THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL

UCLA law professor Peter Arenella and Loyola Law School professor Laurie Levenson offer their take on the Simpson trial. They are joined by Southwestern University Law Professor Karen Smith, who will rotate with other experts as the trial moves forward. Today’s Topic: Dr. Henry Lee on everything from blood to etiquette.

PETER ARENELLA

On the defense: “Barry Scheck and Lee offered an exhaustive and exhausting demonstration of how criminalists botched the crime scenes. They missed shoe imprints suggesting there were two killers; somehow police got more blood on the envelope than was there originally, and Lee’s interpretation of blood evidence indicated a long struggle. Lee’s conclusion: LAPD incompetence prevented their recognition of evidence that might have exonerated O.J.”

On the prosecution: “Hank Goldberg’s dilemma: Lee’s competence, charm and integrity lend his conclusions more significance than they might deserve. Worse, jurors might resent how badly the prosecution treated Lee when he came to L.A. to inspect the socks. Goldberg needs to show jurors that there was no second shoe print or that it came from the police and that all the Bundy crime scene reveals is that a struggle occurred, not its duration.”

LAURIE LEVENSON

On the defense: “Heavy on show and tell, lighter on substance. Dr. Lee gave jurors an excellent science lesson in reading blood drops. He then suggested that if there were additional shoe prints and if there were additional fingerprints there could have been more than one killer. But Lee was reluctant to go as far as the defense wanted him to. At most, he would only say there was a struggle at the crime scene and unexplained blood transfers on the socks.”

On the prosecution: “Goldberg’s biggest concern has to be that jurors are so impressed by Lee that they give his testimony more weight than even he would. None of Lee’s testimony was a surprise. Generally, Lee sounded like he didn’t want to hurt the prosecution, but he wasn’t happy about a rude reception when inspecting socks at the LAPD lab. Moral of the story--be nice to witnesses if you want them to be nice to you.”

KAREN SMITH

On the defense: “Lee’s splatter experiments effectively illustrated his theories. He helped the defense by raising doubts as to how the victims died, especially the struggle that the physical evidence indicates Ron Goldman put up, and by suggesting there may have been two killers. The importance of offering a competing scenario is that it suggests to the jury that prosecutors are at best guessing at what happened, and that’s not good enough for a conviction.”

On the prosecution: “Goldberg faces a real problem if he tries to criticize Lee’s two-killer theory, because Lee could come back and say he can’t tell them more because of the unprofessional way the Bundy crime scene was processed. The prosecution’s overall problem is they locked themselves into a one-killer, quick-silent-kill, catching-them-by-surprise theory. They might soften that position as they did with the timeline.”

Compiled by HENRY WEINSTEIN / Los Angeles Times