For Dennis Fung, the scene was all too familiar - an O.J. Simpson lawyer bombarding him with accusations of contamination and corruption. The only thing missing was the shrill voice of Barry Scheck shouting: "Where is it, Mr. Fung?"
In a confrontation Monday with the only lawyer left from Simpson's criminal trial defense team, the Los Angeles Police Department criminalist again found himself the focus of a defense frame-up theory, this time in the wrong-ful-death trial.Robert Blasier, a soft-spoken scientific evidence expert lacking the dramatic flair of the brash Scheck, accused Fung of a series of evidence blunders: allowing a dog to wander through blood evidence on the former football star's driveway, carrying a bloody glove to the crime scene and failing to collect a piece of paper and blood "imprint" evidence from a post.
Thirteen months after Simpson was acquitted in the 1994 killings of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman, the defense unveiled yet another picture that went unused by the criminal lawyers.
This time it was a photo of a post near Goldman's body, smeared with blood that Blasier said bore imprints, possibly of a shoe.
"I do see some sort of pattern on the post," Fung said.
"Did you even notice it at the time?" Blasier asked.
"No," said Fung, who said he also didn't notice the piece of paper depicted in another photo. Blasier suggested both bore shoe impressions, but Fung said it wasn't clear.
The confrontation was reminiscent of the April day in 1995 when Scheck, the scientific bulldog of the criminal defense team, sprang on Fung two pictures of a back gate at Nicole Simpson's condo taken three weeks apart. The more recent photo showed a blood spot unseen in the first shot.
"Where is it, Mr. Fung?" Scheck shouted as he showed jurors the first photo.
"I can't see it in the photograph," Fung said then.
On Monday, he admitted he never saw any blood on the back gate the first time he visited the condo the morning after the killings. He also contradicted Detective Tom Lange, who testified last week that he alerted Fung to the gate blood.
"I don't remember being told about blood on the back gate that day," Fung testified.
Meanwhile, USA Today reported Tuesday that an 18-year-old high school senior working as a court intern has been the subject of unwanted suggestive behavior from Simpson.
Amber McGrath said Simpson invited her to a Halloween party, and the newspaper said spectators and witnesses have seen three incidents, including one where Simpson made a gesture as though he were about to lift her skirt one day as she was bending over in court. A bailiff admonished him, the paper said.
McGrath's boss, court administrator Jerrianne Hayslett, said the young woman had done nothing to encourage the attention, saying McGrath has been doing "a fabulous job."
McGrath told the newspaper, "Here he is at the trial involving the death of his ex-wife, who he's supposed to be in love with, and he's hitting on me."