THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : Flare-Up Reveals Pressures : Trial: Some experts say the prosecution’s anxiety was evident in contretemps between Darden and Ito. Others fault the judge. One sees the hand of Cochran.

Was Thursday’s tense standoff between an angry Judge Lance A. Ito and a recalcitrant deputy district attorney, Christopher A. Darden, high drama or low farce?

Legal analysts were divided. But they agreed that the scene that developed when Ito came close to holding Darden in contempt--for refusing to apologize for a remark during a so-called sidebar conference--embodied two of the O.J. Simpson double-murder case’s continuing subplots: Ito’s sometimes halting attempts to control his courtroom and the prosecutors’ visible struggle to cope with the trial’s mounting pressures.

“If I had to give this incident a title,” said Los Angeles defense lawyer Gerald L. Chaleff, “it would be ‘Much Ado About Nothing.’ It was the kind of situation that naturally arises in the heat of battle. These people are tired. They’re under great stress, and sometimes tempers flare. Obviously, Judge Ito didn’t want to hold him in contempt. But it was equally obvious that, at least for a time, Chris Darden felt that what he’d said was necessary and proper.”

But one of Chaleff’s colleagues, defense attorney Albert De Blanc Jr., said he found it “alarming that Judge Ito ratcheted the situation up to a point where an immediate apology was required. It was the kind of standoff between a lawyer and a judge that should not have happened in a case that is being watched around the world.”

Retired Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Jack Tenner faulted Ito for not taking firmer control of the situation. “If he really thought Darden was guilty of contempt,” Tenner said, “he should simply have cited him and then moved on. Instead, you have this crazy situation in which Ito basically ran after Darden begging him, ‘Please, please, please apologize,’ and Darden just refused. It made them both look juvenile. In the end, it wasn’t about contempt of court at all, but about whose ego would have to give way. That’s unseemly.”

New York defense attorney David L. Lewis argued that Ito’s previous conduct--threats ofretribution followed by retreat and alternately courting and castigating the media--had paved the way for Thursday’s confrontation.

“The authority conferred by a judge’s robe,” Lewis said, “can be undermined by the individual inside it. . . . When the judge asserts his authority to shut a lawyer down and the lawyer goes forward anyway--especially a prosecutor--it is a sign that his power over that courtroom is eroding right in front of us. Threatening a prosecutor with contempt is like dropping a nuclear bomb. A judge who does that and doesn’t follow through has . . . emptied his holster for the rest of the trial.”

Santa Monica defense lawyer GiGi Gordon said that while “Ito shouldn’t have had to ask three times before Darden apologized, I also thought it was interesting that Ito then apologized himself. In fact, he did everything but say, ‘It hurt me more than it hurt you.’ It made him sound sort of like a hesitant parent apologizing to the child he just spanked.”

Not all observers, however, agreed that Ito’s handling of the incident was either hesitant or an overreaction. “I thought it was about time that the judge became annoyed with the lawyers,” said Southwestern University School of Law professor Myrna Raeder. “It’s clear that most of them have been taking advantage of the judge’s previous patience. In fact, this was the first indication we’ve had that the judge is ready to reassert his control over the courtroom.

“So I was amazed that Darden didn’t respond immediately. It was clear that all Ito wanted was an apology. Yet when Darden made it, he could hardly get out the words.”

To many analysts, Darden’s recalcitrance was another indication of how the trial’s various pressures continue to tell on a prosecution team that has had a rocky couple of days.

“That courtroom is a pressure cooker,” said one veteran district attorney, who asked not be identified, “and Chris is the part of the stew with the lowest boiling point. I’m not surprised he was the one who blew first.”

According to veteran Deputy Dist. Atty. Harvey Giss, the prosecutors’ day got off to a particularly jarring start Thursday, when they heard their boss, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, responding to speculation that the jury in the Simpson case may ultimately fail to reach a verdict.

“If we wind up with a hung jury in this case,” Garcetti told a CBS Morning News interviewer, “I tell you right now, if the case is 11 to 1 in favor of acquittal--which would be a shock to me if that happens--we will retry this case.”

“I bet you Johnnie (Cochran Jr.) is just having fun,” Giss said. “He can afford to. He didn’t wake up hearing the district attorney saying if the case hangs, we will retry it. That is the fuel that feeds the fire of the defense’s hope. The two prosecutors are left with nothing to say to themselves but, ‘It’s not over till the fat lady sings.’

“You don’t want to talk that negative talk,” he said. “It has to hit the two prosecutors.”

According to another source close to the prosecution, Darden’s own superiors were displeased when he allowed himself to be interviewed Wednesday night by talk show personality Geraldo Rivera. During the course of that interview, which Darden insists he did not know was being broadcast, the prosecutor appeared to criticize the performance of the Los Angeles police officers who have testified in the case.

“I would like the officers to be a bit more aggressive,” he said. “They are answering the questions being put to them (on cross-examination), and some of those questions I think are a bit ridiculous. And I wish that they would point that out to the jury on occasion. . . . I am sure (Cochran) is scoring some points.”

Darden’s further irritation at being taken to task for those remarks, according to the source close to the prosecution, “put him on edge for the whole day. I think Cochran, who has superb courtroom instincts, could sense that, and that’s why he goaded him the way he did during the sidebar.”

Indeed, a transcript of the conversation, which occurred outside the jury’s presence, shows what appears to be a relatively innocuous exchange. At one point, Cochran, responding to a remark by lead prosecutor Marcia Clark, quipped that the prosecutors “obviously haven’t tried any cases in a long time and obviously don’t know how.”

Darden snapped in reply, “Who is he talking about, doesn’t know how to try a case?”

Ito intervened, “Wait Mr. Darden,” to which the prosecutor replied, “Is he the only lawyer that knows how to try the case?”

To defense attorney Gordon, at least, the drama that followed was “sound and fury signifying nothing,” for a purely practical reason:

“It’s difficult to apologize if you think you’re right,” she said, “but sometimes you have to do it. What’s the alternative? These people are going to have to spend the next three months together.”