Jurors View Simpson Finger for Swelling : Trial: Shapiro suggests condition observed by detective on day after slayings was due to arthritis, not a knife cut.

For the second time since his murder trial began, O.J. Simpson walked the short distance from the defense table to the jury box Monday and showed off an ailment--this time to the middle finger of his left hand--as his lawyers sought to show that arthritis, not a knife cut, was responsible for swelling that a detective observed on that finger.

In his testimony last week and Monday, Detective Philip L. Vannatter said he had interviewed Simpson at Los Angeles police headquarters the afternoon after the June 12 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman. During that meeting, Vannatter said, he noticed a bandage on the middle finger of Simpson’s left hand--a potentially meaningful observation because investigators had found a row of blood drops to the left of a set of bloody footprints that led away from the bodies.

Simpson has pleaded not guilty to the murders.

Vannatter said Simpson’s hand was cut and swollen across the knuckles when he examined it June 13--an observation backed up by a photograph taken that day. Vannatter said the injuries to Simpson’s hand redoubled his belief that the former football star was a suspect. But Robert L. Shapiro, whose cross-examination of Vannatter was a contentious reprise of last summer’s faceoff between the two men, suggested that Simpson’s knuckles often are swollen because of a medical condition.

“What if his finger was always swollen due to a medical condition and not due to any laceration?” Shapiro asked. “Would that concern you?”

“I guess that could be a possibility,” Vannatter responded. “However, it appeared to be swollen from the laceration that morning.”

At Shapiro’s invitation, Vannatter walked to the defense table and stood over Simpson, who held out his hand as he was flanked by sheriff’s deputies. Then the former football star, smiling sheepishly and rolling his eyes, walked to the jury box, where he held out his hand for each of the jurors.

They looked but did not touch, even as Simpson stretched across the box to show the alternates in the back row. Jurors looked directly at Simpson’s hand, which trembled noticeably. It was the second time Simpson had approached the jury: During opening statements, he displayed his scarred knee as his lawyers sought to show that he was not physically capable of carrying out the brutal crimes.

As he walked back to his seat Monday, Simpson appeared surprised by the entire display. He glanced at members of his family and shrugged his shoulders.

Jurors’ faces did not betray what significance they attached to seeing the finger up close, but Vannatter, at least, was unimpressed.

“It didn’t look swollen to me,” the crusty veteran detective told Shapiro, who quixotically wore a blue ribbon pin signaling support for the Los Angeles Police Department even as he launched a cross-examination intended to belittle the department’s handling of the Simpson case.

Shapiro would not explain why he wore the pin, but his decision to do so surprised even members of the sometimes divided defense team.

Before Shapiro began his cross-examination, Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher A. Darden concluded his questioning of the detective. Darden already had conducted most of his examination last week, but he finished up by having Vannatter deny that police had rushed to judgment and by having him describe the handling of blood samples--including those taken from Simpson and both victims.

Defense lawyers have suggested that Vannatter might have used the blood vials to stain evidence in the case, part of their hotly disputed allegation of a police conspiracy against Simpson. But Vannatter said that by the time he returned to the crime scene to turn over Simpson’s blood vial to a police criminalist charged with booking evidence, bloody drops from the scene already had been collected.

Darden also played two videotapes for the jury. One showed Vannatter speaking to Simpson at the former football star’s mansion, where Vannatter said another officer mistakenly handcuffed Simpson. On the tape, Vannatter removes the handcuffs and then escorts Simpson to a waiting car.

The second tape was introduced merely to show that the crime scene and Simpson’s house are close to one another. That tape shows Vannatter driving between the two locations, obeying all traffic signals and staying below the speed limit. Even under those conditions, he makes the trip in just under six minutes.

Darden did not, however, choose to introduce a tape of Simpson speaking to Vannatter and his partner, Detective Tom Lange, shortly after the murders. That decision was a tactical move generally praised by legal analysts, who said prosecutors still could introduce the statement if Simpson chooses to testify but that withholding it for now keeps the jury from hearing Simpson’s account without his being forced to undergo cross-examination.

As the questioning shifted to the defense team, however, Shapiro attempted to portray Vannatter as an aging detective out of touch with modern investigative techniques, such as collection and preservation of DNA evidence. Vannatter conceded that he had not read textbooks on homicide investigation during the past decade, but said he constantly learns about investigative techniques from his cases, colleagues and occasional seminars.

At one point, Shapiro asked Vannatter whether he was an “old-school detective,” a description that the veteran officer shrugged off. “I don’t think I know what old school means, sir,” Vannatter said.

In addition to questioning the detective’s education in modern police techniques, Shapiro used his cross-examination to reiterate a central theme of the defense, that evidence was sloppily collected and that investigators mishandled the case.

Vannatter admitted that some mistakes were made--he said, for instance, that the officer who found the bodies should not have used Nicole Simpson’s telephone to call for backup. He also conceded that some of the police personnel who went to the crime scene were not veterans and that searches in Brentwood and Chicago never turned up bloody clothes or a murder weapon.

But he rejected other defense arguments, including the recurring suggestion that a cup of partially melted ice cream could have shed light on the killings. On Monday, Shapiro repeatedly asked the detective why he had not bothered to photograph a cup of ice cream found inside Nicole Simpson’s condominium; each time, Vannatter responded that he did not think the cup was important.

“If you had to do it all over again, you still wouldn’t take that ice cream cup?” Shapiro asked, just before the noon break, his voice lilting in disbelief.

“Monday morning quarterbacking is wonderful,” Vannatter responded, looking directly at the defense lawyer. “I still to this day don’t believe that the ice cream is connected to the crime scene.”

Shapiro has questioned only one other witness in the case, delicately and gently handling the cross-examination of Denise Brown, sister of Nicole Simpson. Shapiro was widely praised for that sensitive questioning of a witness whose emotional account posed problems for the defense.

Monday, however, Shapiro displayed a different, more combative side. And his approach drew mixed reviews from legal analysts--including some who had criticized F. Lee Bailey for his questioning of LAPD Detective Mark Fuhrman, who spent most of last week on the stand.

“Shapiro is really laying out Vannatter,” said Ira Reiner, a former Los Angeles County district attorney. “The whole thrust of the cross-examination is to portray Vannatter as a detective of the old school, with disdain for newfangled scientific investigative techniques. The point is to explain why the evidence was handled carelessly and perhaps contaminated. Shapiro is doing much better than F. Lee Bailey did with Mark Fuhrman.”

But Robert Philibosian, another former Los Angeles County district attorney, sharply disagreed.

“I thought that Shapiro confused repetition and sarcasm with effective cross-examination,” Philibosian said. “It was apparent that Shapiro was trying to get at Fuhrman through Vannatter. He failed miserably.”

Shapiro questioned Vannatter at several points about Fuhrman’s actions outside Simpson’s house. But Vannatter did not undercut his colleague. To the contrary, he echoed Fuhrman’s description of some actions that the officers took and supported the younger detective’s decision to wander up and down the street while other officers rang the bell to Simpson’s house.

It was during that foray that Fuhrman said he looked inside Simpson’s Ford Bronco and spotted items that raised concern. Defense lawyers have suggested that Fuhrman was in fact wandering off to plant evidence against Simpson, an accusation vehemently denied by the detective and so far unsupported by evidence.

In addition to the mixed reviews from the legal commentators, Shapiro’s questioning drew frequent objections from prosecutors, most of them sustained, and an occasional rebuke from Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito, who sustained some of his own objections to Shapiro’s questions.

The most pointed comments from the judge came as Shapiro was questioning Vannatter’s motives for going to Simpson’s house on the morning after the murders.

“When you said you were going to check on the welfare of someone, whose welfare were you going to check on, sir?” Shapiro asked.

“Mr. Simpson,” Vannatter responded.

“Because you were concerned about him, weren’t you?” Shapiro asked.

“I wasn’t so much concerned about him,” Vannatter answered, speaking slowly and appearing to choose his words carefully. “I had concerns for the children. I wanted to meet him. I was informed that a commander of the Police Department had ordered an in-person notification. And I knew it was going to be a very newsworthy case, and I thought it best that we make a notification before the press did.”

Shapiro, who paced between the two courtroom lecterns all day, gesturing effusively with his hands as he tried to bear down on the detective, scowled in disbelief at that response: “Have you memorized that response?” Shapiro said. “That’s about the third time you’ve given it to us.”

Before Vannatter could answer, prosecutor Darden objected, and Ito sustained that objection, ordering the jury to disregard Shapiro’s question.

Still, Shapiro persisted: “Is that the verbatim response that you gave at the preliminary hearing?”

Darden objected again, prompting Ito to sustain the objection again. And this time, the judge added a barbed remark at the defense attorney.

“Mr. Shapiro,” he said. “When I caution you on something, I don’t expect the next question to be the same thing.”

Shapiro then apologized and moved on.

While Simpson’s lawyer was battling with one police detective in court, another Simpson attorney was trading comments with a police association.

Last week, defense lawyer and Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, in discussing Fuhrman’s testimony, said police officers are trained to lie on the witness stand, an assertion for which he offered no evidence and that enraged officers from coast to coast.

Monday, Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams again defended the conduct of his officers, and the California Organization of Police and Sheriffs angrily demanded that Dershowitz apologize for the remarks.

“A civilized, law-abiding society should no longer accept the unprofessional, counterproductive conduct of individuals such as Alan Dershowitz,” the organization said in a statement. “One has to wonder why any credible university would allow Mr. Dershowitz the opportunity to spew his anti-law enforcement venom under the guise of freedom of speech. Speech lacking responsibility is nothing more than the ranting and ravings of a hate-filled, anti-social fool.”

Despite that demand, Dershowitz not only refused to apologize but reiterated his original comments.

“Of course, I will not apologize for telling the truth,” he said in an interview. “Nor will I be coerced by the threatening and intimidating language used by certain police officers. . . . Until and unless the police of this country begin to understand that their job of protecting citizens does not include perjury, the liberty of all Americans will be placed in danger.”

City leaders, including Chief Williams and Mayor Richard Riordan, have scheduled a rally today to defend the Police Department against criticisms lodged by the defense team. City Councilman Hal Bernson introduced a motion saying the Simpson team’s attacks have hurt Police Department morale, an accusation echoed by the police union.

That rally is scheduled for this morning at the same time Shapiro is expected to be continuing his cross-examination of Vannatter.

Times staff writer Henry Weinstein contributed to this article.