Simpson Defense Hits Handling of Evidence

Fending off questions from an increasingly frustrated defense lawyer, Los Angeles Police Department criminalist Collin Yamauchi on Tuesday acknowledged that some elements of the evidence handling in the O.J. Simpson case were imperfect, but he narrowly avoided being drawn back into a fierce debate over the admissibility of a statement Simpson gave police.

Simpson has pleaded not guilty to the June 12 murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman. His attorneys have aggressively challenged the charges, and on Tuesday, attorney Barry Scheck resumed a key aspect of the defense effort, trying to undermine the jury’s confidence in scientific test results by attacking the handling of the evidence.

Scheck suggested that Yamauchi had handled a vial of Simpson’s blood near other items of evidence, had failed to document various steps in his notes and had risked contaminating samples by using sloppy techniques. At one point, Yamauchi acknowledged that a small amount of blood from a test tube containing a sample from Simpson had stained his gloves--though the criminalist added that he quickly changed the gloves before touching any other items.

The court week began Tuesday with the dwindling jury still intact but laboring under the threat of further attrition: As the day began, Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito cryptically announced that “there were some issues left unresolved that we were going to discuss further this morning.” The judge said those issues could not be resolved until a transcript of an in-chambers session last week was completed.

Although Ito did not elaborate, sources have said that at least one more juror is under investigation.

Without the completed transcript, Ito instead decided to keep things moving in open court. Lawyers on both sides agreed with his suggestion, clearing the way for Yamauchi to retake the witness stand.

In response to Scheck’s cross-examination, Yamauchi defended his techniques, sometimes openly displaying his impatience with the lawyer’s detailed, accusatory questions.

Jurors followed the questioning closely, and several appeared to take special note as the analyst described performing certain procedures with one hand--a technique that Yamauchi said prevented contamination, but that Scheck suggested would be difficult to execute. The panel also seemed intrigued by Yamauchi’s discussion of blood staining his gloves, a point that defense attorneys deemed critical.

Yamauchi, whose techniques of handling evidence came under a sarcastic critique by the defense attorney, avoided short answers, explaining at length why and how he performed certain procedures. Frustrated by the witness’s attempts to avoid being pinned down, Scheck rolled his eyes, raised his voice and occasionally interrupted him to ask that his answers be stricken from the record.

After one particularly involved response, Scheck sarcastically asked: “Are you finished?”

“Yes,” Yamauchi responded defiantly. “I am.”

“Then would you please answer my question?” Scheck shot back.

Simpson’s Statement

Just before the morning break, Scheck launched a controversial line of inquiry, attempting to elicit the analyst’s testimony about when and how he learned that Simpson had provided police with an “airtight alibi,” as Yamauchi testified under questioning by the prosecution.

That topic brought the trial to an abrupt halt last week, as defense attorneys attempted to persuade Ito that the reference should allow them to play the entire 32-minute, tape-recorded statement for the jury--a move that effectively would have allowed the panel to hear from Simpson without the defendant having to face cross-examination.

Both sides argued their positions on that notion orally and in writing before Ito denied the defense request--partly because prosecutors said Yamauchi’s courtroom comment was based on what he had heard on the news, not on information about what Simpson told the police. But Scheck gingerly raised the topic again Tuesday by posing a series of questions intended to determine whether Yamauchi had learned about Simpson’s statement from Police Department colleagues, including criminalist Dennis Fung.

“Did he indicate to you, via the detective from robbery-homicide, that the Rockingham blood drops were expected to be Mr. Simpson’s blood?” Scheck asked at one point.

During his interview with police, Simpson said he thought he might have cut his hand at his house that evening, perhaps while packing to leave for Chicago. Scheck’s question was an attempt to determine whether Yamauchi had been given that information, but Yamauchi appeared not to understand what the defense lawyer was asking.

After a prosecution objection was overruled, Yamauchi responded: “He indicated there was a blood trail leading away from the scene, and he talked about that cut [to Mr. Simpson’s finger] and it could possibly be linked.”

That response referred to blood drops at the scene of the crimes, not Simpson’s residence. Shaking his head, Scheck posed another question, trying to steer Yamauchi back to the blood drops at Rockingham and asking what he knew about those drops when he began performing his DNA tests at the LAPD lab. But the analyst shrugged off that inquiry as well when he said he had not even tested the Rockingham blood drops until another day.

Frustrated by his inability to get the information he was seeking, Scheck sought it more directly: “When you were talking with Mr. Fung on the morning of June 14, did you know that detectives at robbery-homicide had taken a statement from Mr. Simpson earlier that day?”

At that, the first direct reference to Simpson’s statement during Tuesday’s session, Deputy Dist. Atty. Rockne Harmon jumped to his feet and objected. Ito dismissed the jurors for the morning break. When the attorneys returned--but before the jurors were brought back in--Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark furiously denounced the defense lawyer’s remark.

Fuming, she threatened to report Scheck to the State Bar for asking a question that she said any “lawyer with half a brain, with an IQ above 5,” would have known was improper. And she demanded that the jury be told that the lawyer had acted unethically in attempting to elicit testimony about the statement, which Ito already had ruled would not be played for the panel.

Scheck was unapologetic, insisting that the question was proper and asking for permission to pose more along the same lines. Ito denied that request, which he said would confuse jurors. And once the panelists returned, Ito instructed them to disregard all references to the statement.

“Ladies and gentlemen, before we proceed any further, I’m going to instruct you to disregard any testimony by this witness, Mr. Collin Yamauchi, as it relates to any statements alleged to have been made by Mr. Simpson, either on direct examination or on cross-examination,” Ito said.

Jurors, some of whom had been attentively following the proceedings and taking detailed notes in their silver-blue notebooks, paused at that instruction, quizzically looking at one another. The judge offered no further explanation, and Yamauchi’s testimony resumed.

“The prosecution is watching like hawks to see if the defense tries to sneak O.J.’s statement in front of the jury,” said Laurie Levenson, a Loyola Law School professor. “Every time the defense mentions the statement, even if they don’t get into the content of it, the jurors may speculate that Simpson has an explanation for his actions that night and the prosecutors are trying to keep it from them.”

Jury Watch

With just four remaining alternate jurors, much attention has focused on whether the Simpson panel will survive long enough to deliver verdicts in the murder trial. Sources have said that at least one juror, a young Latina who works as a real estate appraiser, remains under investigation and could soon be excused.

Meanwhile, Ito is attempting to cater to the remaining panelists, who had originally been told to brace for about six months of sequestration, but who now may be looking at several months more.

On Tuesday, Ito released a proposed court order prompted by a letter from jurors requesting longer court days and the scheduling of a half-day session on Saturdays. Ito’s proposed new schedule does not recommend a Saturday session, but it would add 90 minutes to the sessions three days a week and tack 30 minutes onto another court day.

In his proposed order, Ito asked the attorneys to respond by Thursday. If the new schedule is workable, it could take effect next week.

Report Attacked

When court resumed after the lunch break, lead Simpson trial lawyer Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. used the courtroom camera to debunk the latest report about the case to be challenged by those most familiar with the details.

The National Enquirer reported last year that prosecutors and defense attorneys were attempting to negotiate a plea for Simpson, a report that sources on both sides denied. The tabloid publication again reported this week that plea negotiations were under way, and again sources on both sides said the reports were false.

“There are not now nor have there been nor will there be any plea-bargain discussions in this case,” Cochran told those in the courtroom. “I thought I should make the record clear in that regard.”

In an interview, Cochran added: “This case will never be settled by a plea bargain. The only thing we’ll accept is a dismissal and an apology.”

Prosecutors also denied that any plea was in the works or that any has ever been negotiated.

Those remarks were made outside the jury’s presence. Once the panel was back in place, Scheck renewed his unrelenting, sarcastic challenge to Yamauchi’s evidence handling.

The questioning was often focused on detailed minutiae in the case--Yamauchi counting up the number of times he entered or left the lab while testing certain samples, conceding that he had not seen another criminalist’s initials on evidence bindles and acknowledging that plastic used to temporarily store some of the blood swatches was not preserved.

Yamauchi also testified that he had tested a large number of samples on one day. Scheck--trying to show that the analyst was rushed--confronted him with records showing that he had entered and left the lab throughout that morning.

Defense attorneys said they were particularly heartened by one aspect of Yamauchi’s testimony, his acknowledgment that when he opened a test tube of Simpson’s blood, it stained wipes that he was carrying and smeared his gloves. Seven jurors appeared struck by that testimony, quickly jotting it down in their notebooks.

As the day concluded, Scheck turned to a central element of the defense’s long-running conspiracy theory, the allegation that somebody tainted a pair of Simpson’s socks with the blood of his ex-wife.

Yamauchi was one of several Police Department employees who inventoried evidence in late June, and he said he had not noticed blood on the socks at that time.

Defense attorneys maintain that the blood was planted sometime after that inspection, but prosecutors have responded by saying that neither witnesses nor the physical evidence--the splatter pattern on the socks, for instance--support that argument.

Indeed, Yamauchi’s testimony on the subject was guarded as well. The inspection that day, he said, “was by no means . . . a final analysis by any stretch.”

Scheck completed his cross-examination at the end of the day Tuesday, but Yamauchi will return to the witness stand today for more questioning by prosecutor Harmon.

Times legal affairs writer Henry Weinstein contributed to this report.