Pale and shaken, criminalist Dennis Fung endured his latest scrape in the O.J. Simpson case, this time recanting testimony about a bloody glove from just one week ago.
Fung, a favorite punching bag for Simpson's criminal and civil trial lawyers, on Wednesday said he blundered Jan. 8 in testimony that the defense seized upon as proof of police evidence tampering.He had said he wasn't sure a glove found near the bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman was the same as the one brought into court.
"I didn't lie, but I was mistaken," Fung said in a quiet voice in Simpson's wrongful death trial.
The defense also took another hit Wednesday when the 2nd District Court of Appeal refused to bar two plaintiff rebuttal witnesses.
In a loud and angry cross-examination, defense lawyer Robert Baker suggested police officials trying to save face pressured Fung into changing the testimony he gave when called as a defense witness. He earlier testified for the plaintiffs.
"Was that your testimony last week or not?" Baker boomed.
"That was the testimony, yes," Fung conceded, but he quickly added that it was wrong.
Fung said almost immediately afterward while in the hallway, "it dawned on me" he had incorrectly described the bloody glove.
Fung initially said that, in a picture of the glove, there appeared to be a defect in the leather that wasn't present when the glove was brought into court. It was this testimony the defense said was evidence that the gloves had been switched.
Brought back into court Wednesday for his third round of testimony in the trial, Fung, now a plaintiff rebuttal witness, said he took a new look at the picture and concluded the mark was actually a piece of debris.
Two other witnesses - photography expert Gerald Richards and Fung's boss Gregory Matheson - said they reached the same conclusion.
Richards testified that what looked like a hole in the glove was an optical illusion caused by the debris. Matheson agreed, saying, "It's clearly a piece of debris sitting on the surface caked in with a little bit of dirt and a hair or fiber that wraps around it."
They were among the plaintiff's final parade of scientists called in rebuttal to challenge defense contentions that Simpson was the victim of a police conspiracy and evidence contamination.
Four witnesses remain for the plaintiffs.