Officer Defends Way The Police Investigated Scene Of Murders But O.J.’S Defense Tries To Show Evidence Might Be Tainted

The first officer to come upon the bodies of murder victims Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman told jurors in the O.J. Simpson murder trial Thursday that the crime scene had been secured and that more than a dozen officers were on hand by the time detectives arrived to investigate.

On cross-examination, however, officer Robert Riske acknowledged he had not received special training in how to protect a crime scene and conceded that some potentially intriguing details about Nicole Simpson’s property were not photographed on the night of the killings - a cup of partially melting ice cream, for instance, and lighted candles in the master bathroom.

Simpson attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. elicited those statements as he launched a vital aspect of the defense case by attempting to show that the investigation was bungled and that evidence was compromised.

In court, Riske spent the day on the witness stand. He was called by the prosecution in part to show that investigators, particularly detective Mark Fuhrman, could not have taken a bloody glove and carried it to Simpson’s house without others noticing them.

Because the Simpson defense has suggested that possibility, Deputy District Attorney Marcia Clark painstakingly questioned Riske about his observations that evening and about his efforts to keep evidence from being tainted.

“Did you touch any of the evidence?” Clark asked.

“No,” Riske responded. “I was trying to preserve the integrity of the crime scene.”

Riske said he and other officers carefully had avoided moves that might have compromised evidence. For instance, Riske said he sidestepped Nicole Simpson’s body on the way into her house, avoiding stepping in the large pool of blood around her and walking through bushes rather than using a walkway that was stained with bloody footprints.

Riske also said that yellow crime-scene tape was stretched around the murder scene soon after he and other officers arrived. That kept passers-by from wandering into the scene of the crime and compromising evidence, Riske said.

But Cochran zeroed in on other aspects of Riske’s account, noting, for instance, that the officer had called his supervisor on Nicole Simpson’s telephone without noting the call in a brief report about his actions that night.

Using Nicole Simpson’s phone eliminated any possibility of redialing the number of the last person who had called her, Cochran said. In addition, Riske said he picked up the phone without gloves and without dusting it for fingerprints.

Although those admissions were arguably embarrassing, their overall effect on the case is harder to discern. There has been no evidence presented suggesting that the killer entered Nicole Simpson’s house, although defense attorneys say the lack of any such evidence may be because officers never explored the possibility seriously.

The dramatic centerpiece of Riske’s testimony was his account of finding the bodies.

Directed by a witness to the scene, Riske said he first spotted the body of Nicole Simpson - an observation highlighted Thursday by the display in court of shocking photographs of her bloody corpse, in the black cocktail dress that she had worn to dinner on the night she was killed.

Riske, a patrol officer with under five years’ experience, spent all day on the stand, his flat monotone contrasting with the grisly details he supplied about the crime scene. He was subjected to several hours of cross-examination by Cochran, an experienced trial lawyer who has a long history of suing the Los Angeles Police Department.

Under questioning by Clark, the officer told jurors that he had discovered no evidence of a struggle inside Nicole Simpson’s condominium and had found her two children asleep inside. He said he woke them, asked them to get dressed and took them out the back door so that they would not see their mother’s body.

Most important, however, was Riske’s description of the evidence he had seen - a bloody glove, a watch cap, footprints and a row of blood drops, the main elements of the prosecution’s case linking Simpson to the crime scene. Officers had noticed all of that evidence before Fuhrman or other detectives arrived, Riske said - testimony that could undercut the defense’s theory of a frame-up.

Fuhrman, who testified at the preliminary hearing that he had found a glove outside Simpson’s home, has become the central character in the defense attack on the investigation. Simpson’s lawyers have suggested he planted the glove.