THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : Simpson Prosecutors Detail Trail of Blood

More than 10 weeks after delivering their opening statement to the jury, prosecutors in the trial of O.J. Simpson on Monday began the painstaking process of using blood, hair and fiber samples in an attempt to link Simpson to the murders of his ex-wife and her friend.

They launched that phase of their case with a methodical, drop-by-drop look at the blood leading away from the two victims and at the series of stains running from Simpson’s Ford Bronco to his front door--the drops that prosecutors have described as a literal trail of blood linking Simpson to the crimes.

In describing evidence found at the crime scene, Los Angeles Police Department criminalist Dennis Fung said shoe prints and blood drops suggested that the assailant, who authorities contend was wounded in the attack, walked rather than ran from the victims toward a back alley.

Simpson had two cuts on the middle finger of his left hand when police questioned him the day after the killings. Simpson’s attorneys said he cut his hand in a Chicago hotel after learning of his ex-wife’s death. He has pleaded not guilty to the June 12 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman.

Under questioning from Deputy Dist. Atty. Hank Goldberg, Fung identified the most hotly contested piece of evidence in the case--the bloody glove found on the grounds of Simpson’s estate, which prosecutors say links the former football star to the murders and which defense lawyers say was planted by a police officer they accuse of being a racist.

Narrating his own actions for the court record, Fung described unsealing the package that contained the famous item, innocuously labeled “Number 9” on the police inventory.

“Cutting away the bottom edge of the bag,” Fung said as he snipped the package with a pair of scissors. “And within the bag is a glove.”

He then held the right-handed brown leather glove in front of the jury and rested it on the witness stand. Jurors stared at the item for about two minutes as Fung studied it, looking at one point for a tag indicating its size. He then repackaged the glove and put it back inside the cardboard box in which it was stored.

The debut of the crucial phase of the prosecution case came just after the two sides squared off outside the jury’s presence over limits on cross-examining one of the government’s upcoming witnesses, deputy medical examiner Irwin Golden. Golden performed the autopsies on the two victims, but defense attorney Robert L. Shapiro appeared to get the better of him during the preliminary hearing.

Since then, Golden has issued a number of addenda to his original autopsy findings. Those records remain sealed despite efforts by various news organizations to have them made public.

*

As they prepare to question Golden in front of the jury, defense lawyers say they want to ask him about mistakes in prior cases, about his gun collection and about an incident in which he allegedly joked about wanting to kill lawyers. Prosecutors, who have said they want to bring up personal and lifestyle questions regarding a defense DNA expert, filed a motion under seal seeking to limit that type of questioning about Golden.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Brian Kelberg, a prosecutor representing the government on that issue, acknowledged that he and other members of the prosecution team have different positions on the scope of cross-examining expert witnesses. But Kelberg insisted his view was the correct one, even if that meant that his colleague, Deputy Dist. Atty. Rockne Harmon, was incorrect last week in asking for wide latitude in questioning defense expert Dr. Kary Mullis, a controversial Nobel Prize winner who invented a form of DNA testing.

Harmon argued last week that he should be allowed to ask Mullis about his admitted use of LSD and about his unorthodox views on the causes of AIDS, among other things. Kelberg argued Monday that defense lawyers should not be allowed to ask Golden about mistakes he has made in past cases or about a July 21 incident in which he said that lawyers should be killed. Prosecutors say the comment was clearly made in jest.

“We ought to go out and kill nine or 10 of those attorneys,” the defense maintains that Golden said during the outburst. Gerald Uelmen, one of Simpson’s lawyers, said that remark appeared directed at the defense team and that it suggested Golden was biased against the defense.

“There is simply nothing funny about a threat to kill nine or 10 attorneys,” the defense said in its motion. Kelberg responded by repeating a joke from the movie “Philadelphia” demeaning lawyers and by saying that Golden’s comments only reflected a widespread public distaste for attorneys, not a specific bias against the defense team.

While Golden’s remarks, which have been widely reported in the past, formed one disputed area of potential questioning, another focused on the deputy medical examiner’s mistakes in two past cases, both involving his analysis of gunshot wounds. Although Kelberg argued that the cases were too old and the circumstances too unrelated to the Simpson case to be relevant, defense attorneys said jurors were entitled to hear about them.

“No question could be more relevant in cross-examining an expert than to ask, ‘Doctor, have you made mistakes before in rendering an expert opinion regarding wounds?’ ” said the defense motion in language closely followed by Uelmen in court. “Ordinarily, the answer to that question would be: ‘Not that I’m aware of.’ In Dr. Golden’s case, the answer must be not once but twice. The jury that will be instructed to give his opinions the weight they believe they deserve is entitled to hear that answer.”

Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito did not immediately rule on the Golden dispute. The judge said he did not expect to hear the testimony about the autopsies for at least another three weeks, so a ruling on Golden’s appearance was not immediately necessary, nor was one required on a dispute over which autopsy photographs the jury should be allowed to see.

As the prosecution embarked on its presentation of the physical evidence, Goldberg, who has not previously questioned witnesses in the Simpson case, assumed the lead role in examining Fung, though the attorney consulted frequently with lead prosecutor Marcia Clark.

Fung, a senior police criminalist, stammered and struggled with some of his early answers, but he seemed to loosen up under Goldberg’s gentle, methodical questioning.

Fung’s handling of the evidence has come under vigorous attack from the Simpson defense team. As the session began Monday, he described his qualifications in detail and led the jurors through his actions on the morning after the murders.

Fung said a junior associate, Andrea Mazzola, was the on-duty criminalist on the weekend of June 12, and that she was the first to be called into action before dawn June 13, after the bodies were discovered. She then informed Fung, her supervisor, and the two traveled together to Simpson’s house on Rockingham Avenue, where they began collecting evidence under the direction of the detectives who were already there.

*

Fung and Mazzola spent the day together, traveling back and forth between the Rockingham estate and the Bundy Drive crime scene. Goldberg walked the criminalist through that day one step at a time Monday, detailing each piece of evidence that Fung booked along the way, from the bloody glove and the drops of blood at both scenes to an unexplained fruit label near the bodies to a pair of socks found in Simpson’s bedroom.

The last item that Fung booked that day was a vial of blood from Simpson himself, one that the former football star gave police at their request when he was questioned at their Parker Center headquarters the afternoon of June 13.

Fung’s testimony, although vital to the prosecution case, was delivered slowly and deliberately and lacked the emotional intensity of some of the witnesses who have attracted intense interest in recent weeks. During the morning sessions, bailiffs removed one member of the audience for dozing off, and others seemed distracted as well.

Goldberg used his early questioning of Fung to address several anticipated lines of defense attacks on the evidence collection: Simpson’s lawyers have suggested that the handling of evidence was left to the relatively inexperienced Mazzola, an allegation they base in part on a log showing her as the “officer in charge” of evidence collection.

But Fung testified that Mazzola had filled out that log before the two criminalists arrived on the scene. Once there, Fung said he decided he should take charge.

“When I found out that it was going to be a high-profile case and that it was a complicated scene,” Fung said, “I decided that she would . . . take the back seat.”

Fung also testified that he wore paper booties over his shoes at the crime scene, but his explanation for why he wore them could undercut the defense suggestion that other investigators were lax for not donning similar shoe coverings as they walked through the scene. According to Fung, the booties are not worn to protect the integrity of the evidence but rather for the protection of the wearer.

“There was quite a bit of blood at the scene,” Fung said. “And I just didn’t want to get any blood on my shoes.”

Fung’s testimony came after a hearing Monday morning in which defense lawyers tried to show that prosecutors should be sanctioned for failing to turn over a videotape of Simpson’s estate that police made the day after the murders.

Through the testimony of police witnesses, Simpson attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. tried to show that the tape was in the prosecution’s possession long before it was shared with the defense in March, months after it was made. He also suggested that Deputy Dist. Atty. Clark was at Simpson’s home when the tape was made and tried to call her as a witness.

Prosecutors strenuously objected, and Ito chose to have Clark address him as an officer of the court, speaking from the lawyers’ lectern rather than from the witness stand and accepting her account as true without putting her under oath.

As Clark spoke, she used the opportunity to address her comments both to the court and to Harvey Levin, a local television journalist who erroneously reported that the prosecutor was at the Simpson home before a search warrant was issued. Levin touted that story as an exclusive with potentially significant implications for the case, only to then retract it and issue a public apology to the prosecution.

“I can tell the court exactly when I arrived at Rockingham, and I would like to address this statement to Mr. Levin as well,” she said.

*

Clark then proceeded to detail her actions June 13, saying she left for Simpson’s house after the warrant was signed by a magistrate and arrived at the mansion after noon. She said that she was there only briefly and that she was gone before the Police Department’s videotape cameraman arrived to document the scene.

Clark said she was unaware that such a tape existed until recently and had not attempted to hide it from the defense. Outside the jury’s presence, police witnesses have said the tape was made only to protect the department from any liability if Simpson were to claim that valuable items of his were broken or stolen during the search.

That, they said, is why the tape languished for months without being shared with prosecutors or defense lawyers. Simpson’s attorneys do not accept that explanation and argue that in any case, they should have received a copy of the tape earlier.

A transcript of a sidebar conference released Monday indicated that Ito was inclined to accept the defense position that the disclosure of the tape was late, but he did not say whether he was leaning toward granting their request for sanctions against the prosecution.

As court ended Monday, Ito exacted a rare point of agreement from the lead trial lawyers on opposite sides of the case. Clark and Cochran, both of whom are UCLA alumni, joined with fellow Bruin Ito in expressing their hopes that UCLA would beat Arkansas for the national collegiate basketball championship.

Cochran also ventured his opinion that the Bruins would “trounce” their opponents.