Prosecution Fails To Shake Witness In O.J. Case

The prosecution Friday attacked the theory of an expert witness for O.J. Simpson that the two victims fought long and hard for their lives at 875 South Bundy Drive.

But the expert, Dr. Michael Baden, largely fended off the attack, making frequent references to the decades he had spent dissecting the mechanics of murder.

Deputy District Attorney Brian Kelberg tried to re-establish the prosecution’s account of how the crime occurred, which Baden, former chief medical examiner of New York City, disputed: that Nicole Brown Simpson was unconscious when her throat was fatally slashed; that the killer placed his foot on her back when he inflicted the fatal wound, and that Ronald L. Goldman also died quickly, before he could fight back.

Baden conceded that the two killings could have been accomplished with a single knife, but the thrust of his testimony - that the killings were too time-consuming for Simpson to have committed them - remained.