Bloodstain Expert Boosts O.J. Blood On Socks Wasn’t Spattered, Macdonnell Says

Blood found on O.J. Simpson’s socks the day after his ex-wife’s murder was “transferred” - not spattered, a bloodstain expert testified Thursday, supporting a defense contention that police planted evidence against Simpson.

Herbert MacDonell, a former New York college professor and recognized expert on the “geometry of bloodstains,” told jurors that he used a stereo-microscope to analyze the bloodstains on one of the socks found in Simpson’s bedroom.

The bloodied socks are a crucial link tying Simpson to the June 12, 1994, stabbing deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. DNA tests have revealed that blood on the socks closely matches Nicole Simpson’s genetic type.

But MacDonell, showing photographic blow-ups that resembled abstract paintings, testified that the cross-hatching pattern of blood on the black sock fibers made it “very clear” that the blood “was not spattered” during a murder-scene struggle between Simpson and his ex-wife, as prosecutors contend.

Instead, MacDonell described the staining as a “classic … compression transfer,” most likely caused when the sock came in contact with a bloody surface.

“Would that be consistent with a smear as opposed to a spatter?” asked defense attorney Peter Neufeld, pressing the defense theory that police smeared Nicole Simpson’s blood on the socks to implicate her ex-husband in the murders.

“It’s not as consistent with a smear as it is just having blood on your hand or some object and touching it and pulling it away,” MacDonell said.

MacDonell also told of finding microscopic “balls” of blood adhered to the inside of the sock, opposite the main bloodstain - a finding that defense lawyers have said shows that the socks had been taken off before the staining occurred.

But Judge Lance Ito stopped MacDonell from giving jurors his opinion on “whether the ankle was in or outside the sock at the time” the sock was bloodied, in Neufeld’s words.

After sustaining two objections by prosecutor Marcia Clark, the judge broke for lunch. Ito later adjourned court for the afternoon when a juror became dizzy.

The juror was taken to a hospital for evaluation, and Friday’s court session was canceled. Ito said he would hear legal motions.

Before testimony began Thursday, Ito took up two matters that could shape defense efforts to show that police conspired to frame Simpson for the murders.

After hearing arguments from both sides, the judge put off deciding whether to allow the defense lawyers to call three new witnesses who could help them paint white Detective Mark Fuhrman as a racist, rogue cop.

Fuhrman has denied defense accusations that he planted a bloody glove behind Simpson’s mansion, and he testified earlier in the trial that he had not in the last 10 years used a racial epithet to refer to black people.

But Thursday, Simpson lawyer Gerald Uelmen said the defense had found at least three additional witnesses who would quote the detective as using racial epithets in the mid- to late 1980s. They include a black man whom Fuhrman once arrested, and a white female acquaintance who, Uelmen said, was so offended by Fuhrman’s racial epithets that “finally she refused to let Mr. Fuhrman come into (her) apartment anymore.”