Evidence Gloves Match Simpson’s, Expert Says : Trial: Witness testifies they are like those in photos of defendant. Ito raises disputed solution to juror problem.

A former glove company executive told jurors Tuesday that gloves worn by O.J. Simpson during a series of football games in the early 1990s are the same style, size and--in some cases--color as a pair linked to the double murder with which Simpson is charged.

That testimony from Richard Rubin marks the prosecution’s most forceful response to the defense’s contention that the evidence gloves could not have been worn by Simpson because they do not fit--a position bolstered by the prosecution’s own, ill-fated glove demonstration. It was during that demonstration, one of the trial’s most memorable moments, that Simpson struggled to put on the evidence gloves, only to announce that they did not fit.

Although Rubin dominated the day’s testimony, legal wrangling and new jury problems continued to dog the trial and keep it on its precarious course toward conclusion. In the morning, one juror threatened to leave the panel because she needed to attend to a rental property that has been vacant and is losing money, sources said, but was persuaded to stay when Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito said he would consider having the county pay her losses.

The defense, which favors the excusal of that juror--a retired white woman who sits in the front row of the jury box--immediately objected. Simpson’s lawyers later asked for that juror to be dismissed and filed a motion urging Ito to reconsider his offer to financially help her.

Then, at day’s end, the defense submitted a long-shot proposal: They asked Ito to end the jury sequestration, which has isolated the panelists from the outside world for the last nine months. Ito did not immediately rule, but some observers called the defense motion, which would permit jurors to return home at night, a sly attempt to expose the jury to news coverage of the case, particularly the widespread reporting of recently retired Detective Mark Fuhrman’s decision to invoke the 5th Amendment rather than testify further in the Simpson case.

“If you can’t get appellate relief on the question of informing the jury about Mark Fuhrman’s invocation of the privilege,” UCLA law professor Peter Arenella asked wryly, “why not get community relief?”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark clearly endorsed that view. She cited the furor surrounding the Fuhrman disclosures and said: “This takes the cake for the most transparent motion by the defense.”

And Ito himself seemed to shrug it off, suggesting that it was a “no-brainer.”

During the portion of the day devoted to testimony, Rubin, a former general manager for the Aris glove company, was the day’s only witness. It was his second appearance on the stand; he had testified as part of the prosecution’s main case, which concluded in July.

Under friendly questioning from the prosecution, the glove expert reviewed photographs and videotapes showing a gloved Simpson at football games from 1990 to 1993. He said Simpson’s gloves in those pictures matched the characteristics of those found at the scene of the slayings, on Bundy Drive, and outside Simpson’s Rockingham Avenue home.

“Are the gloves worn by the defendant in these four photographs,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher A. Darden asked at one point, “the same style as the gloves found at Bundy and Rockingham?”

“Yes,” Rubin said forcefully. “Yes, they are.”

After showing a videotape of Simpson at that game, a 1991 playoff match between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Houston Oilers, Darden asked Rubin’s opinion about the gloves that Simpson was wearing. Rubin’s response: “Based on what I’ve seen, I would say that this is Style 70263, size extra large, brown.”

That matches the evidence gloves in every detail, and Darden followed up by asking, “How certain are you of that?”

“I’m 100% certain,” Rubin replied.

Jurors, who were kept out of the courtroom for most of the morning while attorneys waged their latest set of legal battles, seemed to follow Rubin’s account closely. Many took notes and all watched intently as he described the videotapes and photographs and fingered the bloodstained crime scene gloves, which were displayed in front of him.

Simpson has pleaded not guilty to the June 12, 1994, murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman. The bloody gloves found at the scene of the killings and outside Simpson’s estate form an important link in the prosecution’s physical evidence connecting Simpson to the crimes.

In his cross-examination, Robert Blasier, one of Simpson’s lawyers, tried to suggest that Rubin was overstating the significance of the similarities between the evidence gloves and those in the photographs.

Trying to hammer home that point, the defense lawyer quoted from a letter Rubin wrote to prosecutors on July 6. In that letter, Rubin said the photographs displayed characteristics consistent with the evidence gloves.

Blasier suggested that Rubin’s letter was evidence that he already had made up his mind about the gloves, and the lawyer highlighted the expert’s closing sentence: “Maybe I can make it to the victory party!!”

“Was this party being planned before the defense started?” Blasier asked sarcastically.

“This statement was made in jest,” Rubin said defensively. “No differently than on the first day that I testified here: As I walked out, I wished Mr. Simpson and the crowd the best of luck. It meant nothing.”

Still, Blasier continued to doggedly challenge the witness. He argued that Rubin’s glove expertise was not as extensive as that of other experts, and he suggested that the witness’s observations were sometimes unreliable. At one point, for instance, Rubin had said he could not distinguish between “mink” and “brown” in assessing the color of gloves portrayed in one of the photographs.

But Rubin said he later determined that they probably were brown, a judgment he came to after talking to the photographer.

In his final round of questioning, Darden presented Rubin with a photograph of Simpson at one of the games, along with one of the evidence gloves and one identical, unstained glove.

“Are they all brown?” Darden asked.

“Yes, they are,” Rubin said, adding: “These three gloves are categorically brown.”

Juror Complains, Ito Offers Help

The resumption of testimony was a welcome relief for Ito, who has pushed the attorneys to speed up in light of the jury’s weariness. But it did not halt other controversies in the case.

During a contentious morning session, Ito rejected defense efforts to gain access to the files of a police officer not directly connected to the case, but the judge conceded that the law barring him from turning over that material might be unconstitutional and invited the defense to challenge his ruling.

“The court is restricted by [the] evidence code . . . from going further on this,” Ito told Simpson attorney Barry Scheck, all but apologizing for the ruling he felt obliged to render. “I agree with you, Mr. Scheck, that that appears to be in conflict with certain rulings of the United States Supreme Court, and I would encourage you to take a writ on the matter.”

That invitation seemed sincere, but when lead Simpson trial lawyer Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. threatened to appeal Ito’s handling of the jury matter, the judge’s reply was clipped.

“Take your writ, counsel,” he said, rejecting Cochran’s appeal for him to reconsider.

Ito did not elaborate in open court on the juror issue, and he urged Cochran to be circumspect in describing it in front of the courtroom audience and camera. Outside court, however, sources said the juror in question is a retired woman in her 60s.

Those sources said the juror informed the court Tuesday that she wished to leave the panel because a rental property she relies upon for income has been vacant since July. The sources said that she put her losses on the property at $3,000, which she said she could not afford.

Ito, the sources added, then said that Los Angeles County might be able to compensate her for the $3,000 loss and asked her for a few days to consider ways that the problem might be resolved.

That was apparently enough to secure her continued service. But the judge’s solution, which seemed to satisfy prosecutors, may soon send the defense marching to the Court of Appeal.

Before appealing Ito’s latest decision, Simpson’s attorneys asked him to reconsider.

Simpson attorney Robert L. Shapiro commended Ito’s move as “noble in its desire and purpose,” but said it could make other jurors believe their colleague had been given preferential treatment. Moreover, Shapiro suggested in arguments that prompted prosecutor Clark to laugh out loud, that juror might also feel a heightened loyalty to the judge.

The judge reminded defense attorneys that they had previously urged him to take great care in protecting the jury panel from further attrition. Ito also noted that he has been according special treatment to jurors throughout the case, including sending some on out-of-state trips for family emergencies.

The varied prosecution and defense reactions reflect not only differing views of what the law permits in such cases, but also the end-game in a yearlong chess match over the composition of the jury.

Sources close to the defense have said Simpson’s attorneys view the juror involved in Tuesday’s controversy as the remaining panelist most sympathetic to the prosecution. The two remaining alternates--one of whom would replace the unhappy landlord, should she leave the jury--are regarded by both sides as potentially more open to the major themes of Simpson’s defense.

One of the alternates is a 72-year-old African American man who works as a security guard. When he was questioned during jury selection he said he had witnessed “many racial incidents” during his life. Transcripts of Ito’s various inquiries into allegations of juror misconduct suggest the man is quite sensitive to any intimation of racial slights.

The remaining alternate is a white woman, 24, employed as a receptionist. Her husband is black, and during jury selection she said interracial couples at times are the target of bias.

Actor Visits Ito

Despite Ito’s increasingly pointed concerns about the welfare of the jury and the need to speed up the case, Tuesday’s testimony was delayed by two hours for legal arguments and interrupted for a few minutes late in the day so that Ito could meet with actor James Woods, along with his mother and a friend of hers.

Woods, who said he had known Simpson and his ex-wife socially, spent about five minutes with Ito, whose courtroom has become something of a celebrity spotting ground since the trial got under way in January.

More significant, however, were the morning arguments as defense attorneys fought to keep the prosecution from introducing one more DNA test result into the Simpson case. Dozens of DNA test results already are in evidence, but authorities have conducted yet another, this time on a set of stains found inside Simpson’s Ford Bronco. Those stains were subjected to a form of analysis known as RFLP, and prosecutors say the results indicate a mixture of the blood of Simpson and Goldman.

If so, that would represent a major addition to the prosecution case, since it would mark the only RFLP test to suggest that Simpson’s blood was mixed with that of a murder victim with whom he had no known contact.

But Scheck argued that the prosecution had forfeited the right to introduce that evidence by stalling on its testing.

“They didn’t want to get this done,” Scheck said, his tone fierce and accusing. “It is arrogant.”

Responding, Deputy Dist. Atty. Brian Kelberg argued that the delays were not intentional and in fact merely reflected the patience and care given to the testing by Gary Sims, a state Department of Justice analyst.

Ito has yet to rule on the admissibility of that test, but when trial resumes this morning, prosecutors hope to begin with the Sims testimony. From there, the prosecution intends to attempt to rebut defense claims that some blood drawn from Simpson after the murders is unaccounted for.

That presentation would come in the form of a videotaped interview with the nurse who drew the blood and who cannot come to court himself because of his health. Instead, prosecutors proposed to screen for the jury a folksy interview between the nurse, Thano Peratis, and Deputy Dist. Atty. Hank Goldberg.

The lawyers and audience got a preview of that tape Tuesday. In it, Peratis admits that he was mistaken when he testified at the preliminary hearing that he drew about 8 cubic centimeters of Simpson’s blood. After conducting a makeshift experiment, Peratis concluded that he actually drew less than that, and on the tape he replicated that experiment at the same time that he offered his easygoing recollections of how he drew Simpson’s blood.

Ito ruled that the jury could hear the tape, but ordered prosecutors to edit out Peratis’ experiment and comments that would be prohibited by hearsay rules.

After the Peratis tape, the prosecution hopes to present evidence about the rarity of fibers found on one of the bloody gloves--fibers that resemble a sample taken from the rug of Simpson’s Ford Bronco--and then to offer a domestic violence expert who would testify about the way men who kill their spouses often behave before and after committing murder. The prosecution also may introduce evidence regarding Simpson’s failure to surrender to police on June 17, but Clark nevertheless insisted the government intends to finish by Friday.

“We’d like to end this case,” Clark said. “We’re tired. Everybody’s tired.”

Times staff writer Tim Rutten contributed to this article.