Laura Hart McKinny, a screenwriter who had recorded extensive interviews with Detective Mark Fuhrman between 1985 and 1994 for a screenplay project, became one of the most consequential witnesses in the trial when the defense used her tapes to undermine Fuhrman's credibility. She testified over three days in late August and early September 1995, first in a hearing on the tapes' admissibility and then before the jury, authenticating recordings in which Fuhrman used racial epithets and described police misconduct. Prosecutor Christopher Darden cross-examined McKinny aggressively, challenging the accuracy of her transcriptions, while defense attorneys Gerald Uelmen and Johnnie Cochran used her testimony to lay the foundation for the defense's argument that Fuhrman was a racist who could not be trusted. Her tapes triggered a chain of courtroom battles that culminated in Fuhrman invoking the Fifth Amendment and reshaped the trial's final weeks.