Without a Doubt - [31]

“I haven’t been in the shoe analysis assist unit for about three years,” he replied. “So I’m kind of rusty on that aspect.”

I was stunned. If he was too “rusty” to make such no-brainer observations, what the hell was he doing at a murder scene as our criminalist? This was not good at all.

“So you are disqualifying yourself?” I asked him incredulously. “Telling us you are not qualified to render an opinion as to that because of a lack of experience or training?”

“Yes, at this point,” he replied.

At that moment, I realized that I had no idea what might come out of Dennis Fung’s mouth next. I was flying blind. All I could do was continue questioning him, and hope that there were no more ugly surprises.

No such luck. Throughout the testimony, I watched helplessly as Fung fumbled through his notes, constantly losing his place. We went through all the presumptive blood tests he had taken. A presumptive blood test is simply a quick, though not infallible, procedure to determine whether a stain is indeed blood. Several stains at Rockingham had given a positive result, including stains in the foyer, on the door handle of the Bronco, and on the glove found on the south pathway. Fung had also done the tests on the drains in the master bathroom sink and shower-and they, too, had indicated blood! This could mean that Simpson had washed himself off before heading to the airport.

But Fung blew it. As we got deeper into the questioning, I learned to my dismay that he had not tested all the drains at Rockingham, only those that had appeared to be in “recent use.” When you do presumptive tests for blood, you should always be aware that the results can be impeached in court, because they can sometimes also give a positive result for things like rust and vegetable matter. Fung’s failure to test all the drains would play right into the defense’s hands. I could already hear opposing counsel crossing him: “Oh, you mean you didn’t test the other drains? So you don’t know whether they, too, might have given a positive result, do you, Mr. Fung? And if they had, you might have concluded that the positive result you got in my client’s bathroom was nothing more than rust, isn’t that so? Or would you try to tell this jury, Mr. Fung, that blood had been washed down every sink in that house?”

Fung had failed to obey the criminalist’s first commandment: be thorough. His tendency to test selectively would later cripple our efforts to get important blood evidence into the record. And his demeanor on the stand wouldn’t give a jury the confidence that he could change a lightbulb, let alone supervise a forensic investigation.

After he left the stand, I called my people and said, “This guy’s a fucking disaster.”

Here’s the bottom line: Fung and his colleague, Andrea Mazzola, a trainee with only four months’ experience, should have been supervised as they went over both crime scenes. Tom and Phil should have returned to oversee that search. When I’d spoken to them mid-afternoon after they’d interviewed Simpson, they’d assured me they were on their way back out to Rockingham. They didn’t make it back there until after five. Too late. By that time Fung and Mazzola were packing up and heading home.

We’d be doing damage control on that sloppy search for a long time to come. We still are.

At the outset, I had assumed we would be offering the cops’ taped interview with Simpson into evidence. But there was more foot-dragging by the LAPD. Not until the week the grand jury hearing began in earnest did I finally get the cops to fork over the cassette tape of that interrogation.

In the privacy of my office, I slipped the tape into my player, grabbed a legal pad, and pulled my knees up into my oversized leatherette chair to listen to what I assumed was at least a two-hour interview. It was a shock, therefore, when after thirty-two minutes, I heard Lange say, “We’re ready to terminate this at 14:07,” and then heard nothing but the white fuzz of unrecorded tape. I didn’t get it-Simpson had spent three full hours at the station. What could they have been doing all that time?

I was even more disturbed by what was on the tape. Phil and Tom both sounded exhausted-that was understandable. They’d been up since three the morning of June 13. But that was no reason to allow a potential suspect in a double murder to set the program for the interview.

Any Monday-morning quarterback can now see that Simpson lied to Tom and Phil all through that interview. Of course, some of the lies weren’t apparent to them at the time. For instance, Simpson claimed that he’d been invited to dinner with the Brown family after the recital, which Nicole’s mother would later deny. Tom and Phil couldn’t have known that yet. But on other, more elemental points, like where and when he’d parked the Bronco, there was plenty they could have done.

Lange: “What time did you last park the Bronco?”

“Eight something,” replied the suspect. “Maybe seven, eight o’clock. Eight, nine o’clock. I don’t know, right in that-right in that area.”