THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL
UCLA law professor Peter Arenella and Loyola University law professor Laurie Levenson offer their take on the Simpson trial. Joining them is Santa Monica defense attorney Brian C. Lysaght, who will rotate with other experts as the case moves forward. Today’s topic: imperfect science.
PETER ARENELLA
On the prosecution: “George Clarke’s redirect attacked the ‘factual’ premises underlying defense hypotheticals about how O.J.’s blood from Rockingham or the reference sample might have contaminated the Bundy blood swatches. Robin Cotton pointed out that deliberate contamination wouldn’t have produced the varied degrees of degradation found on the different Bundy results and that inadvertent contamination was unlikely because of separate packaging.”
On the defense: “Peter Neufeld’s cross ended where it should have begun: reminding the jury that the prosecution’s DNA results are only as reliable as the human beings who produce them. Neufeld showed the jury that Cellmark had made mistakes and that those errors look just as damning as accurate results. Teaching the jury that the prosecution’s damning statistics can be misleading was an important lesson, but were the students awake to hear it?”
LAURIE LEVENSON
On the prosecution: “Good question: If O.J.’s blood was planted, why don’t all the Bundy walkway drops have the same quality of human DNA? Cotton’s redirect examination helped to show just how hard it would have been to frame Simpson with phony swatches. Cellmark may not be infallible, but with a 100% testing success rate in the last few years it’s hard for O.J. to cry foul. There are many defendants who are free because of Cellmark tests.”
On the defense: “Neufeld’s cross-examination wasn’t pretty, but he finally got where he wanted to be. Cotton admitted that Cellmark is not infallible and that LAPD contamination could lead to false DNA results. Nothing came easily for Neufeld. He stumbled through his questions until Judge Ito ended up helping him. Perhaps Neufeld’s worst moment was when he wanted to attack Cotton with Cellmark’s proficiency test but ended up misreading the result himself.”
BRIAN LYSAGHT
On the prosecution: “Clarke’s redirect started well by reintroducing the jury to the blood drop chart. Then it got hopelessly bogged down in a conversation that could only have been enjoyed by Clarke and Cotton. It was a grim reminder of why most of us slept through biology, except for the part with the frog. Clarke didn’t explain how a sample of two African Americans can support a one in 170 million frequency finding.”
On the defense: “Neufeld’s morning was a death march to nowhere. The last 20 minutes scored some points, however. A false positive is possible. Cellmark won’t submit to independent proficiency tests. And the whole house of cards ultimately may be balanced on two African Americans as yet unidentified. In a no-eyewitness, no-murder-weapon, no-bloody-clothes case, this may be enough to hang it.”
Compiled by TIM RUTTEN / Los Angeles Times
