Simpson Tries On Gloves Matching Murder Evidence : Trial: Expert says they ‘fit quite well,’ but analysts disagree on whether prosecution recouped from blunder.

Seeking to recoup from a major setback last week, Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher A. Darden went hand to hand with O.J. Simpson one more time Wednesday in a bid to show that gloves found at the crime scene and his mansion could have fit Simpson.

With jurors watching, Darden asked the defendant to slip on a pair of leather gloves of the same style and size as the bloody ones that Simpson told jurors last Thursday were “too tight.” Although the gloves appeared snug, Simpson was able to get them on both hands without much trouble.

“I think they fit quite well,” glove expert Richard Rubin testified.

The prosecution, intensely seeking to tie Simpson to critical evidence in the double murder case, won permission from Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito to try on new gloves that are the same type and size as the ones found at the Bundy Drive murder scene and at Simpson’s Rockingham Avenue estate. Simpson has pleaded not guilty to the June 12, 1994, murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman at her Brentwood condominium.

The degree of importance prosecutors placed on the gloves was made clear by the fact that they tracked down unworn pairs of the gloves in the Philippines, where they were made, and had them air-expressed to Los Angeles.

Ito spurned the bid of defense lawyer Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. to bar what he called “a bogus courtroom demonstration in which [prosecutors] seek to recapture some credibility for a mistake they made last Thursday.”

Darden countered that using the new gloves, which had not been subject to shrinkage from exposure to the elements or DNA testing, would be more probative than last week’s display. Cochran argued later that there was no evidence proving that the gloves found at Bundy and Rockingham had shrunk after the murders, suggesting that they could have shrunk before the slayings and would have been too small for Simpson last June.

Although most legal analysts said the earlier glove demonstration was a disaster for the prosecution, analysts were divided on the impact of Wednesday’s replay.

“My opinion is that the prosecution recouped a great deal,” said Los Angeles defense lawyer Michael L. Adelson. But defense attorney Harland W. Braun said the prosecutors had compounded the errors they made last week. UCLA law professor Peter Arenella said prosecutors had made only a partial recovery from last week’s debacle.

At the prosecution’s request, Rubin returned to Los Angeles from his New Jersey home Tuesday night and spent 3 1/2 hours with Darden and other prosecutors getting ready for his testimony.

Before the jurors entered the courtroom, Rubin measured Simpson’s hands, using a red plastic tape measure.

Cochran and Darden, onetime friends and now bitter rivals, sparred over how the glove demonstration would be conducted, where Simpson would stand, what his demeanor should be and whether he could speak. Darden urged the judge not to allow Simpson to “jack around and play games for the jury” as he asserted Simpson had done last week.

Cochran strenuously objected to Darden’s language. The judge sternly admonished Darden, saying “I don’t need that terminology here.” Ito later fined the two lawyers $250 for remarks they made at a sidebar conference, but eventually lowered it to $100 each.

When they finally got to the demonstration, just before noon, Simpson, looking relaxed and wearing a gray pin-striped suit, walked to a courtroom podium and followed Ito’s instructions to put on the gloves where jurors could see them.

The former football star pulled on the lightweight Aris-Isotoner gloves, with a tag still hanging off the right one. He raised his hands, fingers spread, for the jurors to observe. Ito had told the lawyers to sit at their respective tables and not speak. At one point, Darden began to get out of his chair for a better view and started to speak, but the judge directed him to sit down.

Wednesday’s demonstration provided a sharp contrast from last Thursday’s, when Simpson struggled to put on the crime scene gloves over a pair of latex gloves and proclaimed that they were too small.

A wide range of analysts criticized Darden for staging a demonstration without knowing how it would turn out.

After Wednesday’s demonstration, Darden asked Rubin his opinion of the fit of the new gloves. Rubin replied: “It was a little on the snug side since they had never been tried on before, but basically he was able to get them over his hands, tugging at them a little bit.”

On cross-examination Cochran asked Rubin, “What the demonstration by the prosecution just showed us is that Mr. Simpson . . . like 99.5% of men in America” could fit into extra large gloves.

“That’s correct,” Rubin responded.

Then, Rubin measured the new gloves and found them to be five-eighths of an inch longer in the fingers than the crime scene gloves. Curiously, he said that although the left glove--found at Bundy Drive--was smaller than the right one--found at Simpson’s Rockingham Avenue home--only the latter showed signs that it had actually absorbed enough liquid to shrink.

UCLA law professor Arenella said the prosecutors’ efforts at damage control had been only partially successful.

“First, Wednesday’s demonstration didn’t use the actual gloves from the scenes,” Arenella said. “For jurors looking for reasonable doubt, the first demonstration might have a more lasting impact because it involved the gloves used by the actual killer and those gloves were smaller than the gloves used in the new demonstration.

“Moreover, Rubin’s measurements--showing that the crime scene gloves were smaller--undercuts the prosecution’s argument that Simpson was acting when he put on the killer’s gloves last Thursday because they are, in fact, shorter in length.”

Defense lawyer Braun said, if anything, the prosecution lost more ground Wednesday:

“Last week they demonstrated that the murder gloves didn’t fit O.J. Today they demonstrated that they had to bring in something larger to fit him, even tightly. And they re-emphasized to the jury the importance of whether the gloves at the crime scene fit O.J. I’ve never seen such a strong prosecution case with such a mountain of evidence so undermined by prosecution demonstrations.”

Loyola Law professor Laurie Levenson disagreed, saying the prosecutors had regained some ground.

But, she noted, “if this case were based on gloves alone the prosecution would be in trouble. But prosecutors have to remind the jury of their other evidence, in particular the DNA.”

Defense lawyer Adelson also said that the prosecution recouped. “The whole spin the defense put on this last Thursday was neutralized. They have to go back to the scenario that the glove was planted. I don’t think they can say any longer that the gloves at the crime scene didn’t fit, therefore they weren’t O.J.’s gloves.”

Simpson’s Phone Calls

In addition to the glove demonstration, the prosecution called two witnesses to present evidence about calls Simpson made from his cellular phone the day of the murders.

First, Lu Ellen Robertson, the records custodian for Air Touch Cellular, testified about six calls Simpson made the day of the murders to the phone numbers of his girlfriend Paula Barbieri in West Los Angeles and Florida. Robertson said that the calls either went unanswered or that only a short connection was made, perhaps suggesting that Simpson had left a message on her answering machine.

The last two calls were made at 10:03 p.m., about 10 to 15 minutes before prosecutors say the murders were committed.

Cochran said in his opening statement that Simpson was at home chipping golf balls at the time prosecutors say the murders were committed. It is anticipated that prosecutors will state in closing arguments that it would be highly unlikely that Simpson would have made calls from a cellular phone while he was at home, suggesting that he was in his Bronco when he placed the calls.

Robertson also said that Air Touch records show that Simpson made a 3-minute, 9-second phone call to Nicole Brown Simpson at 2:18 p.m., a few hours before he saw her at their daughter Sydney’s dance recital at Paul Revere Junior High School in Brentwood.

The second witness was Kathleen Delaney, an attorney for the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas. Delaney offered records showing that Barbieri checked in on June 12 on a reservation guaranteed by singer Michael Bolton. The records also showed that she checked out June 15.

On cross-examination, Cochran suggested that Barbieri was only one of a number of friends that Bolton had brought in for the weekend because he was performing there.

Motion on Marcus Allen Denied

Meanwhile, a Missouri judge dealt Simpson a setback Wednesday. Jackson County Circuit Judge Thomas Clark denied a motion filed by Simpson’s lawyers seeking to compel Kansas City Chiefs running back Marcus Allen to come to Los Angeles and testify in the Simpson case.

Simpson’s attorneys contended in a motion filed in Kansas City this month that Allen was a material witness in the case because he had admitted to Simpson in 1993 that he had an affair with Nicole Brown Simpson. Nonetheless, Simpson’s lawyers said, their client allowed his longtime friend Allen to use Simpson’s Brentwood mansion for his wedding. The defense contends that this shows that Simpson was not obsessively jealous and did not kill his ex-wife in a jealous rage.

Simpson and Allen filed dueling declarations with the Kansas City judge. “A few weeks before Mr. Allen’s marriage in 1993, he admitted to me that he had been sexually intimate with my ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson,” Simpson said in an affidavit. “In spite of this, I hosted his wedding at my Rockingham Avenue home.”

In his sworn affidavit, Allen denies making any such statement to Simpson.

Allen’s Kansas City attorney Paul Schepers told Judge Clark that his client “has nothing to say that would help. If Marcus Allen thought he could add anything” of value to the Simpson murder trial, “he’d be on the first plane out there.”

F. Lee Bailey, part of Simpson’s flotilla of attorneys, flew to Kansas City for the hearing and argued strenuously that Allen was a potentially key witness. But Judge Clark said he not been provided with a sufficient explanation as to why Allen was a material witness and granted Allen’s motion to quash the subpoena.

Garcetti’s Comments

Court recessed early and Ito told the jurors that there would be testimony only in the afternoon Thursday because he had to consider other legal matters in the morning.

The jurors applauded when Ito announced that his clerk Deirdre Robertson had been named Superior Court “employee of the quarter.” The panelists also smiled when Ito told them that prosecutors had promised to conclude their case by the end of next week.

At a Wednesday news conference, Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti explained why prosecutors had decided not to call several other witnesses who would have testified about alleged incidents of domestic violence.

“I honestly believe in our trial lawyers’ reading of the jurors that [jurors] want to move on,” Garcetti said. “If you had someone saying the day before the murders, ‘I saw him [Simpson] knocking her [Nicole] silly,’ all right. But we don’t have that.”

Garcetti emphasized that the prosecutors had made this decision on their own, rather than talking to a jury consultant.

Simpson’s lawyers have said their case could take six to eight weeks to present, but some defense sources said their presentation might be pared back.