Simpson Lawyers Use Crime Photo to Suggest Frame-Up

Hitting jurors with a cornerstone of their frame-up theory, O.J. Simpson’s defense lawyers Tuesday unveiled a photo that appears to contradict police officers’ testimony about the number and location of blood spots on the back gate of Nicole Simpson’s condominium.

A photo taken the day after the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman seems to show just one blood smear on the bottom rung of the gate. But snapshots taken three weeks later, when criminalists returned to the scene to collect the back-gate blood, show two distinct splotches, plus several dark marks that police officers variously identified as either chipped paint or blood.

Although defense lawyers trumpeted the discrepancy, police who responded to the scene hours after the murders insisted that they saw at least two bright red blood drips on the bottom rung of the gate--stains that were later found consistent with O.J. Simpson’s DNA.

“It doesn’t show [both stains] on the picture, sir,” said Sgt. David Rossi, who noted two splotches during his tour of the crime scene. “[But] I was there. There was blood, sir.”

The next witness, however, offered a conflicting account about the location of the blood, further muddling an issue that has been hotly contested. Officer Donald Thompson, who responded to the scene about six hours after police first arrived, testified that he saw only one major blood drop on the bottom of the gate, and pointed to its location. Confronted with the photo taken the day after the murders--which showed a drop in a different area of the bottom rung and no stain where he said there had been one--Thompson insisted that the camera must not have accurately captured all the evidence.

Although he did not record his observations on paper, Thompson said he took good mental notes, and he expressed more confidence in his memory than in the blurry snapshot, which captured the gate at an angle. “It’s too hard to tell what’s [there]. There’s too much grain in that photo,” Thompson said.

The plaintiffs called Thompson, Rossi and other officers in an effort to shoot down the defense’s frame-up theory by proving that all the evidence was in place long before Simpson returned from Chicago and gave a blood sample to the Los Angeles Police Department. They also tried to counter the defense argument that some of Simpson’s blood might have been on the grounds of his ex-wife’s condo for entirely innocent reasons, since he was often on the property playing with his children and their dog.

The first officers on the crime scene both said that blood drops on the back gate and next to bloody footprints on the walkway appeared fresh and moist. Officers who responded a few hours later said the stains were bright red, not the brown color of blood that has been exposed to the elements for a long time.

Thompson also testified to spotting a trail of blood on Simpson’s driveway and several stains inside his Ford Bronco, again before Simpson ever returned home. And he insisted that the Bronco was well secured, even though a reporter got near enough to rest a coffee cup on it and another onlooker rushed up to peek through the windows.

In a further rebuff to the defense’s conspiracy theory, several officers testified that they saw only one bloody glove at the crime scene. The defense has suggested that former LAPD Det. Mark Fuhrman may have picked up a second, matching glove at the condo and planted it at O.J. Simpson’s estate.

But Fuhrman’s partner, Det. Ron Phillips, emphatically and repeatedly testified Tuesday that there was no second glove at the murder scene.

The plaintiffs called on Phillips to give jurors the first account of how four detectives entered Simpson’s estate shortly before 5:30 a.m., just hours after the murders. As he had in the criminal trial, Phillips testified that the officers rang the bell and called the home, trying to rouse somebody so they could notify Simpson of his ex-wife’s death. Meanwhile, he said, Fuhrman walked around to another gate and spotted a drop of blood on the door of Simpson’s Bronco. When the lead detectives saw the blood, they grew concerned that other victims might lie inside the estate, so they ordered Fuhrman to jump the fence and open the gate for them, Phillips testified.

Phillips also told jurors that he called Simpson in a Chicago hotel room to notify him of the murders. Simpson sounded distraught, and kept repeating, “Oh my God, Nicole’s been killed,” but he did not inquire about the circumstances of her death or ask whether her body had been positively identified, Phillips testified.

The veteran detective said Simpson’s behavior was different from the reaction he has gotten in hundreds of other death notifications. Usually, he said, “there’s an initial shock, and then [the relatives] always want to ask how, why, when, where, am I sure about it, and how do I know.”

Simpson attorney Dan Leonard tried hard to undermine Phillips on cross-examination; his tone grew so sarcastic at times that Superior Court Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki had to admonish him to phrase his questions more politely. Phillips, however, seemed unruffled. And the jurors, who had jotted notes throughout the detective’s direct testimony, put down their pens as the cross-examination wore on without any jolting revelations.

Fujisaki canceled court for today to allow out-of-town witnesses time to travel to Santa Monica. Testimony resumes Thursday at 8:30 a.m., when retired LAPD Det. Tom Lange is expected to take the stand.