Chief Coroner Concedes Errors in Simpson Case

Prosecutors in the murder trial of O.J. Simpson opened one of the most delicate and problematic sections of their case Friday with a candid admission from Los Angeles County’s top coroner that one of his deputies made mistakes in autopsies of the two victims.

“He has made some mistakes, yes,” Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran testified, referring to Deputy Medical Examiner Irwin Golden, who performed the autopsies and who may testify next week.

Six jurors jotted in their note pads at the remark, the first of what are expected to be a series of acknowledgments by the coroner that Golden did not perform perfectly in conducting the autopsies on Ronald Lyle Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson, who were stabbed and slashed to death June 12, 1994.

Sathyavagiswaran also is expected to tell the jury, however, that none of the mistakes undermined the coroner’s ultimate conclusions.

Simpson has pleaded not guilty to the crimes. One of his lawyers, Robert L. Shapiro, has said mistakes by the coroner’s office left holes in the prosecution’s case and deprived the defense of evidence that might have helped clear Simpson. Prosecutors hope Sathyavagiswaran will be able to convince the jury otherwise.

A likable witness with impressive medical credentials, a distinct Indian accent and near-impossible-to-pronounce last name, Sathyavagiswaran opened his testimony by giving Deputy Dist. Atty. Brian Kelberg permission to refer to him by his first name.

“If we call you Dr. Lakshmanan, you will not be offended, will you?” Kelberg asked.

“No,” Sathyavagiswaran replied, returning the prosecutor’s grin. “I will not.”

Jurors, some of whom were attempting to write down the coroner’s name as he spelled it out, smiled gratefully. Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito, who has forbidden laughter in his courtroom, allowed a few chuckles from the audience to go unpunished.

All 16 remaining jurors and alternates were on hand for Friday’s testimony, and their entry stirred a mild commotion. When the jurors strode single-file through a courthouse hallway before the session began, reporters scrambled to nearby phones to pass on the news that none of the panelists had so far been excused, despite reports of investigations into three of them.

At first, the full complement on hand for Friday’s session seemed to suggest that Ito had concluded his inquiry and found no misconduct by any of the jurors. But a court spokeswoman said Ito is still considering the issue, which sources said involves accusations against three panelists: a 28-year-old real estate appraiser, a 43-year-old marketing representative and a 54-year-old postal operations manager.

According to sources, the appraiser has been accused of passing a note to another juror and then of not being truthful about that when questioned by Ito; the appraiser, in turn, has said she is intimidated by the postal operations manager. The marketing representative, sources added, has been accused of failing to disclose a past incident of domestic abuse.

Some attorneys had expected a ruling on at least one of the juror issues Friday, but lead Simpson trial lawyer Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. said outside court that Ito had not yet reached a decision.

In his effort to accommodate the jurors, Ito also released a new court schedule. He did not agree to a request from some members of the panel that he add a Saturday session, but Ito lengthened the court days on four days a week, adding 4 1/2 hours a week.

Description of Victims

As prosecutors began to unveil their autopsy evidence, the first clinical descriptions of the murder victims rippled emotionally through the courtroom, highlighting Simpson’s discomfort with the topic and emphasizing the prosecution’s close bond with the victims’ families.

Simpson winced and began to breathe heavily as Sathyavagiswaran read a cursory description of Nicole Simpson’s body--her height, weight and body temperature hours after her death. Although the description was far from graphic, Simpson tilted his head back and began breathing through his mouth. Cochran, sitting next to his famous client, placed his hand on Simpson’s left shoulder and whispered in his ear.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark, meanwhile, traded notes with Goldman’s sister, Kim Goldman, who was seated in the front row of the courtroom. When the Goldman family’s address was flashed briefly on a large overhead screen, Clark jumped to her feet and warned her colleagues, who quickly took it off.

Kelberg, with the help of another member of the district attorney’s staff, doctored the document in an attempt to delete the address, and then displayed it again.

“It’s still there,” Kim Goldman whispered to the prosecutors. Kelberg snatched the document off the projector again and instead proceeded without it. Kim Goldman nodded her thanks.

Sathyavagiswaran spent only about 90 minutes on the stand Friday, ending the short court day before reaching any of the dozens of autopsy photographs that jurors are expected to see next week. Even before they got a glimpse of those pictures, however, Ito on Friday braced them for the sight of photographs that he has referred to as “horrible.”

“If at any time during the presentation of this evidence you feel unusually uncomfortable or if you need to take a break, feel free to let me know,” Ito told the panelists, who listened with rapt attention.

Cochran said Friday that his client is still considering whether to skip the session or sessions at which the jury will see the pictures.

Admitting Mistakes

Because it was cut short by legal arguments and the abbreviated court day, the coroner’s testimony did not touch on many mistakes by his staff. But he did describe one area that might have been handled better, and he hinted at more.

Sathyavagiswaran testified, for instance, that an investigator from the coroner’s office, not a deputy medical examiner, went to the crime scene. That is standard practice in busy jurisdictions such as Los Angeles, but nevertheless, the coroner acknowledged, it is not as good as having a medical examiner go to the scene.

“Doctor, in your opinion, would it be a better practice to have one of your doctors at the scene than to rely, as you say, on the investigator to be the eyes and ears of the medical examiner?” Kelberg asked.

“It would be a good practice to have that also happen,” Sathyavagiswaran said. But the coroner then elaborated, in testimony that foreshadowed how he can be expected to handle further questions about the performance of his staff when he takes the stand next week.

Asked by Kelberg whether any of the coroner’s findings would have been different if a full-fledged medical examiner had gone to the crime scene, Sathyavagiswaran responded: “It would have been nice for one of our doctors to go to the scene, but I don’t think we lack any of the information we need to provide the opinion we need to provide.”

“Why is that, doctor?” the prosecutor asked.

“Because the different objectives you try to meet when you go to the scene are being met by our coroner’s investigator,” the coroner answered. “. . . And I find that though going to the scene does help, if a trained investigator collects the information you need, it provides enough basis for our opinions.”

Prosecutors made a tactical decision to discuss the mistakes themselves, rather than have that testimony emerge under cross-examination. And Kelberg made it clear to the jury Friday that there will be more to come on that subject when court resumes next week.

After Sathyavagiswaran testified that Golden, whom the coroner described as a friend and colleague, had made mistakes in his autopsies, Kelberg commented: “We’re going to get into this in much greater detail later.”

Legal analysts commended the prosecution for addressing the question of coroner mistakes up-front.

“Kelberg was very smart in attempting to lower the expectations of the public and the jury as to the competence of the Los Angles coroner’s office,” said Gigi Gordon, a Santa Monica defense lawyer.

But others warned that the upcoming testimony may provide the defense with fodder for its charges that the investigation of the Simpson murders was hopelessly botched. Golden’s testimony during the preliminary hearing was widely ridiculed, and eventually he has to take the stand to describe the autopsies he performed.

“You have to play the cards you were dealt,” said former Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner. “And the prosecution was dealt a very bad hand with Golden.”

Time of Death

One area in which Kelberg and the coroner agree that mistakes had no impact was in determining the time of the deaths. That issue has emerged as a central point of the defense, which contends that Simpson was home either napping or chipping golf balls at the time the prosecution says the crimes were committed.

Simpson’s attorneys have maintained that if the coroner had not made mistakes, they could better pinpoint the time of death and thus establish their client’s alibi.

But outside the jury’s presence, Kelberg insisted that nothing the coroner’s office could have done would determine more precisely the time of death. Coroner’s officials have placed the time of the murders between 9 p.m. and midnight June 12, and prosecutors, based largely on testimony about the wailing and barking of a dog, have said that the killings were committed about 10:15 p.m. or 10:20 p.m.

Even if a coroner’s examiner had been on the scene almost instantly, it would not have made any difference, Kelberg said. Measurements such as the temperatures of the body and the liver are always inexact, he said.

The defense is expected to aggressively challenge the coroner’s attempts to pinpoint the time of death. In court Friday was Dr. Michael Baden, a former colleague of Sathyavagiswaran and the defense expert on that topic.

Kelberg also won the right Friday to admit a few more of the prosecution’s crime scene photographs, including one of Nicole Simpson’s hand that he said will strengthen the contention that her throat was slashed while she was already on the ground. Over Shapiro’s objections, Ito also granted Kelberg’s request to show the jury different knives tested for their relationship to the wounds inflicted on the victims, part of the prosecution’s attempt to show that a single knife, and thus a single killer, was responsible for all the injuries.

Before Sathyavagiswaran took the stand Friday, Ito met briefly behind closed doors with Michael Viner, president of Dove Books, a publishing company that has produced several books connected with the Simpson case.

Emerging from that session, at which Viner was joined by a battery of attorneys, the publisher told reporters that he has assured Ito that an upcoming book by a dismissed juror would be responsible.

“The judge is satisfied that his concerns from the very beginning of the trial about anonymity during the trial and the safety of the jurors where they’re housed is not in any in jeopardy,” said Viner’s lawyer, Pierce O’Donnell.

O’Donnell said the book, by former juror Michael Knox, had gone to the printer and would be out in two weeks.