Teresa Carpenter - Without a Doubt

At this point, we were beginning to get excited. The defense was making our case for us, tossing us meatball after meatball. The jury had to be thinking that an innocent man would have a better case to present.

Next up to bat for the defense, the experts-for-hire.

It is worth noting here that never, during the entire case, did the defense perform one single test on any of the blood found at Bundy, in the Bronco, or at Rockingham. The reason was perfectly clear. They knew the results would point directly to their client . Under law, they’re allowed to keep those results confidential, but if the word somehow got back to the jury that they’d done the tests and weren’t putting their findings into evidence, it could be mighty incriminating.

They elected, instead, to have their own expert, Dr. Edward Blake, observe our testing. But they quickly realized that if he were put under oath, he would have to tell the truth: that the prosecution’s blood results were unimpeachable.

As I’ve said, Dr. Blake disappeared from their witness list. Instead, we got Dr. Fredric Rieders.

Rieders, an Austrian-born toxicologist now working in Philadelphia, was called to support the very essence of the defense’s “conspiracy” offensive. He would argue that the blood on certain evidence-like the rear gate at Nicole’s condo and the socks found at the foot of Simpson’s bed-contained a preservative called EDTA. He would assert that this meant it came from a test tube. Rieders was there to back up the theory that the blood taken from Simpson after his police interview had been subsequently sprinkled on crime-scene evidence. He was basing his claims on his own interpretations of data that had come back to us from the FBI lab.

The challenge sounded serious enough that I wanted to handle this witness myself. That meant getting up to speed very quickly on the science of EDTA. Several weeks before Rieders’s scheduled appearance, an FBI toxicologist, Roger Martz, flew in from the East Coast to brief me. Agent Martz gave me a chart with two sets of results. One showed the results from the blood taken from Simpson the morning he’d been brought to Parker Center. That reference blood, of course, had been treated with EDTA to preserve it. The presence of the preservative manifested itself as tall, unmistakable bars. Next to it were the readings from blood on the rear gate and Simpson’s socks. Here the EDTA showed up as tiny bars.

The question the defense would ask, of course, was “Why was there any bar at all? Why was any trace of EDTA in the blood on the gate and socks?” And that’s exactly the question I asked Roger Martz.

Roger explained to me why the low-level readings were meaningless. As a “negative check” against the readings, he’d lifted a bloodstain from Nicole’s dress. Now that had to be her blood. Right? No one had a reason to plant it; it hadn’t come from a test tube. The results on that sample came back with the same EDTA reading as the disputed blood from the gate and socks. Agent Martz had gone a step further: he’d drawn blood from his own arm and tested it. Sure enough, there it was again. The same low-level reading of EDTA.

“EDTA is used as a preservative in foods and detergents,” he explained to me. “A small amount of EDTA can stay in your system when you eat preserved foods. Or on your clothes after you wash. It’s everywhere then. It’s the matter of degree that tells the story. You see this huge bar?”

He pointed to the reading from the vial of reference blood taken from Simpson.

“If the blood on the rear gate and the socks had come from the preserved tube, the EDTA indicators would have been just as high. Instead, they’re about a hundredth the size.”

Wonderfully clear and graphic. But could I get this across to the jury?

Since the defense had done no tests of their own, we knew they would have to call Agent Martz as their own witness-after all, he had performed the case’s only EDTA testing. Only he could give the testimony that would get the results into evidence. Had they been interested in getting to the truth of the matter, they would have called him first to explain his testing, then followed up with Rieders offering his own interpretation, obviously one more favorable to the defense.

But of course they weren’t interested in the truth. Late in the day on July 17, we got notice that they wanted to call Dr. Rieders first, and only then call Agent Martz. Worse, they waited until that moment to release a dense technical report on Rieders’s interpretation of the test-which we’d have to analyze closely before responding to it. It would be very tough, but at that point the defense was listing seven or so witnesses ahead of Rieders.

At nearly eight o’clock on the evening of July 19, however, we got notice that they might be calling Rieders as early as the next day . This flew in the face of Ito’s rule requiring both sets of counsel to give a few days’ notice before they called a witness. We’d complied, but the defense virtually ignored the rule. They knew all they had to do was give some lame excuse, and Lance would shrug his shoulders and let them off the hook.

I was pissed, and made no bones about it.

“I’m really outraged at the way the defense has proceeded,” I charged in court the next morning, so angry I was stammering. “It is a trial by ambush.” I outlined the history of this issue, noting that Rieders had received the test results in February, giving him months to prepare his report. There was no excuse for springing it on us just before he testified. Furthermore, I explained why it was unacceptable for the defense to put Rieders on before Martz. They had a guy who was going to put his own twisted spin on a set of scientific tests – before the tests themselves were presented to the court.

“I think it is scandalous what has occurred here,” I said. “I think it is a very deliberate attempt to try to… prevent the people from adequately meeting this testimony… I mean, where is the fairness?

The defense, of course, acted stunned and accused me of trying to manipulate their witness order. They even tried to insinuate that Lisa Kahn had told them that we were ready for Rieders anytime. When I called that “the biggest bald-face lie we have heard yet in this case,” Ito warned me about making personal attacks. But Lance knew what was happening. “If the shoe were on the other foot,” he said to the defense, “I would be peeling you off the ceiling right now.”

Damned straight.

Nevertheless, Ito was loath to give me the prep time I needed. The jury was restless; the case had already dragged on way past its original estimated four months. Bob Blasier had the gall to mock my argument that Martz should go first: “I can’t believe that Miss Clark says she’s ready for Martz but she’s not ready for Rieders.”

“Oh come on,” I charged. “That’s so obvious it doesn’t even bear addressing. Agent Martz is going to be an honest witness who’s going to testify truthfully to the results. That’s a little easier-” (I had not intended to suggest that Rieders was lying so much as that he was distorting the evidence to such an extent that it would have the same effect.)

Lance cut me off. “Miss Clark, earlier today I cautioned you about personal attacks.” I began to apologize but he stepped on me again. “Sanction is two hundred and fifty dollars. Don’t leave court without writing a check.”

Thanks, Lance.

At the end of the day, he ruled that the defense could put Rieders on first, and they could do it on Monday, July 24. This gave me only three or four days to prepare an incredibly complicated cross. With the witness order inverted, the defense would use Rieders to distort the test results before Martz, an honest and knowledgeable witness, could explain what they meant. Instead, I’d be forced to try and extract simple explanations of scientific evidence from a hostile witness bent on confusion and distortion. At the same time, I’d need to use my now bulging dossier on Rieders’s professional history to impeach both his ethics and his expertise.