DNA Statistics Point Firmly to Simpson, Witness Says : Trial: Criminalist’s calculations magnify significance of blood ‘matches.’ But he also faults handling of evidence.

A prosecution witness performed a series of mathematical calculations in front of the jury in the O.J. Simpson murder case Thursday, and with each one magnified the connection between Simpson and crimes he is charged with committing.

Under cross-examination, however, the same witness implicitly faulted some aspects of the way blood samples in the case were handled by the Los Angeles Police Department and conceded that his laboratory would not necessarily have detected contamination caused by police officers or evidence collectors.

Combining the results of DNA tests performed by two laboratories on opposite coasts, criminalist Gary Sims showed it was even more unlikely that bloodstains from the scene of the crimes--as well as from Simpson’s house and car--could randomly match anyone other than the defendant or the victims.

Barry Scheck, one of the DNA experts on Simpson’s legal team, vigorously objected to Sims performing those calculations, saying that the analyst, who has long experience as a criminalist but not as a molecular biologist or statistician, lacked sufficient expertise. Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito disagreed and allowed Sims to calculate the figures for the jury.

In each case, the new statistics ratcheted up the significance of the prosecution’s DNA “matches.” The new numbers suggested that only one in 240,000 people could have left some of the drops at the crime scene, for instance, and that only one in 50,000 would likely have the genetic markers of blood found beneath Nicole Brown Simpson’s fingernails.

Even the most staggering statistic of the entire case was nudged by the latest round of calculations: Blood on O.J. Simpson’s socks, which matched that of his ex-wife, had previously been computed to occur in 1 out of 6.8 billion people; when the additional genetic markers were added to the mix, the odds of it coming from anyone other than Nicole Simpson increased to 1 in 7.7 billion.

Simpson is charged with the June 12 murders of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman. He has pleaded not guilty, but the prosecution has built a circumstantial case against him largely supported by DNA evidence.

As the defense continued its campaign to undermine the DNA statistics, Scheck began his cross-examination of Sims by returning to a familiar defense theme: the charge that blood samples were contaminated or tampered with, rendering the subsequent test results irrelevant.

“You do not know how any of the biological material got on those items, do you?” Scheck asked.

“No,” Sims responded in a soft voice.

“And you have no idea when the biological material got on those items, do you--from your own personal knowledge?”

“No,” the analyst answered.

“And there is no test that you can conduct on a specimen containing the biological material to tell you if it was there when it was first collected or whether it got there through cross-contamination?” asked Scheck.

“That’s correct,” Sims agreed.

Two Reporters Ousted

Thursday’s session was not marked by the explosive DNA disclosures that have rocked Ito’s courtroom during the past two weeks, and even though the jurors took notes and watched closely, they seemed less captivated than they have in recent days.

Just because jurors seemed less interested, however, did not mean they were being less assertive. During the morning session, two of the panelists sent notes to the judge complaining about a pair of reporters who the jurors said were talking and disturbing the jury.

“They are constantly whispering which distracts my attention for brief moments of time,” one juror wrote. “It happened yesterday and also this morning.”

Another juror added: “I am having trouble trying to hear the testimony at times due to the fact that a few members in the audience are whispering a little loud.”

Ito, who has adopted a get-tough posture in recent weeks, instructed the court clerk to ban the two reporters--one from Court TV, the other from USA Today--from his courtroom for the remainder of the trial.

Over the noon break, Ito backed up those comments with a court order formally barring Court TV’s Kristin Jeannette-Meyers and USA Today’s Gale Holland from the courtroom. After noting that Court TV operates the courtroom TV camera, Ito added an ominous note: “The court deems this to be an act of misconduct on the part of the television news media.”

Ito’s anger with Court TV was the second time that organization has felt the judge’s wrath in the case. Earlier, when Court TV flashed a short clip that inadvertently showed a juror, the judge erupted and threatened to cut off television coverage of the entire case.

But the organization apologized for that mistake, and on Thursday, Steve Brill, the editor in chief and chief executive officer of Court TV, said Ito had done the right thing in ejecting the network’s reporter.

“If the jurors complained about it, then the judge is right,” Brill said. “What are you going to do, have a fact-finding inquiry on whether the juror was distracted? If the juror said she was distracted, I think the judge did the right thing.”

One of the jurors also notified Ito about a slip-up in the court’s system for screening the panel from news about the case. Despite the censorship imposed on all the news that the jury receives, a small blurb from USA Today’s sports page slipped through. In it, the paper noted an exchange during Wednesday’s session in which a prosecutor made a passing reference to a pair of basketball teams.

Ito assured the lawyers that the slip-up was minor and said it was the first such problem. Having done that, the judge dismissed the issue with a basketball quip of his own: “No harm, no foul,” he said.

Deflating the Defense

Deputy Dist. Atty. Rockne Harmon, a wry and experienced DNA prosecutor, spent more than three days conducting his direct examination of Sims, a process he completed Thursday morning.

In his final session, Harmon first elicited the new statistical evidence, then moved to head off the defense’s suggestions that DNA samples were contaminated by sloppy or malevolent police officers.

Harmon, his voice thick with disdain, posed a series of sarcastic questions intended to belittle the defense and its theory of the case--namely, that DNA from vials of blood or from other samples somehow came into contact with samples collected from the crime scene and from Simpson’s car.

“Can DNA fly?” Harmon asked abruptly at one point.

Laughing agreeably, Sims responded: “I don’t think so.”

“I mean, there are no scientific studies that have shown that, are there?” the prosecutor continued.

“No,” Sims said, continuing to chuckle. “I don’t think it has wings.”

“How about if it’s from a bird, can it fly?” Harmon asked.

“I don’t think that makes any difference,” Sims answered.

“Does the DNA of an athletic person have any greater athletic prowess than that of a dead person?” the prosecutor then asked, deliberately provoking the lawyers representing Simpson, whose football career is well-known to the jury.

Scheck jumped up. “Your Honor,” he said, beginning to form an objection.

“Sustained, sustained, sustained,” Ito said before Scheck could even articulate the grounds for his objection. “The jury’s to disregard the tenor of that question.”

Back on track later, however, Harmon continued to press the questions regarding contamination. Sims testified that contamination would be more likely to result in incorrectly excluding a suspect than in producing a false DNA “match,” and he said the controls that were used in the testing of samples in the Simpson case did not yield any results that suggested the types of contamination that the defense has alleged.

Throughout his questioning, Harmon has delighted in mentioning the name of a highly respected scientist who is working with the defense in the Simpson case but who is not expected to testify. According to defense lawyers, Harmon is trying to create the impression that, if forensic scientist Edward Blake does not appear, it is because his testimony on the DNA evidence would favor the prosecution.

Blake said in an interview that he objects to that suggestion.

“By Harmon continually injecting my name into this litigation, the jury wants to know: ‘Why does this guy keep coming up? Where is he?’ ” Blake said. “It’s just not fair to Mr. Simpson. He’s being punished because the defense attorneys sought out what in their view was good scientific advice and they’re being crucified for that.”

Simpson’s lawyers have urged Ito to curb the prosecutor’s references to Blake, but on Thursday, the scientist’s name surfaced repeatedly because he is the co-author of many of the scientific works that Sims said formed the basis for some of his opinions. Blake often testifies for the prosecution in DNA cases, and both Harmon and Sims are conversant with his work.

Defense Responds

Just before the defense began its cross-examination, Harmon asked Sims whether he was part of a police conspiracy to frame Simpson, a question that prosecutors have regularly posed to witnesses in light of the defense contention that such a conspiracy was at work. Harmon flubbed the question, getting Sims’ name wrong, but then Sims genially denied being part of any such plot.

Unlike with previous witnesses, however, the defense itself let Sims off the hook. Shaking his head in response to Harmon’s question, Scheck stood up and said the defense would stipulate that Sims was not part of any conspiracy.

That set the tone for Scheck’s initial questioning, which gently sought to elicit Sims’ criticisms of others but did not attack him or the California Department of Justice lab where he works.

Sims seemed at ease with his defense interrogator, at times gently poking fun at Scheck’s exhibits and at one point joking: “Mr. Scheck, I’d take your word for anything.” More significant, the analyst accepted a number of the defense attorney’s points and agreeably echoed the defense lawyer’s opinions on some subjects.

LAPD criminalists testified, for instance, that they used pencil to complete some reports. Sims said he would not do that. “It would be weird that I would ever have a pencil around in my lab,” he said.

LAPD criminalists also testified that they did not change gloves between handling some samples, a practice that Sims raised some questions about. And the LAPD technicians did not date or initial some evidence items, which Sims said was standard practice in his lab.

Among other topics, Sims said he and his colleagues work by a strict manual--the LAPD evidence collectors said their manual still was in preparation and that some aspects of it are only guidelines, not mandates. And Scheck used his questioning to elicit Sims’ comment that certification is important for criminalists, a potentially helpful point for the defense since Sims could not say whether his organization had ever certified Police Department analyst Dennis Fung.

Scheck made those points early in his examination, but seemed to run out of steam as the afternoon drew to a close. Seeking to raise doubts about whether blood on a gate near the crime scene could have been planted by police, Scheck posed a long series of questions about the amounts recovered and the DNA extracted from them.

The points were densely mathematical, however, and the questioning bogged down at points. Outside court, lead Simpson trial lawyer Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. said jurors will hear more about the topic when cross-examination resumes today, and he stressed its importance.

“Why would there be so much DNA in the blood on the back fence after three weeks that was not degraded?” Cochran asked. “That’s the question of the day.”

Times legal affairs writer Henry Weinstein contributed to this report.