Lance Allan Ito (born August 2, 1950) is an American retired judge, best known for presiding over the criminal trial for the O.J. Simpson murder case, held in the Los Angeles County Superior Court in 1995. He was married to Margaret York, an LAPD police officer, from 1981 until her death in 2021. During the O. J. Simpson murder case trial, over which Judge Ito presided, a key witness in the trial was Mark Fuhrman, a police officer who once was a subordinate of York's. Fuhrman had been caught on tape disparaging York, and the prosecution in the trial threatened to call York as a witness as a way to disqualify Ito from continuing his role in the case. ​From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia