Strongest DNA Statistic Yet Offered in Simpson Trial : Courts: Expert says just one person in 57 billion could have left two bloodstains. Prosecution to shorten its case.

Frustrated in their efforts to implicate O.J. Simpson through gloves and shoe prints, prosecutors in his murder trial Tuesday shifted back to the heart of their evidence, presenting the jury with the most statistically powerful DNA test results of the case to date and then announcing that they were dropping witnesses scheduled to testify about domestic abuse.

“We have already presented an extremely compelling case,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark said during an afternoon news conference. “I have never had a case with so much evidence in my entire life. It came out beautifully and in such compelling and strong form. We really feel we want to get this thing to the jury. They’re ready for it.”

The last-minute decision to drop several anticipated witnesses--four of whom were prepared to testify about instances in which O.J. Simpson allegedly abused Nicole Brown Simpson--came on a short court day in which prosecutors were attempting to wrap up loose ends and speed their case to its conclusion. Outside court, prosecutors said they now hope to rest their case in late June or early July.

Since being excused, some former jurors have said the domestic violence evidence presented earlier in the trial was not particularly persuasive to them, but prosecutors insisted that their only motivation in dropping the additional witnesses was to move the case along. After months of fretting about the composition of the Simpson jury, government lawyers have suddenly become far more confident in the panel, particularly since the departure of an African American man that the defense fiercely fought to keep on the panel.

Clark and fellow lead prosecutor Christopher A. Darden denied, however, that their decision to drop the anticipated domestic violence witnesses--as well as to at least temporarily shelve the testimony of an FBI analyst slated to discuss tests for the presence of a preservative in blood samples--was related to the dismissed jurors’ reactions to the earlier spousal abuse evidence.

“We’d like to get our case to the jury while we have a jury,” said Darden, referring to the erosion of the panel that has left it with just two alternate jurors for the balance of the trial. “We’d like to get on with our lives.”

Clark and Darden both expressed confidence in the prosecution case, particularly its wealth of scientific evidence. The case so far, Clark said, “has proven conclusively guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Before finishing up, prosecutors said, they expect to call a witness to testify about Simpson’s cellular phone records, another witness or witnesses to present hair and trace evidence found at the crime scene and elsewhere, and one expert on population genetics to tell the jury about the statistical significance of some of the DNA test results. Those witnesses, as well as possibly more evidence about the gloves found at the crime scene and Simpson’s house, should be done within another week or two, officials said, clearing the way for Simpson’s team to begin presenting its case.

Darden, who once publicly expressed his admiration for Simpson attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., on Tuesday theatrically laid down a challenge to him: “Mr. Cochran,” the prosecutor said during the news conference, which the defense lawyer did not attend, “you’ve been mouthing off for the last 12 months. OK, Johnnie, these are baseless allegations of conspiracy and contamination and the like. Now is the time to put up or shut up.”

Told later of Darden’s comments, Cochran responded: “You can tell Mr. Darden I accept his challenge. I’m not the one who’s running scared.”

Cochran also dismissed the prosecution’s confidence about its case as false bravado.

“They’ve got to say this,” he said. “What do you expect them to say, that they’re fading in the end here?”

Just as prosecutors have been paring back, so have defense lawyers, sources say. Simpson’s team, heartened by a prosecution blunder last week in conducting a demonstration with the bloody gloves, is cutting back on the number of witnesses it intends to call, sources said, and considering yet again the question of whether the defendant should take the stand.

A final decision on that crucial issue has not been made, but some members of the defense team who once argued that Simpson should testify now are having second thoughts, sources said.

New DNA Results

In the morning session Tuesday, prosecutors returned to the area of the case in which they have had their greatest success, the presentation of DNA evidence that they say shows Simpson was at the scene of the crimes and that he tracked the blood of the victims back to his car and home.

State Department of Justice analyst Gary Sims, who has appeared twice before during the trial, told the jury that only one person in at least 57 billion could have been the source of one bloodstain on a pair of socks and of another stain recovered from a gate near the scene of the crimes.

Those two stains sit at opposite ends of the prosecution’s so-called “trail of blood,” which leads away from the two bodies and back to Simpson’s house. The socks were recovered from Simpson’s bedroom, and also were stained with blood that was genetically matched to his ex-wife.

The stains from the socks and the gate contained genetic markers matching those from Simpson’s blood, a combination of markers that Sims said would appear in less than one person out of every 57 billion, about 10 times the number of people currently alive on Earth. Even in a case marked by strong statistical evidence, the figure of one in 57 billion is staggering: It reflects roughly the likelihood of two randomly selected people in the United States both being struck by lightning in any two-year period.

As he did during his previous appearances in the Simpson trial, Sims presented those results with no evident emotion. At the request of Deputy Dist. Atty. Rockne Harmon, the witness read off the statistics to the jury and wrote them on one of the prosecution’s elaborate evidence display boards.

Jurors, who appeared less interested in some of the other testimony Tuesday morning, sat forward and took notes as Sims detailed the latest batch of DNA test results. Allowed to step forward and view on a large light board the X-rays used to present DNA results, jurors stared long and hard, with one panelist lingering for nearly a minute. When the jurors returned to their seats, most wrote in their note pads.

Defense attorneys have tried to establish that blood on the socks and the gate was planted by police--a suggestion for which they have offered no concrete evidence, but which they have argued in front of the jury and outside the courtroom. Given that line of defense, there is little reason for the Simpson team to challenge the DNA test results of those drops because planted blood would naturally match Simpson’s.

As a result, Simpson attorney Barry Scheck cross-examined Sims for less than an hour, using his questioning merely to remind the jury about the amounts of DNA taken from various samples. Defense lawyers have suggested that the high concentration of DNA on the gate and the socks bolsters their argument that it was planted, but Sims has said that deterioration of other samples could also account for why more DNA was recovered from those two areas.

With no strong challenge to his credibility or his results, Sims’ appearance on the witness stand Tuesday was brief and cordial: Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito welcomed him back and sent him on his way with a cheery farewell.

“Good to see you again,” the judge said as Sims prepared to go.

“Thank you, your Honor,” Sims replied. “Good to see you again.”

Inconclusive Shoe Testimony

The prosecution’s brief return to DNA evidence came after several days of fumbled and inconclusive testimony, marked by a disastrous demonstration involving the gloves found at the crime scene and Simpson’s house and capped Tuesday by a less-than-airtight conclusion to evidence about shoe prints found near the bodies of the two victims.

Samuel Marc Poser, a Bloomingdale’s employee, testified that he had sold Simpson several pairs of shoes in recent years and that all of them were Size 12, the size of prints found at the crime scene.

But he could not recall selling Simpson the expensive Italian shoes that another witness identified as the source of the prints, leaving a dangling loose end that the defense ridiculed.

“Do you remember whether or not you sold those shoes to the defendant?” Deputy Dist. Atty. Hank Goldberg asked the former manager of the Bloomingdale’s shoe department.

“No, I do not,” Poser replied firmly.

F. Lee Bailey--whose cross-examination of an FBI expert on shoe imprints mystifyingly strayed into a debate over whether two assailants both wearing expensive Italian shoes of identical sizes could have carried out the murders--stayed away from elaborate theorizing Tuesday.

“They’re whistling in the wind,” said Cochran, arguing outside the jury’s presence that Poser should not even be allowed to testify. “These are the dying grasps of the prosecution.”

Without responding to Cochran’s pronouncements about the prosecution case, Ito overruled the defense objections to Poser taking the stand. The testimony that Simpson wore Size 12 shoes and shopped at Bloomingdale’s--one of 40 American stores that sold the type of shoes linked to the prints at the crime scene--was relevant and admissible, Ito ruled.

He did limit prosecutors to 15 minutes in presenting the evidence, however, a rare curb on the length of a witness’s testimony. Goldberg held his examination well below that, grilling Poser only for about eight minutes.

Prosecution Fights Subpoena

As the defense prepares to begin its case, prosecutors are resisting their adversaries’ attempts to question members of the district attorney’s office, documents released Tuesday make clear. Defense attorneys have sought to question members of the prosecution team who were involved in conducting a practice session with Detective Mark Fuhrman, the Los Angeles police officer who testified that he found key evidence in the case and who has been the central focus of the defense’s conspiracy theory.

When he testified during the trial, Fuhrman denied having used a racial epithet referring to blacks any time during the past 10 years.

Simpson’s lawyers, believing that Fuhrman answered the same question differently during a practice cross-examination, have placed two deputy district attorneys under subpoena.

But Clark, in a motion to quash that subpoena, dismissed the defense effort.

“The defense is clearly engaged in a desperate fishing expedition in an attempt to impeach Detective Fuhrman’s trial testimony,” she wrote, adding that prosecutors would not submit to interviews by the defense team.

“In every criminal case which goes to trial, the prosecution interviews the witnesses before they testify,” she wrote. “This case is no different in that respect than any other case. We have no desire to set precedent by agreeing to allow hard-working, overburdened district attorney personnel to be interviewed at the whim of defense attorneys. Accordingly, we decline the invitation to be interviewed in this case.”