Criminalist Concedes Errors; Panelist Ousted : Simpson trial: Some evidence ‘possibly’ was compromised, LAPD expert says. Juror is sixth dismissed.

Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito, his voice subdued and his eyes downcast, excused a sixth member of the jury panel in the O.J. Simpson trial Wednesday and replaced her with a 44-year-old computer technician from South-Central Los Angeles.

Once the newly constituted panel was seated, the 18 remaining members of it heard a second day of cross-examination of an important prosecution witness, police criminalist Dennis Fung, who supervised the collection of much of the blood and other physical evidence in the case. During more than five hours on the stand, Fung conceded that investigators made errors at the murder scene that had “possibly” compromised some evidence in the case.

The latest dismissal of a juror--this time a 38-year-old woman from Inglewood--marked the sixth since opening statements in late January and leaves six alternates for the remainder of a trial that many predict could last through the summer. It did not change the gender or ethnic makeup of the panel, however, as one black woman was replaced with another.

Ito gave no reason for the latest move, but the dismissed juror, Jeanette Harris, said in a television interview Wednesday night that he informed her it was because she had been a victim of domestic violence. She denied reports that she had been involved in a such an incident. “I have never, ever been a victim of domestic abuse,” she said in the interview on KCAL-TV Channel 9.

Defense attorneys had fought to keep the juror from being excused, sources said, but after an hour-long conference in his chambers, a somber Ito emerged and asked his clerk to call the number of a replacement panelist. The alternate juror chosen has followed the proceedings attentively and taken copious notes.

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In her questionnaire, the new juror, who has served on previous juries, said she had watched the famous low-speed pursuit of Simpson and his friend Al Cowlings on the evening of Simpson’s arrest, but added that she had no opinion about Simpson’s guilt or innocence. Simpson has pleaded not guilty to the June 12 murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman.

She also said that she considered police officers reasonably reliable witnesses, and, in her questionnaire, she called DNA analysis “somewhat reliable.” She later conceded that she did not know much about DNA testing, however, and backed off her questionnaire answer.

The Simpson defense team has argued that the collection and testing of evidence in the murder case was so sloppy that the results are unreliable.

Prosecutors, who intend to introduce a battery of DNA test results as a mainstay of their case, are attempting to rebut that contention by detailing what they say were the careful and meticulous steps that investigators took in collecting the evidence. The government lawyers began the physical evidence phase of their case on Monday and expect to spend at least a month introducing that evidence and taking testimony from witnesses who collected and tested it.

With so much evidence yet to come and so much attrition in the Simpson jury, some observers have questioned whether the panel is large enough to complete the trial. Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, a defense jury consultant, has said the dwindling size of the panel is a matter of concern, but another jury expert said Wednesday that he believed there was still no reason to worry.

“Most problems have been flushed out by now,” said Robert B. Hirschhorn, a Galveston, Texas-based jury consultant, adding that all but one of the dismissals have been for causes unrelated to the jurors’ work on the panel but rather for failure to disclose information in their questioning.

“We are six months into the trial since jury selection began,” Hirschhorn added. “The information you would expect to come out of the woodwork has come out.”

Since the trial started, much attention has focused on the composition of the Simpson jury--much of it focused on the racial and gender composition of a panel in a case that involves a black defendant, two white victims and a powerful theme of domestic abuse. With the panel under such scrutiny, each change in its composition has attracted new waves of analysis and new attention to the panel that remains.

Wednesday also brought the first sign that a dismissed juror will join the growing number of amateur authors that the case has spawned.

Pierce O’Donnell, a Los Angeles lawyer representing Dove Books, said his client hopes to challenge a new state law restricting jurors from selling their stories. If that is successful, excused juror Michael Knox hopes to sign a contract with Dove--the same publisher responsible for a splashy account of Nicole Simpson’s final months--and to release a book this summer.

“Based on my opinion (that the statute is clearly unconstitutional), Dove will be filing a lawsuit early next week seeking declaratory relief and a preliminary injunction that would allow Dove to enter into a contract with Michael Knox and publish his book in June,” O’Donnell said. “We don’t have a contract now because under the statute you potentially could be sentenced to jail just for signing a contract.”

According to sources, Knox was released from the jury for failing to disclose an incident of domestic violence that was more than a decade old. After making a few comments shortly after his dismissal, Knox has adopted a lower profile in recent weeks.

Once the latest shift was completed Wednesday, testimony resumed with the cross-examination of a witness who was being questioned about the collection of physical evidence. Criminalist Fung conceded that there were mistakes in the crime scene investigation and repeatedly answered that it was “possible” that those mistakes could have affected the evidence in the case.

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Fung’s concessions were offered grudgingly and amid more than five hours of verbal jousting with defense attorney Barry Scheck. The confrontation pitted Scheck, a highly acclaimed New York lawyer who was occasionally sarcastic, against Fung, a clean-cut, soft-spoken evidence expert who sat for most of the day with his hands in his lap, pausing long and hard before answering some of the lawyer’s most pointed questions.

Although the issues were dry, the court day was enlivened by the contrast of personalities and by a strange interruption during the morning session.

While the attorneys and the judge were consulting at a sidebar conference, a man who goes by the name Will B. King, an infrequent member of the court audience who came dressed as a woman Wednesday, began shouting that someone next to him was threatening to hit him. Bailiffs quickly intervened and rushed King from the courtroom.

Ito advised the jury to disregard the outburst, adding wryly: “I think that particular incident speaks for itself.”

Allowed to resume, Scheck grilled Fung on a number of topics but took particular aim at a white blanket from Nicole Simpson’s condo that was used to cover her body before coroners removed it from the scene. Using a series of hypothetical questions, Scheck asked whether such a blanket could have carried hairs or fibers from O.J. Simpson or his car and whether those hairs or fibers could have been transferred to the victims when the blanket was spread out at the scene of the crime.

The defense has suggested that Simpson could have left one of his hairs on the blanket while at Nicole Simpson’s home, which he visited frequently, or that the blanket could have picked up hairs or fibers if one of Simpson’s children had put it in his Ford Bronco.

Fung acknowledged that such a transfer was possible, and Scheck then pressed further.

“As a general principle, as a criminalist you try at all costs to avoid taking an object that could have lots of hairs and fibers on it and putting it right into the middle of a crime scene, don’t you?” Scheck asked.

“That’s correct,” Fung answered.

“That’s a terrible mistake from the point of view of a criminalist, isn’t it?” Scheck then asked.

“Yes,” said Fung.

If jurors accept that the blanket could have carried hair or fiber evidence, it might cause the panel to dismiss such prosecution evidence as a hair found on Goldman’s body that prosecutors say resembles Simpson’s hair. In addition, the defense presented videotapes that include three shots in which the blanket at first appears to be close to and then appears to be touching an object that resembles the bloody glove found at the crime scene.

Simpson attorney Robert L. Shapiro said outside court that the defense believes the glove was contaminated before it was collected, perhaps by coming in contact with the blanket. According to Shapiro, tapes and photographs make clear that the glove was still at the scene while the blanket was on the ground and that the glove was moved several times during the investigation of the crime scene.

That glove allegedly contained fibers resembling those from Simpson’s car, evidence that prosecutors hope to use to link Simpson to the crimes. As a result, suggestions that it was contaminated could remove that piece of the prosecution puzzle.

Fung had collected another glove that day, recovering it from a pathway outside Simpson’s house two miles from the crime scene. At a detective’s request, Fung said he brought that glove to the murder scene, a move Fung conceded could have contaminated evidence.

The criminalist said he understood the risk and tried to minimize it by leaving the glove from Simpson’s estate in a brown paper bag. But Fung testified that he could not remember whether he had ever opened the bag.

Under questioning from Scheck, Fung also acknowledged that Nicole Simpson’s body had been moved by the time he arrived at the scene of the crimes, that both bodies were removed before he had collected all the evidence from the scene, that it had taken him longer than he would have preferred to get to Simpson’s estate on the day after the murders, and that he had not collected a mysterious piece of paper that appears in a videotape of the crime scene.

In each of those instances, Fung conceded that his investigation might have been hampered by those developments.

Scheck returned to a theme that the defense has long argued with a line of questions attempting to suggest that Fung’s partner, an entry-level criminalist named Andrea Mazzola, was too untested to be given responsibility in such an important case.

As Fung attempted to fight off Scheck’s pointed cross-examination on that topic, Ito made an offhand remark that some observers said seemed to support the prosecution.

The defense lawyer was attempting to get Fung to agree that Mazzola was a “rookie,” a characterization intended to belittle her expertise. But in the middle of that questioning, Ito, in front of the jury, joked: “There have been rookies of the year who have been MVPs (most valuable players).”

Although Fung was challenged Wednesday with what Scheck called investigative mistakes, the criminalist was reluctant to concede even small errors, a marked contrast to his testimony a day earlier when he readily acknowledged that he had made significant changes in the sworn account he was giving at trial compared to what he told the Los Angeles County Grand Jury.

Fung’s about-face on some aspects of his testimony, including the amount of work that Mazzola performed, could undermine his credibility with the jury.

Once Scheck concludes his cross-examination, probably today or Friday, Deputy Dist. Atty. Hank Goldberg will have another opportunity to question Fung. Legal experts said they expect Goldberg to use his next round of questioning largely to repair any damage that Scheck’s widely praised cross-examination may have done to the jury’s impression of Fung.

Fung returns to the witness stand this morning.

Although the discussions about the jury composition delayed the court day by about an hour Wednesday, the session featured more than five hours of testimony--an unusually long session in a trial that often has been interrupted. Increasingly in recent days, Ito has been pressuring the lawyers to move quickly and to take up legal matters during breaks or after the jury has left for the day.

Once the jury was sent home Wednesday, Ito met in chambers with the attorneys and with Kelli Sager, a lawyer representing The Times, CBS and other news organizations. Those organizations are seeking access to autopsy reports, but not photographs, prepared by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office in the Simpson case.

Ito had scheduled a hearing on the matter, but instead took it up behind closed doors, where the attorneys struck a deal to have the documents released when the case reaches the stage at which testimony is about to be presented regarding the autopsies.

Prosecutors offered that compromise, they said, in order to protect the public’s right to review the documents but also to protect the families of the victims from as much publicity as possible.

Under the agreement reached Wednesday, which was supported by representatives of both families, the documents will be released either 48 hours before the first official from the coroner’s office takes the stand or six weeks from now--whichever comes first.

Times staff writer Henry Weinstein contributed to this article.