about 420 members.

An attorney representing the Hawaiian Gardens Redevelopment Agency has dropped his client over the City Council's plan to repay the agency more than $4 million, contending that the building the city offered as collateral would not cover the debt. Graham Ritchie, who worked under contract with the agency, submitted his letter of resignation Tuesday, just hours before the council voted to mortgage the city's recreation center.

A federal judge on Monday agreed to reconsider his ruling that disqualified Allan H. Stokke from representing Dr. Sergio C. Stone, who is scheduled to go on trial next week on charges stemming from the UC Irvine fertility clinic scandal. U.S. District Judge Gary L. Taylor removed Stokke from the case last week, citing a potential conflict of interest because Stokke's law firm had also represented Dr. Jose P. Balmaceda when the scandal erupted. Stone, Balmaceda and Dr. Ricardo H.

Celebrated defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz returned to a Southern California courtroom Monday, but to a far less glamorous setting than the murder trial of O.J. Simpson. The defendant was a no-name. The TV cameras were gone. And Dershowitz lost. Dershowitz argued in a U.S. District Court here on behalf Nagesh Shetty, a Huntington Beach doctor charged with filing a false tax return. Dershowitz flew cross-country to argue a single motion on the doctor's behalf.

In a rare challenge to the U.S. Olympic Committee's nominating committee, 15 member organizations combined efforts to place Los Angeles lawyer Michael Lenard on the ballot for president opposite Bill Hybl. Lenard, 41, is a 1984 Olympian in team handball serving his second term as a USOC vice-president.

A federal appeals court judge said Tuesday that the verdict in the O.J. Simpson murder trial was "astonishing," and he decried the "bizarre and unseemly" rush of participants in the case to sell books about their experiences. Judge Stephen Reinhardt of Los Angeles was particularly critical of the lucrative deals made by deputy district attorneys Marcia Clark and Christopher A. Darden, the lead prosecutors, who garnered $4.2 million and $1.3 million, respectively, for their as-told-to books.

Serial killer William G. Bonin, condemned more than 12 years ago to die, has managed to outlast some of the key players in the case that sent him to death row. "Jigsaw John" St. John, the storied Los Angeles detective who chased down Bonin in 1980, died last year. Kenneth E. Lae, the Orange County judge who imposed one of two death sentences, died in 1987. Bonin, convicted of killing 14 people in 1979 and 1980, is scheduled to be executed just after midnight Friday morning.