Bloodstain Not From a Spatter, Witness Says

On a day cut short by a juror’s sudden illness, a renowned blood-spatter expert testified Thursday that blood on a sock found in O.J. Simpson’s bedroom was pressed into the material, not splashed up from the ground, bolstering a defense contention that the blood was planted.

Herbert MacDonell, a retired professor and director of a forensic science laboratory in Upstate New York, calmly and confidently laid out his observations for the jury, whose members craned forward to study pictures and took careful notes as he spoke.

“The ankle stain was very large,” MacDonell said, referring to the key blood evidence on the sock. “It was not spattered.”

MacDonell’s testimony is an enormous boon for Simpson because it backs up the defense argument that the jury should disregard DNA tests that strongly suggested that the blood on the sock came from Nicole Brown Simpson, who was murdered along with Ronald Lyle Goldman on June 12, 1994. Simpson has pleaded not guilty to those killings, and the defense long has maintained that the blood on the socks was planted.

MacDonell supported that point by saying that the blood appeared to have soaked through the sock and by suggesting that the blood was pressed into the material, a process known as “transfer,” not splashed there.

“That’s what a transfer looks like,” MacDonell said, reviewing one microscopic photograph of the stain. “Classic.”

MacDonell’s comments represented some of the most beneficial testimony to Simpson so far, offering jurors physical evidence--albeit hotly disputed evidence--to support the police conspiracy theory. Another defense expert has said he believes that the blood on the socks was laced with a preservative, but his testimony was sharply contradicted by the FBI agent who ran the test.

In addition to testimony that the witness delivered Thursday, Simpson’s attorneys forged ahead on two other fronts, telling Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito that they have three more witnesses prepared to testify about hearing Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman use a racial epithet and gaining the right to take the next step in pursuing a novel and potentially provocative aspect of their police conspiracy theory--one involving television station KNBC.

News Report Debated

The KNBC issue involves what may be the most discredited news story of the Simpson case, a Sept. 21 report by the station asserting that a DNA test performed on bloodstains from a sock discovered in Simpson’s bedroom revealed “a genetic match” to Simpson’s ex-wife.

DNA tests had not even been started on the socks at that point, and though The Times accurately reported at the same time that conventional tests on the socks had pointed to Nicole Simpson as the likely source of the blood, KNBC went further and claimed that DNA tests had produced the genetic match with her blood.

The KNBC report, which was echoed by CNN, now forms the basis for the defense’s argument that someone inside the Los Angeles Police Department planted blood on the socks and thus could accurately predict what subsequent DNA tests would find.

Prosecutors on Thursday offered a simpler explanation for the inaccurate KNBC story: that the reporter, Tracie Savage, had made a mistake.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Hank Goldberg pointed out several errors in the KNBC report, each of which implied that the source of the information was someone without access to accurate information about the DNA testing.

“How are we supposed to trust at face value this story as having accurately stated what was supposedly heard from this source, if indeed there was a source?” Goldberg asked.

Ito, whose fury at the original KNBC report was magnified by the station’s decision to amplify on it even after the judge had denounced the original story as false, did not appear to need much convincing. In fact, the judge raised the idea of bringing Savage into court and even broached the notion of putting her in jail if she refused to divulge information.

“Don’t we have to then first determine by summoning [Savage] and demand from that person production of the source of that information?” Ito asked. “Perhaps in this situation that person will agree to divulge the source. And if not, we’ll have to conduct a contempt hearing.”

Although state law limits the rights of lawyers and even judges in probing a reporter’s confidential sources, some legal analysts said Ito seems to be spoiling for a confrontation. “It sounds like Ito might test his powers,” said Laurie Levenson, a Loyola Law School professor.

The problems facing Savage are magnified by a letter that her station sent to Ito after the reports in an attempt to quell the judge’s anger. In the letter, the station asserted that its sources were “individuals knowledgeable about the investigation” and that they had previously provided the station with reliable information.

As a result, Simpson attorney Gerald F. Uelmen said the defense would ask Savage to testify that she had based her report on traditionally truthful and reliable sources. Normally, a reporter could refuse to answer that question, but KNBC’s letter may give Ito grounds to force Savage to characterize her sources.

And if Savage testifies that her sources were longstanding and dependable, then the defense will argue that they must have been within the LAPD--all without ever asking Savage for the names of any sources.

Although prosecutors pointed out that others, including members of the defense team, were aware of test results and could have provided information to the television station, Uelmen said the defense argument that the source came from within the LAPD was bolstered by the fact that the week before the KNBC story, news organizations, including The Times, accurately reported on DNA tests soon after the results were reported to Michelle Kestler at the LAPD lab.

In a statement released by the station, KNBC did not address the defense allegations of a conspiracy but said Savage would not divulge her sources.

“If Ms. Savage is questioned on that subject by any of the attorneys or the court, she and KNBC will vigorously assert their constitutional rights to protect confidential sources as they do in all cases,” the statement said.

Juror Falls Ill

Ito set the hearing on the KNBC issue for Monday morning, but the court schedule for the next few days was thrown into doubt Thursday afternoon when a 43-year-old juror suddenly became ill with dizziness and stomach pains.

Paramedics took the man to a hospital, where he was being examined. The sudden illness of that juror--who tends to keep to himself at mealtimes and during breaks in which other jurors quietly converse--brought an abrupt halt to Thursday’s session and forced cancellation of testimony today.

Jurors who contract prolonged or serious illnesses generally are dropped from panels on which they are serving. But with only two alternates remaining for the duration of the Simpson case, attorneys said Ito was inclined to temporarily postpone the proceedings in the hope that the sick juror can recover and continue serving.

When testimony resumes, Simpson’s lawyers hope to complete the examination of the two experts who have been on the stand this week. Then they plan to turn to the issues surrounding the KNBC report, and soon after hope to begin eliciting the accounts of witnesses who say they heard Fuhrman use a racial epithet that the parties in this trial have taken to calling the “N word.”

Fuhrman denied under oath that he had used the word in the past 10 years, but Ito months ago ruled that the defense could present two witnesses who say they heard the detective say it sometime in 1986 or 1987.

Prosecutors objected to those witnesses, and on Thursday protested the defense’s plans to call three more people on that topic. The three latest witnesses, according to Uelmen, include a girlfriend of a former partner of Fuhrman, as well as that woman’s roommate.

Uelmen said those two women would testify that they heard Fuhrman deride blacks frequently and use the epithet that he denied uttering. In addition, Uelmen said a third witness, a drug suspect arrested by Fuhrman in the mid- to late-1980s, was prepared to say that the detective used the word in his presence and said to him during a strip search: “You guys all look alike to me.”

As the defense has long insisted, Uelmen said Thursday that the importance of those witnesses was not that they would establish that Fuhrman is a racist, but rather that he lied on the stand. If the defense team could convince the jury that the detective did not tell the truth, the attorneys would then urge the panel to disregard Fuhrman’s testimony entirely.

“Detective Fuhrman attempted to present himself to this jury as a choirboy,” Uelmen said. “He set it up. He dug the hole.”

Although the trial is beginning to wind down, major elements of the defense case still are unfolding, and an order released Thursday indicates that jurors may get the chance to stroll the scene of the crimes during a rare nighttime viewing.

Ito set Aug. 20, a Sunday night, for a 10 p.m. visit to the Bundy Drive crime scene, and 11 p.m. that night for a stop at Simpson’s estate. The judge is pushing ahead with those plans despite the headaches associated with the jury’s last trip to the area, an expensive and extraordinary spectacle that brought Brentwood to a halt while the jury bus tooled through.