THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : Lab Flaws’ Impact Will Linger Long

No matter how the O.J. Simpson trial ends, the Los Angeles Police Department will be picking up the pieces from the case for many years to come.

Ever since the Simpson trial began, the department has come under heavy scrutiny and attack by the Simpson defense team. Much of it has been lawyer’s rhetoric, some of it desperate and unbelievable.

That has not been the case, however, with the defense assault on the department’s ability to use sophisticated science to solve crimes. Procedures, cleanliness and competence were the issues when the defense focused an unsparing spotlight on the Police Department’s crime lab, the heart of its scientific crime-fighting capability.

Those were the issues Wednesday and Thursday when microbiologist John Gerdes, a defense witness, gave a detailed analysis of how the lab worked before and during the period when Simpson allegedly killed his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.

Simple, powerful bar graphs told a story of increasing contamination in DNA analyses in the crime lab in 1993 and 1994. The bars, signifying contamination rates, looked like the record of a bull market, steadily rising month after month, interrupted only occasionally by a dip.

After watching the presentation, Peter Keane, assistant San Francisco public defender, said the record will provide ammunition for years to come for lawyers defending poor clients who don’t have the ability to mount an expensive, Simpson-style defense.

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Keane made the comment Wednesday when he was interviewed by Fred Graham, Court TV’s chief anchor, during the morning trial broadcast.

Intrigued by the thought, I called Keane on Thursday and asked him to be more specific about what the defense testimony will mean to L.A.’s criminal justice system.

“Gerdes’ testimony will provide the poor man an ‘O.J. Simpson defense,’ ” he said. He noted that there were hundreds of cases processed by the crime lab in the ‘93-’94 period studied by Gerdes. “In attacking DNA prosecutions in those cases, the defendants’ attorneys will simply ask the courts to take judicial notice of the [Gerdes] testimony.”

This step would put into the trial record of all these unknown accused felons the information obtained for the defense by Gerdes, who is paid $100 an hour for his work.

“These defendants will have gotten for free what Simpson has laid out a couple of million for,” Keane said. Moreover, he said, the defense attack has uncovered a pattern of lab failures that will be used against the cops and the district attorney’s office in future years, unless they’re cleaned up. The Simpson team’s legacy could be strengthened defenses in DNA cases.

The government, which has a high winning percentage against poor defendants, doesn’t want that to happen.

“I would be very surprised if Gerdes’ testimony does not result in radical changes to the LAPD crime lab,” Keane said. “I don’t think the D.A. and the LAPD will allow themselves to be so vulnerable. It will result in more highly developed standards, not only in L.A. but also in other metropolitan centers.

“You just can’t run these mom-and-pop operations where they look at bullets through magnifying glasses,” he said, “where old cops get the evidence, throw it in a shopping bag, put it in the trunk of the car, lock the trunk and get to it next week.”

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But the LAPD is as resistant to change as a grouchy old bachelor.

We had an example of that in another area Saturday night when a 14-year-old boy, who police said pointed a gun at an officer, was shot to death by the cop in Lincoln Heights. It turned out that the officer, Michael A. Falvo, was one of 44 officers cited for excessive force or improper force in the post-Rodney King report on the LAPD.

Police Cmdr. Tim McBride, the department’s chief spokesman, said Falvo has been given counseling and retraining. Still, after all the turmoil since King, why would the department assign Falvo to a high-pressure gang suppression unit in an explosive neighborhood? Does the LAPD ever learn?

The crime lab’s problems go even deeper. One of the most telling Simpson case crime lab revelations in the Simpson trial was the disclosure earlier in the year that the refrigerator in the lab truck often broke down.

The leadership has been shaken up. The budget problems remain, as they do with the rest of the LAPD.

Maybe Mayor Richard Riordan, who persuaded corporate leaders to buy the cops new computers, can get business chiefs to buy the crime lab new equipment. That would be a start.