More DNA Experts Say The Blood Trail Leads To Simpson
SANTA MONICA, Nov. 14 (Evening) -- DNA analysts Renee Montgomery and Gary Sims testified Thursday afternoon in the O.J. Simpson civil trial, telling jurors that blood drops on the back gate at the Bundy crime scene most likely matched Simpson's.
Court will convene Friday at 9:00 a.m. and is expected to last only half a day. Sims, who finished direct examination, is the only scheduled witness tomorrow. On Monday, the plaintiffs plan to call Colin Yamauchi, an LAPD criminalist, and FBI shoe print expert William Bodziack.
Sims, a criminalist supervisor at the California Department of Justice DNA laboratory, talked about the blood samples collected from the back gate at Bundy by police several weeks after the murders. All three samples tested by his lab matched the DNA of Simpson. Sims was able to perform the most sensitive DNA test, called RFLP, on one of the samples. The chance of that blood coming from another person besides Simpson, Sims said, was one in 57 billion or more.
Anticipating that the defense will claim the blood on the gate was planted, the plaintiffs had Sims tell jurors that it was possible for blood to remain there for several weeks without degrading.
Plaintiffs attorney Thomas Lambert also launch a preventive strike on defense assertions that the bloody socks found in Simpson's bedroom were planted. When the socks were first recovered, the criminalists did not notice blood on them for a number of weeks, leading the defense to question why blood seemed to suddenly appear weeks later.
After the first blood spots were pointed out to him, Sims said he discovered additional spots on the sock while photographing them under high-powered lighting. After putting them under a microscope, Sims said he found even more blood. When he made those discoveries, Sims testified, Edward Blake, Simpson's criminal defense DNA expert, was present.
Earlier in the afternoon, Montgomery, a criminalist who works for Sims, testified about tests she performed on a number of pieces of blood evidence. Those tests, called D1S80, use a combination of PCR and RFLP techniques. Montgomery identified blood at the Bundy crime scene as Simpson's; blood in Simpson's Bronco as belonging to Simpson, Nicole Brown Simpson, and possibly Ronald Goldman; and blood on the glove allegedly found at Rockingham as belonging to Simpson and Nicole Brown Simpson.
On cross-examination defense attorney Robert Blasier tried to show that the tests conducted by Montgomery were subjective. Montgomery admitted that she needed to make some interpretation to come to her findings. Blasier also pointed out that some of the alleles her test identified as belonging to Nicole Brown Simpson and O.J. Simpson were so common that 30 percent of the population would have one of them.
O.J. Simpson was not in court Thursday because he was with his mother who underwent surgery for a knee replacement this afternoon at a local hospital.
Robert Schmidt
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