The defense had focused upon one sock that had a stain they claimed was a “compression transfer”-meaning that the blood hadn’t been spattered onto the sock in the heat of violence, but had been pressed onto it later. The jury was to infer, of course, that the pressing had been done by one of the nameless, faceless conspirators out to frame O. J. Simpson.
MacDonell was harping on certain microscopic spheres of blood found on the inside of the sock that was stained at the ankle with Nicole’s blood. I pointed out that these “little balls,” as I referred to them pejoratively, could very well have come from the handling the socks received after the crime-but for perfectly innocuous reasons. The socks had been frozen and unfrozen. They had been stretched for microscopic analysis. And in an earlier test, they had been swabbed with water; this alone could easily have caused the blood to rehydrate and leak through to the other side of the sock.
I confronted him with the fact that he had originally referred to the blood pattern as a “swipe,” not a “compression.” This was important because of the latter term’s sinister implications.
“It’s a matter of interpretation,” he waffled. “It’s a distinction that to my mind is totally irrelevant.”
But, of course, it wasn’t.
I asked the court for permission to question the witness about crime-scene photos. The defense objected frantically, but this time Ito overruled them.
“You saw photographs of the crime scene, have you not?” I asked him.
“Yes,” MacDonell answered, “I have.”
“… Let me ask you this, sir,” I continued. “If someone wearing the socks that you saw were to step near to the body of the victim, Nicole Brown Simpson, near enough for the ankle bone to come in contact with her bloody hand, could that cause a compression transfer?”
“Certainly,” he replied.
I could see Johnnie and Peter Neufeld out of the corner of my eye. Sweating.
“Could it also cause a swipe?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I shot it back again, with a cleaner spin. “If Nicole Brown Simpson reached out a bloody hand to touch the ankle of the murderer wearing those socks, could that cause a compression or a swipe transfer?”
He admitted that it could.
Bingo.
The Dream Team had two big guns left to calclass="underline" Michael Baden and Henry Lee. Shapiro had called in Baden, a medical examiner for New York State, almost before the bodies were cold. It was Baden, in turn, who’d told him to secure the services of Henry Lee, the forensic scientist who ran Connecticut’s state police crime lab. The word of mouth on both men was good. They enjoyed reputations for scientific and personal integrity. Sadly, those stellar reputations would take a beating in the Simpson trial.
Baden was an affable, charming man who always went out of his way to be sweet to me. And I have to admit, he had expert-witnessing down to a science (so to speak). A big man with a winning smile, he sat on the stand as if he owned it. Though Brian is not as physically imposing as Baden, his intensity makes him a formidable courtroom figure. I enjoyed watching their exchanges; to a seasoned legal observer it was like a clash of gods on Mount Olympus. I just hoped the jurors weren’t so blown away by the pyrotechnics that they ignored the point: that Brian was able to get Baden to concede that his scenarios were not as watertight as they seemed. Here’s how:
Contention: The L.A. County Coroner destroyed evidence when he discarded the food remnants in Nicole’s stomach. They might have indicated that she died much later than our time line allowed for.
Refutation: Under pressure from Brian, Baden in effect admitted that even if the contents had been preserved, they wouldn’t necessarily have pinpointed the time of death.
Contention: Nine days after the sock was found in Simpson’s bedroom, Baden looked at it and saw no blood, the implication being that the blood was planted later.
Refutation: Brian got Baden to admit that he had not inspected the socks carefully. A special high-intensity light is required to see blood on such material, and the defense didn’t use it. Thus, Baden couldn’t say for certain that there was no blood present.
Contention: The victims’ injuries showed that they may have been killed by two people, with two knives.
Refutation: Kelberg got Baden to admit that the evidence was consistent with a single murderer wielding a single knife.
In addition, Baden testified about the cuts on Simpson’s hands-and helped us while doing so. He reported that Simpson himself had told him that he’d gotten the cuts while retrieving his cell phone from the Bronco just before he left for Chicago. This line of questioning was important: It allowed us to get in evidence that the cell phone he’d used to call Paula at 10:03 P.M. on June 12 was in the Bronco. Ergo, Simpson had been out driving at 10:03 P.M., just before the murders were committed. Now I didn’t even need that snippet from Simpson’s statement to Vannatter and Lange. I would put this information to good use in closing arguments. In fact, I would use the Baden “cut” testimony in my summation to show how Simpson’s flimsy excuse about the cell phone couldn’t possibly account for all the blood in his car and his bathroom.
For his performance, Baden was paid $100,000.
There was even more fanfare for the vaunted superstar of the defense’s lineup, Dr. Henry Lee, one of the country’s most revered-and charismatic-criminalists. Lee’s testimony would focus on evidence collection, the blood on the socks, and the shoe prints-all Hank Goldberg’s turf. The job he had ahead of him was the courtroom equivalent of guarding Michael Jordan.
Personally, I thought there was a pretty good chance that Dr. Henry Lee could be helpful to us. He was, for instance, a big proponent of DNA testing in criminal cases. He could also be helpful in answering assertions that the LAPD labs were “cesspools of contamination,” as charged by another defense witness, Dr. John Gerdes. Dr. Lee, by his own admission, had at one time done his evidence processing in a men’s room! He’d also dried crime-scene clothing in his backyard. (This practice ended when a stray dog took off with a piece of a rape victim’s underwear.)
But Hank’s work wouldn’t end there. Back on June 25, over a year earlier, Lee had gone to Bundy to examine the bloody shoe prints. His notes revealed that he thought he’d found evidence of a second set of prints, different from those made by the Bruno Maglis. Hank pored over the photos Lee had taken, trying to find the supposed shoe prints-to no avail. Finally, by piecing together all the photos, Hank located the exact spot on the tiles where Dr. Lee claimed to have seen that other set of shoe prints. Then he looked at the crime-scene photos taken by LAPD on their first sweep of Bundy. That spot was blank. The lines Dr. Lee found on June 25, two weeks after the murders, had not been there on June 13.
That wasn’t surprising. It could easily be explained by the fact that, after the crime-scene tape was removed, cops walked up and down that pathway freely. If, after all the photos were taken and the evidence collected, someone had stepped on some remaining blood and left another imprint, it was no big deal.
But Lee was claiming to have found what he called “parallel lines” that, he said, firmly indicated a second set of shoe prints. Hank located the spot where those appeared, and discovered that the parallel lines were actually impressions in the concrete.
Hank sat back while Scheck questioned the affable Dr. Lee for hours on these shoe-print findings. Then, on cross, Hank revealed to the witness the fact that the parallel lines were artifacts in concrete, probably made by a workman years before the crime.
“And now…” he asked Lee, “does it appear that the parallel lines are in fact trowel marks or scratches in the surface of the pavement?