Simpson Jury Urged Not to Trust Evidence

O.J. Simpson’s defense team warned jurors Thursday not to be taken in by a case that they described as a giant con game, built on multiple conspiracies involving police planting evidence, scientists fuzzing data, photographers doctoring snapshots and federal agents shading testimony in an all-out effort to get Simpson.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” attorney Daniel Leonard said, laying his hand on Simpson’s broad shoulder and turning to face the jurors, “what this all comes down to is, are you going to be able to come back and, based on this evidence, tell my client that he killed the mother of his children?”

Leonard was talking in particular about the 31 photos of Simpson wearing Bruno Magli shoes. But his question applied as well to all the other evidence against Simpson, which the defense contends is contaminated, corrupted, compromised or just plain inaccurate.

“Our defense in this case regarding the physical evidence is very simple,” attorney Robert Blasier told jurors. “You can’t trust it.”

In a closing argument full of detail but sparse on passion, first Blasier and then Leonard laid out the basis for that contention.

They talked of evidence mysteriously showing up weeks, months and even years after the murders--from blood in Simpson’s Bronco to the photos of Simpson in the killer’s shoes. They talked, too, of how police officers contradicted one another on the stand. Of how blood was wet when it should have been dry. Of how evidence was moved at the crime scene.

They alleged that scientists, supposedly objective, interpreted DNA test results in the most incriminating way possible. They spoke of witnesses being coerced into changing their testimony to peg Simpson as the culprit. And they accused their adversaries in the courtroom--the lawyers for the victims’ families--of trying to bamboozle the jury by misrepresenting the evidence.

The attack grew so personal, in fact, that attorneys began sniping at one another in front of the jurors. The plaintiffs’ lawyers did not try to hide their disdain for the defense’s arguments, rolling their eyes and shaking their heads in amusement. And the defense team, slogging through hour after hour of technical material, grew increasingly annoyed.

At one point, Blasier turned to lead plaintiff counsel Daniel M. Petrocelli and asked: “Is there something funny?”

Petrocelli’s response: “You don’t want me to answer that.”

Petrocelli will, in fact, have a chance to answer all of the defense’s allegations in a rebuttal argument scheduled for Monday. Superior Court Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki had hoped to hand the case to jurors this week, but attorneys could not meet that schedule. Because Fujisaki will be out of town at a conference today, the trial will resume Monday, with one final appeal from the defense, followed by the plaintiffs’ rebuttal.

Jurors will probably begin deliberations Tuesday. Their task: to determine whether the plaintiffs have proved by a “preponderance of evidence” that O.J. Simpson killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman on June 12, 1994. That burden of proof is much lower than in the criminal cases; jurors could find Simpson liable even if they think there is just a 50.1% chance that he was the murderer.

To cut down the plaintiffs’ formidable stack of evidence, the defense turned to Blasier, the only holdover from the “dream team” that won Simpson his acquittals in the criminal trial.

Blasier, who is recovering from back surgery, delivered his four-hour summation from a wheelchair, using folksy metaphors and Tinkertoy props to help jurors understand his complex indictment of the DNA evidence.

He reminded them that a defense expert spotted traces of EDTA, a preservative used in test tubes, on bloodstains recovered from the back gate at the crime scene and from the socks in Simpson’s bedroom. The plaintiffs’ expert vigorously contests that conclusion, but Blasier insisted that the presence of EDTA proved beyond any doubt that someone planted the blood from test tubes.

Blasier also argued that jurors should be suspicious about the five crime-scene blood drops consistent with Simpson’s DNA. Although the swatches containing the blood were laid out to dry overnight, one set left wet stains on the paper that criminalists used to package it the following morning. Blasier interpreted those stains as proof that someone sneaked into the locked evidence room overnight and daubed blood from Simpson’s reference sample on the swatches.

As for the other blood, Blasier said there was nothing unusual about Simpson’s DNA being in his own car or his own bathroom.

Blasier acknowledged that the defense cannot explain exactly who tampered with the evidence--or, for that matter, when, how, or why the alleged conspiracy unfolded. Still, he insisted that the defense had proved enough anomalies to make it clear the evidence was not, to use his phrase, “hunky-dory.”

“I mean, c’mon folks,” he said repeatedly. “Good heavens.”

In his presentation, Blasier revived many of the catch-phrases from the criminal trial: “rush to judgment”; “garbage in, garbage out”; “something’s wrong.” Yet though the words were the same, the delivery was markedly different.

Simpson’s criminal trial lawyers projected outrage during closing arguments; in indignant tones, they demanded that jurors send a message to a corrupt Police Department by freeing a man wrongly accused. In contrast, Simpson’s civil attorneys have been decidedly low-key.

Both Blasier and Robert C. Baker, who spoke Wednesday afternoon, sounded during their summations as though they were chatting with jurors over coffee instead of spurring them to action. Both have also sounded somewhat uncertain about the details of their case, frequently telling jurors that they didn’t remember the testimony exactly but that they thought a certain witness raised a particular point.

The most aggressive defense argument came from Leonard, who opened his presentation by describing himself as a “hardheaded Irishman” who used “common sense” to analyze the 31 photographs of Simpson in Bruno Maglis. “Common sense will tell you,” he said, “that these are photographs that have come too late and cost too much.”

Reminding jurors that the pictures surfaced only after the criminal trial--one photo in March and the other 30 in December--Leonard said he could not believe the photographers’ testimony that they had forgotten all about the snapshots until recently. Further, he argued that it was highly suspicious that the same agent was peddling all 31 snapshots, for prices of up to $18,000. Deriding the photos as “store-bought evidence, evidence with a price tag,” Leonard urged jurors to disregard them.

Even the plaintiffs’ photo analyst, who testified that all 31 pictures were genuine, conceded that a motivated forger with the right equipment could doctor a negative so skillfully that no expert would ever be able to detect signs of fakery. Leonard read that testimony aloud, then added: “Money makes people do a lot of things.”