THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : Low-Profile Attorney Shines for Defense

When Barry Scheck speaks at the O.J. Simpson trial, the media has hated to listen.

Scheck, one of the nation’s foremost legal experts on DNA, has taken the lead for the Simpson defense team in arguing against the admission of such evidence.

It’s a complex task, and Scheck hasn’t made it any easier. He doesn’t miss a precedent or a twist in the DNA legal road that leads from the laboratory to the courtroom. He does it in a slightly rasping tenor, unrelieved by humor, or even a light remark.

The attention has gone to the media star lawyers--Cochran, Clark, Bailey, Shapiro. Some of the stars have cultivated the attention, with leaks, press conferences and efforts to try their case in the media.

And so it was with considerable surprise that we journalists found ourselves watching intently as the previously ignored Scheck began late Tuesday afternoon to relentlessly take apart Los Angeles Police Department criminalist Dennis Fung and inflict major damage on the prosecution’s case.

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Nobody should have been surprised.

Barry Scheck, 44, a graduate of Yale University and the UC Berkeley Law School, has become famous in the world of DNA experts for using DNA testing to exonerate and free falsely accused felons. He and attorney Peter Neufeld direct this effort through the Innocence Project at Yeshiva University’s Cardoza School of Law in New York. Neufeld is also part of the Simpson team.

The Scheck-Neufeld team, assisted by law students, have used DNA testing to show that the accused was not at the scene of the crime in 15 cases. In this case, they are trying to cast doubt on DNA tests the prosecution says show Simpson killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman.

Scheck, a short man in a dark blue double-breasted pin-striped lawyer-like suit, looked confident and aggressive as he cross-examined Fung. His brown hair hung over his forehead, giving the impression of a man so preoccupied with his task that he doesn’t have time to comb his hair.

His quarry, Fung, looked nervous Wednesday after Scheck had hammered him the day before. Fung’s voice was soft and a bit shaky. He paused before answering. Once he stretched, as if his back was cramping up.

Scheck took Fung slowly and carefully through the crime scene. Where Tuesday afternoon the lawyer hammered the criminalist into submission, Wednesday he sliced him up inch by inch.

Fung’s co-worker at the death scene, Andrea Mazzola, was portrayed by Scheck as an incompetent rookie, and neither Fung nor Deputy Dist. Atty. Hank Goldberg could figure out a way to say something in her behalf. Scheck got Fung to admit it was a mistake for police to cover Nicole Simpson’s body with a blanket from the condo. The blanket, Scheck maintained, contaminated the crime scene and the evidence.

“A terrible mistake?” asked Scheck.

“I wish it had not been done,” replied Fung.

The prosecutor in charge of Fung’s presentation, Goldberg, sat silently through much of his witness’s ordeal, letting it happen.

Goldberg’s relative silence was understandable. Tuesday, Judge Lance A. Ito gave him a powerful scolding for displaying an exhibit containing information that Ito already had told the jury to disregard.

All Ito wanted was a simple apology. “If I were in your shoes, I would adopt an attitude the court would be more receptive to hearing,” Ito said. Goldberg refused. He reminded me of a kid who won’t apologize to his parents. No wonder Goldberg didn’t want to attract the judge’s notice on Wednesday.

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The entire prosecution team, in fact, seemed paralyzed by the Scheck assault. Remember, this is the bunch that was bouncing all over the courtroom with protective objections to the cross-examination of some of their other witnesses, notably Detective Mark Fuhrman. But poor Fung was left unprotected even though he had met with Goldberg for more than 10 hours before his ordeal. Despite the sessions with Goldberg, he didn’t seem to be prepared for the detailed nature and persistence of Scheck’s questions.

“I am really disappointed that the prosecution didn’t do its homework and Barry did,” said Seattle DNA expert Howard Coleman, who has testified in many crime cases, often for the prosecution. “They left a big opening and Barry walked right through.”

Coleman said that Scheck could derail the prosecution’s case with his assault on the competency of Fung and the Los Angeles Police Department crime lab. If the cops’ evidence gathering techniques were flawed, Coleman said, the jury may not trust the evidence, and may take the attitude of “garbage in, garbage out.”

As I said, the process of cutting up the prosecution is slow work, often hard to follow. But it is working. Fifteen minutes before adjournment, Fung looked like a badly beaten fighter, except there was no referee to step in and stop the fight. He had to go the distance.

For me, it was a great lesson in the difference between real law and the media hype law that has been practiced through much of the case.