Simpson Defense Drops Witnesses in Strategy Shift : Trial: Defendant is unlikely to testify as lawyers prepare pared-down presentation. There are risks to the leaner approach and some team members express concerns.

After weeks of paring back their witness list, lawyers for O.J. Simpson have dramatically retooled their case and now expect to give the jury a far leaner and faster presentation than lead trial attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. previewed in court more than five months ago.

“At this point,” one member of the defense team said Saturday, “the feeling is that less is more.”

The result: A presentation that Simpson’s lawyers once predicted could take three months now is likely to take less than two, and Simpson, who once was considered a good bet to testify, instead is increasingly likely to watch silently from the sidelines as his attorneys try to win his freedom.

As the defense begins presenting its case to the jury, probably Monday, it is expected to move from the supportive testimony of family and friends to the sounds overheard by wakeful neighbors; from provocative theories of scientific experts to the explosive theory that the killings were committed by drug dealers. Underlying it all will be the longstanding contention that evidence was compromised by sloppy handling or planted by police.

Simpson’s attorneys once had suggested that they would make their case by calling scores of witnesses, mirroring the long, sometimes meandering prosecution presentation against their client, who has pleaded not guilty to the June 12, 1994, murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman.

But when the prosecution ran into trouble just as it was trying to bring its case to a conclusion--most notably during a now-infamous demonstration in which Simpson appeared to struggle as he put on a pair of blood-soaked gloves--sources say the defense team shifted strategy and began dropping witnesses.

The rapidly evolving defense strategy reflects the confidence of Simpson’s attorneys that the prosecution has not presented an effective case against their client--although some on the long list of potential witnesses clearly have been dropped because of credibility problems that emerged since Cochran’s opening statement.

Leaner Case Carries Risks

There are risks to the leaner approach, and some members of the defense privately are concerned that it is unwise to shift course so abruptly. But the team’s consensus is that the prosecution made so many mistakes that the worst outcome for the defense at this point would be a hung jury, and that an acquittal is within reach.

“The prosecution has done some things that really [worked] to our benefit, especially that glove demonstration,” Cochran said Saturday after an afternoon defense strategy session. “Now we feel we’ve got some compelling evidence, but we want to present it in the most cogent, quick and confident manner possible.”

Prosecutors last week rested their case, which many analysts found strong on evidence but weak on presentation at several key points. That is not the last word for the prosecution team, however, which will get a chance to rebut the defense case when it concludes.

A shorter, less sweeping defense has the added advantage of depriving prosecutors of a chance to slip in additional evidence during their rebuttal case, Cochran said. Court rules limit the prosecution rebuttal to evidence that contradicts points raised during the defense case.

“If we open doors, they’ll be trying to present additional evidence,” Cochran said. “Why do that?”

The most problematic issue in the new defense strategy, however, is that it will not fulfill promises Cochran made to the jury in his opening statement. Among other things, Cochran told jurors that they would be hearing from two nationally renowned experts, Lenore Walker on domestic abuse and Nobel Prize winner Kary Mullis on DNA testing procedures that he invented.

Now, defense sources say Walker is unlikely to testify because the Simpson team does not believe that the prosecution’s domestic violence evidence was especially compelling. Mullis still may take the stand, but some members of the team are advising against it, worried that his erratic personal behavior--including his admitted use of LSD--could make him vulnerable to rough cross-examination. Cochran said he was leaning toward calling Mullis but still was undecided.

In addition, the jury may never hear from two witnesses who Cochran said would back up Simpson’s alibi. One, next-door housekeeper Rosa Lopez, already testified on videotape, but admitted to lying about some aspects of her testimony and professed to be unable to remember other details.

Cochran told the jury a second witness, Mary Anne Gerchas, would testify that she saw four men, some wearing ski caps, leaving the scene of the crime. But in the months since Cochran’s opening statement, Gerchas has been convicted of fraud, among other crimes. Cochran now says he does not want her to testify, though he does plan on calling another witness who allegedly heard raised voices coming from outside Nicole Simpson’s condominium.

If jurors never hear from some of those witnesses, they may wonder why the defense promised too much in its opening statement, and prosecutors are sure to remind the panelists of those broken promises, experts said. Similarly, Cochran told the jury that Simpson was practicing his golf swing on the night of the killings, a statement he can only back up if Simpson testifies.

“The prosecution is free to comment on this,” said Steven D. Clymer, a former federal prosecutor and now a law professor at Cornell University. “If they don’t call O.J. Simpson to testify, the prosecution is entitled to point out that Cochran said in his opening statement that he would prove O.J. Simpson was chipping golf balls at the time of the murders. This could have the same impact as commenting on Simpson’s failure to testify, which the prosecutors can’t do.”

Will Simpson Take the Stand?

As they have from the beginning, defense lawyers declined to say definitively whether Simpson will take the stand, except to say that he wants to testify.

But several sources said it appears increasingly unlikely, particularly because Cochran, who once said he strongly believed his client should take the stand, now is leaning against it. Likewise, Cochran’s associate Carl Douglas is said to be less persuaded than he once was about the need for Simpson to testify.

Robert L. Shapiro, who has represented Simpson the longest and who built the defense team, always has questioned whether testifying would be a smart move. F. Lee Bailey has long favored the idea, but he is a less important member of the team than Cochran, who is responsible for all decisions regarding trial strategy.

Either course has its risks, analysts agree. Legal considerations may argue against Simpson taking the stand, but other factors favor it.

“He has the most charismatic personality of any person I’ve ever met,” said former Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, who said he has met Simpson about half a dozen times. “There hasn’t been someone with a smile like that since Maurice Chevalier. . . . I don’t care how good the facts are, he’ll be a cross-examiner’s worse nightmare.”

When trial resumes this week, Simpson’s attorneys expect to turn first to his grown daughter, Arnelle Simpson, who may testify about talking to her father on the morning after the murders. A Los Angeles police detective told the jury that Simpson did not appear rattled to learn of his ex-wife’s death; Simpson, according to the detective, did not even ask how Nicole Simpson had died.

But Arnelle Simpson talked to her father that morning, too, and members of the defense team say she will portray it differently if, as they expect, she takes the stand Monday.

Arnelle Simpson’s appearance, to which prosecutors have objected, would kick off the defense case by reminding jurors of Simpson’s humanity, a personal touch that his legal team considers important as a way of rebutting the prosecution characterization of him as a two-faced villain who ruthlessly attempted to control his ex-wife and who ultimately killed her.

The defense case could include other relatives--Simpson’s mother and sister are on the witness list--after which the team expects to call witnesses who will attempt to raise doubts about the prosecution’s contention that the murders were committed at roughly 10:15 p.m.--a time the government has tried to establish mainly through the wailings of Nicole Simpson’s dog. Several witnesses have told defense lawyers and investigators that they remember the barking starting later, after 10:30 p.m.

The time is important because Simpson was seen at home shortly before 11 p.m., when he met a limousine driver to take him to the airport.

According to Cochran, the time-line witnesses will show that his client could not possibly have had time to commit the murders, dispose of bloody clothes and a murder weapon and still meet the limousine.

In addition to poking holes in the prosecution timeline, the defense lawyers say they plan to rebut the government’s portrayal of Simpson as melancholy around the time of the murders. During the government case, some witnesses, including Nicole Simpson’s sister Denise, said Simpson brooded at a recital for his daughter earlier that evening.

But the defense, according to members of the Simpson team, will call witnesses to contradict that and to say that they saw the defendant in the days prior to the killings. Nothing seemed amiss then, according to the witnesses--including, according to the Simpson team, a couple of Simpson’s golf partners, a woman who sat next to the former football star at a dinner the night before the killings and an interior designer who met with him that week.

Prosecutors have objected to their testimony, questioning the relevance of Simpson’s demeanor a day or two prior to the killings.

Defense lawyers also say they intend to call witnesses who saw Simpson on the flight to Chicago just hours after the killings and that nothing seemed unusual about him; by contrast, passengers aboard his return flight the next day are expected to testify that he seemed distraught and disheveled.

In the area of possible expert witnesses, Simpson’s lawyers say they intend to call a few DNA scientists to challenge aspects of the DNA evidence.

Other likely defense witnesses include doctors to testify about Simpson’s arthritis and other ailments and scientific experts to detail some aspects of the defense evidence-tampering contention. The scientists, according to the defense, could include one to describe the pattern of stains on a pair of Simpson’s socks and another to testify that traces of a preservative were found in that blood.

When a sample of Simpson’s blood was taken on June 13, 1994, it was put in a test tube along with a preservative known as EDTA. The FBI found traces of what could have been the preservative in the blood found on the socks, but said the traces were so light as to be questionable. Moreover, the same preservative is used in soap and other items.

The defense argues that the trace amounts of the preservative suggest that the vial of Simpson’s preservative-laced blood was used to plant evidence.

The most provocative aspect of Simpson’s defense may be its attempt to offer jurors a possible alternative explanation for why Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman were killed: drugs.

Cochran has long said that he believes the killer or killers could have been at Nicole Simpson’s condominium that night to collect a drug debt from her friend, Faye Resnick, who was in drug rehabilitation at the time. According to that theory, for which no evidence has surfaced, the assailants came looking for Resnick, who had stayed with Nicole Simpson for a time.

The defense witness list includes both Resnick and her ex-boyfriend, Christian Reichardt, presumably to testify about Resnick’s drug use.

Prosecutors have expressed indignation at various defense tactics, and their early glimpses of what the Simpson team expects to present during its case have done little to soften the government team’s impression of its adversaries.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti said in an interview Friday that he has been troubled by many of the defense gambits so far, but that no matter what Cochran offers up in the coming weeks, it will not affect the verdict.

“I believe we have put together . . . evidence that is extremely compelling and persuasive to any objective viewer or listener,” Garcetti said. “All of that evidence points to only one person who is responsible for the deaths of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson.”

Times legal affairs writer Henry Weinstein contributed to this story.