THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : Prosecutor Vows to Attack Defense DNA Testing Expert : Forensics: If Nobel Prize winner testifies, motion says, he will be asked about allegations of scientific fraud and drug use. Simpson attorney says such a move would be ‘character assassination.’

A prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson double murder trial threatened Monday to launch a personal attack on a Nobel Prize-winning chemist, who Simpson attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. promised jurors would be an expert witness for the defense, if the chemist is called as a witness.

Kary Mullis won a 1993 Nobel Prize for conceiving a process called PCR that is used in testing blood samples for DNA, but a motion filed by prosecutor Rockne P. Harmon asserts that Mullis’ expertise has little relevance to the Simpson trial.

The defense has suggested that Mullis will say he has reservations about the forensic applications of DNA testing in criminal cases.

Harmon also alleged in the motion that Mullis has admitted engaging in scientific fraud and is a self-admitted “longtime drug (LSD) user/abuser.”

Harmon’s motion offers no detail to substantiate the allegations.

“Should the defense choose to call Dr. Mullis to voice any relevant criticisms about forensic PCR applications, the prosecution is fully prepared to cross-examine Mullis on every aspect of his life which reflects on his credibility, competency and sobriety,” said Harmon, a deputy district attorney in Alameda County who is a DNA expert and is assisting the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office in the Simpson case.

He launched the salvo against Mullis in a motion seeking to limit questioning that would attack the reliability of DNA evidence.

Mullis was not available for comment. But defense DNA lawyers issued a sharp retort.

“On the one hand, prosecutor Rock Harmon is saying we have no right to attack the reliability of DNA testing, with the opinions of world-renowned scientists, yet he should have the right to attack the credibility of the scientist who won the Nobel Prize for inventing the very technology, because of his personal views on matters completely unrelated to the issue at hand,” said attorneys Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, who specialize in DNA matters.

“What Harmon proposes to do is character assassination of Dr. Mullis, instead of rebuttal to Dr. Mullis’ scientific views. The most important point is he does not identify any prosecution witnesses who will actually say that they disregard Mullis’ views about PCR on the basis of his lifestyle. That’s utter nonsense; that is just Harmon,” Scheck and Neufeld added.

Prosecutors filed the provocative warning about Mullis in one of three motions on DNA issues unsealed by Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito on Monday. The prosecutors have asked for a Wednesday hearing on several DNA-related issues.

The prosecution moves illustrate the critical nature of DNA evidence in the case, in which there is no known eyewitness and no murder weapon recovered.

In another motion, prosecutors asked defense lawyers to accept a stipulation of certain facts about DNA tests that the defense conducted on two blood samples recovered at the scene of the June 12 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald L. Goldman and on one blood sample recovered from Goldman’s shoes.

The proposed stipulation presents Simpson’s lawyers with some potentially unenviable choices.

If the defense accepts the prosecution’s proposal, jurors would be told that a defense expert, Larry Ragle, picked up the three samples from the Los Angeles Police Department, on Oct. 27, 1994, pursuant to a court order; that portions of the samples were consumed during testing by the defense, and that the sample containers were returned to the LAPD on March 10.

If the defense refuses, however, the prosecutors say they will call Ragle and two other experts--Dr. Frederick Reeders of National Medical Services and Dr. Kevin D. Ballard of Baylor College of Medicine--to establish the chain of custody and consumption of the samples.

“The defense must be mindful . . . of the inescapable conclusion that would arise in the minds of the jury upon hearing the testimony from these witnesses--that the defense shopped these items around until they found someone who might tell them what they sought to hear,” according to papers filed by Harmon.

Simpson’s lawyers said they would respond to the prosecution’s contentions in court.

Peter G. Keane, San Francisco’s chief deputy public defender and a DNA expert, said the defense team would be wise to accept the stipulation.

The defense would not want “to be beat over the head with the fact that they tested something and did not introduce the results,” Keane said. “The jury would draw the inference the results were unfavorable to the defense. The prosecution would not be filing this motion if they expected the defense to introduce those test results.”

In a third motion filed Monday, the district attorney’s office vigorously opposed any attempt by O.J. Simpson’s defense lawyers to challenge the admissibility of DNA evidence.

This prosecution move came in response to a motion filed by Simpson’s lawyers last week, seeking to resurrect a challenge to the admission of DNA evidence that they waived earlier in the case. Specifically, the defense requested an admissibility hearing on all DNA test results submitted since they abandoned their pretrial challenge of such evidence on Jan. 4.

“It would be unfair to force a defendant to decide whether and how to challenge DNA evidence before knowing about that (upcoming) evidence,” according to the defense motion prepared by Scheck and Neufeld.

“It would be particularly unfair to hold that a defendant’s ‘waiver’ with respect to one set of DNA evidence . . . is binding with respect to later-disclosed items of DNA evidence,” the motion added.

If Judge Ito granted the defense motion, testimony in the trial could be interrupted for several weeks by the wrangling over what DNA evidence could be admitted.

Prosecutors retorted Monday that the motion should be summarily rejected: “Defendant (Simpson) should not be permitted to evade the consequences of his tactical decision to forgo his right to challenge the admissibility of DNA testing.”

The prosecution response notes that during the Jan. 4 hearing, Simpson told Ito that he had read the waiver and had “full confidence” in his lawyers’ decision. At the time, defense lawyers cited Simpson’s desire to get the trial started and the potential cost and length of a DNA admissibility hearing as reasons for waiving the hearing.

Simpson’s lawyers “were clearly aware on Jan. 4” that DNA tests were ongoing and that the results of those tests would be given to Ito, the prosecutors said.

Legal experts said they thought that the defense motion might reflect particular concern about a recently completed DNA test result, first publicly described by prosecutors in mid-February, indicating that a blood drop from a gate at the murder scene is consistent with Simpson’s blood.

Southwestern University law Prof. Myrna Raeder, a DNA expert, said the defense’s attempt to reopen the admissibility of DNA is a “real long shot.”

Keane agreed: “I can’t imagine Ito granting that request. Essentially, on Jan. 4, the defense said RFLP and PCR (the two basic types of DNA testing) are admissible and on all the remaining questions we give up. They signed away all title to the farm, in my opinion. I couldn’t believe they did it, and I still can’t.”

But Los Angeles defense lawyer Marcia A. Morrissey said, “I don’t think it’s all that unreasonable that the defense should be permitted to challenge tests conducted after he entered into the waiver. That’s only fair. He didn’t agree to waive test results forever after.”

Ultimately, predicted Loyola Law School Prof. Laurie Levenson, it is virtually certain that DNA evidence will be admitted at the trial. But she predicted that the defense would continue to attack the methods that the police used to collect blood samples in an attempt to cast doubts about the merits of the DNA evidence.