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From: Kate
T1:
Category 3: Category 1
Date: 08 Aug 1999
Time: 01:01:47
Remote Name: pm441.isomedia.com
Jasper:
Here is a story about Dr. Lee I am sure you will enjoy. My comments are in caps:
Editors' Notes A Quick Update on Plans for 1997-98 New J.D. Law Schools (Updated 9/16/97) ©1997 Mercury American Publishing Company, Worcester, MA
If anyone knows for sure whether O.J. Simpson is a murderer, its probably Dr. Henry Lee. Thats the expectation, anyway, and it explains why the phone never stops ringing in Lees office at the Connecticut state police forensics lab. If its not Larry King on the line, its Geraldo Rivera, or the folks from Good Morning America.
The idea that Lee has figured out who killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman is not a crazy one. Lee, a world-renowned forensic scientist, was an expert witness in Simpsons trial for the murders of his ex-wife and Goldman. The Dream Team grabbed him within two weeks of the killings, because he had arguably the best reputation in the forensics world for thoroughness, astuteness and honesty. His theory of the murder - that there must have been two killers - gave the jury the forensic hook on which it hung Johnnie Cochrans conspiracy theory.
Lee saw the crime scene firsthand, if only briefly and nearly 15 days after the murders took place. Even if his exposure to the crime scene was limited, this is a man whose investigations have helped prosecutors convict murderers when the police were unable to find the victims body.
Despite giving days of testimony in Simpsons murder trial, and subjecting himself to another 30 hours of depositions in the civil wrongful death case, Lee has since tried to distance himself from the Simpson saga. The gag order imposed on the participants in the civil trial, coupled with Lees own distaste for the "circus" the trial became, has meant the nobody has had the chance to ask Lee, on the record, the burning question of the O.J. Simpson case: Does the worlds top forensic scientist think Simpson did it? Nobody, that is, until now.
Its early on a windy, gray Saturday morning at the state police crime lab in Meriden, Connecticut. Dr. Lee has agreed to talk with us, mainly because I took a class he team-taught at the University of Connecticut School of Law. He has a 9 oclock lecture, in which hell teach a group of police officers and students about crime scene management. J.D. editor Jamie Diaferia and I arrive half an hour early for our 8:30 meeting, hoping to snag a few extra minutes of Lees time. The room is tiny and crowded, with stacks of files, photographs, clothing, and an old slide projector piled up on the table. Lee sits down and we start peppering him with questions right away. The clock is ticking. We figure we have about 45 minutes to elicit the ultimate scoop of the O.J. Simpson murder trial from this wiry, mysterious man. "This case taught everybody good lessons," Lee says. "So many lessons we can learn. Yes, it is a tragedy. But [with] this case came so many lessons. Im so happy to see positive things come out of it. For example, we forensic scientists start looking at ourselves. The police, they start everybody training in procedure of crime scene. My crime scene lecture service, they are already booking 1999 for different police department organizations. It shows, everybody wants to do things the right way." Attorneys have long maintained that the key to Lees presence on the witness stand is that he treats the courtroom like a classroom. He doesnt just testify; he teaches the jury about his craft. It is not long before he naturally, subtly assumes this role in our interview. Where we see a story, Dr. Lee sees yet another chance to teach.
Lesson 1: Science Cant Take Sides How many dead bodies does the average person see in his lifetime? At age 58, Lee has seen thousands. Hes investigated thousands of deaths, testified in thousands of trials, and talked with the families of thousands of victims. That experience gives him an especially good perspective to see exactly what made the brutal killings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman stand out in a country where violent death is, unfortunately, not all that unusual. "The O.J. Simpson case started as simple case, a double homicide," says Lee. "My heart deeply feels for Ron Goldmans family and Nicoles family. However, as a forensic scientist, we have to put all the emotion aside. When you let emotion drive your decisions, youre no longer a scientist." The problem for forensic scientists that the Simpson case highlighted, he explains, is that the American legal system is full of emotion. In an adversarial system, lawyers are expected to use emotion as one of their tools. Theyre supposed to argue.
"Lawyers have to take sides," Lee says. "Unfortunately, in the last couple of years, because physical evidence played such an important role in a number of high profile cases, theyve kind of pushed the scientific field into an adversary system. They think the scientific witnesses should take sides, too." Forensic scientists, Lee says, should "just play one role, the only role: faithfully report scientific fact. Thats my belief. There [are] some people, unfortunately - in California, many of them - [who] dont believe that. They think that scientists should take the drivers seat. I guess this is a conceptual issue." Impartiality is as important as restraint, Lee says. He is unwavering in his determination to be perceived as an unbiased witness. When his lab investigates crime scenes for the prosecution in Connecticut, he insists that his investigators include exculpatory as well as inculpatory evidence in their reports. That may seem like an easy proposition to law students who have spent years studying a justice system committed to the presumption of innocence. But the world of forensic science embraced that basic concept only 30 or 40 years ago, Lee says.
"I tell my scientists here, [when] we go to the court, we tell the truth. Win, lose, draw, its not our concern. Hey, let the chips fall. In many cases we testify for the defense, for public defenders. Many, many cases. And [in] almost 30 to 35 percent of cases we exclude our original suspect. Think about that figure," Lee implores. "Almost a third."
"The beauty of this country is that everything must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Good or bad, this is the system. It has worked for so many hundreds of years. Im just a small part of the system. We have to follow the law," Lee says.
"This case, now that its over, nobody should second-guess the jury. When I first came to this country, I sometimes wonder if the jury system is a good system. Now I see that it is."
When Lee and another defense expert, Dr. Michael Baden, examined O.J. Simpson in the days after the killing, they found three cuts on his hand. When the prosecution introduced a picture of Simpsons hand, only one cut was visible. More than a year later, in the Simpson civil trial, the plaintiffs introduced a picture of Simpsons hand with three cuts.
"Who took that picture? Me," Lee says. "I have to be faithful and say, yes, I see three cuts. The prosecutions picture [had] just one cut. You know, a lot of people dont understand. They think that was a new discovery in the civil trial. No, its not a new discovery. The defense expert witness found it. Dr. Baden and me, we examined his hand and found three cuts. We also examined his body and there [was] no other injury. Do you see what I mean? If theres a violent struggle, usually we can see some bruises or a scratch or something."
Ironically, by rushing Lee and the other experts through their inspection of the murder scene, the Los Angeles Police Department may have robbed itself of a witness who could have debunked one of the main defense arguments. Central to the defense frame-up theory were a few drops of blood LAPD criminologist Dennis Fung found on the back gate of Nicole Brown Simpsons house three weeks after the murders. DNA tests proved there was a one in 175 million chance that the blood was not O.J. Simpsons. But earlier, when Fung recorded his observation of the scene only hours after the killings, he hadnt noticed any blood. The defense argued that meant there was only one logical conclusion: Someone must have planted the blood before Fungs second visit.
Lee was one of very few people who examined the crime scene between Fungs first and second visits. If he saw blood, as Gerald Posner pointed out in a November 1996 article in Esquire, that would punch a big hole in the frame-up theory. When the Esquire article came out, a gag order prevented those involved with the case from speaking to the press. But after the civil trial verdict, the gag order was lifted.
Lee draws a long breath before answering our question: Did he see any blood on the back gate?
"When we got there the gate was heavily dusted with fingerprint powder. We only had ten minutes to check the whole scene. I tell you honestly there [were a] couple gates, and there was so much fingerprint powder on it, unless you look at it carefully, specifically look for something, well, in 10 minutes I really did not pay too much attention."
IF THIS TRUE, WHY DIDN'T THE DA'S USE THE FINGERPRINT DUST AS AN EXCUSE WHY SO MANY PEOPLE, INCLUDING FUNG NEVER SAW THE BLOOD DROPS ON THE BACK GATE? IF THIS IS TRUE, WHY DIDN'T FUNG HIMSELF USE THIS EXCUSE? IF THIS IS TRUE, WOULD FINGER PRINT DUST HAVE BEEN WASHED OFF WHEN THE RON HARDING WASH THE BUNDY CRIME SCENE DOWN?
IF THIS IS TRUE, WOULD FINGERPRINT DUST BE DETECTABLE IN THE SAMPLES OF THE BLOOD DROPS---AS IN THEY WERE TESTED FOR EDTA, COULD THEY HAVE BEEN TESTED FOR FINGER PRINT DUST?
IF THIS IS TRUE, THEN THIS DOES BACK UP SHAPIRO'S MOTION THAT A FINGER PRINT WAS IN FACT LIFTED FROM THE BACK GATE AREA AND IT WASN'T OJ'S, NICOLE'S OR RON'S.
IF THIS IS TRUE, THE BACK FENCE WAS COVERED WITH FINGER PRINT DUST, THEN HOW DID WOODY CLARKE "FIND THE BLOOD DROPS ON THE BACK GATE IN A PICTURE WEEKS INTO THE TRIAL?
I DON'T REMEMBER SEEING FINGERPRINT DUST ON ANY PICTURE EXCEPT FOR THE BRONCO DOOR---AGAIN DIDN'T THE DA'S TRY TO USE THE FINGERPRINT DUST TO EXPLAIN WHY SOME OF THE DEFENSE WITNESSES DIDN'T SEE BLOOD IN OR ON THE BRONCO?
Lesson 2: Hard Work Pays Off Calling Lee a workaholic is like calling Sid Vicious a recreational drug user. Lee rarely gets more than four hours of sleep a night. Time off is a foreign concept to him. He spends his personal and vacation time traveling to crime scenes in other states and countries. He traveled to Bosnia with Dr. Michael Baden, his counterpart at the New York state crime lab, to help identify the remains of civilians who were slaughtered and buried in mass graves. He was called in to help track down the killers who pulled off the assassination of a county magistrate and seven others in a gangland-style hit in his native Taiwan last November. Lee is always in the news, most recently working for the prosecution in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case in Boulder, Colorado.
"Sunday morning I got called by the states attorney. Are you busy? Early morning on a Sunday. I say, What, with my age? Three oclock and am I busy? " My whole life is helping people. Of course I help." Today, Dr. Lee has already been at the state police forensic lab for several hours. The dinner at which he spoke last night carried on well past midnight, and when he awoke at 4:30 a.m., his wife extracted a promise.
"Tonight, I leave office no later than 7 oclock. We have a nice dinner," Lee recalls. But already, those plans have been thwarted. Work has piled up, he says. Several police departments have called, asking him to look over evidence for a few hours this evening. Dinner with his wife will have to wait.
Lee was born in 1938 in mainland China, the youngest of 13 children. His family emigrated to Taiwan during World War II, and Lee grew up to become a police officer. He graduated at the top of his class from the Taiwan Central Police College, and at age 22 was promoted to become one the youngest police captains in his countrys history.
Six years later, newly married and with an English vocabulary of only a few words, he arrived in the United States hoping to study forensic science and then return to his native land. But when New York University refused to give him credit for his Taiwanese bachelors degree, he had to start his education over from scratch. Working as a waiter in a Chinese restaurant and as a martial arts instructor, he made his way through City College and won a scholarship to study forensic science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He finally earned his coveted Ph.D. in biochemistry from NYU in 1975.
After deciding to remain in the United States, Lee became the head of the forensic science program at the University of New Haven and earned full tenure as a professor in three years. By 1979, he had taken on the additional job of running the state forensics lab and overseeing the investigations of its violent crime scenes. He built both institutions into nationally recognized leaders in the field of forensic science. Since then, Lees resume has literally grown to unbelievable proportions. When he testified in a murder trial in New Orleans three years ago, defense attorneys tried to block the jury from even looking at the half-pound document for fear that its sheer weight would lend his testimony unwarranted credibility. In another trial, a prosecutor spent 20 minutes reading Lees credentials to the jury until he finally asked the judge for permission to stop.
As he was testifying for the Connecticut states attorneys office in hundreds of cases, Lee developed a reputation as an unshakably neutral witness and investigator. He testified for the defense in the "preppie murder" trial of Robert Chambers in New York City in 1986, and for William Kennedy Smith in his 1991 defense against rape charges in Palm Beach, Florida.
In Boulder, Colorado recently, where Lee has been retained to investigate the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, he encountered a crowd of journalists. One reporter asked him how he could justify flying all over the country - and the world - to investigate cases far from the state that pays his salary. What about his obligation to the taxpayers of Connecticut?
"I told him, the first 40 hours I work each week, that is my contractual obligation. The next 40 hours, that is my donation to the taxpayers. Last 40 hours, I can do whatever I want." The throng of reporters broke into cheers, Lee said, when he added a parting shot: "How many hours do you work for your newspaper?"
Lesson 3: Admit Your Mistakes "From day one, they had some problems with that case," Lee says, getting back to the details of the Simpson murder trial. "They jumped over the fence. Whether or not thats legitimate, Im not a lawyer. As a scientist, I take the point of view that theres no rush. With that little blood smear in the Bronco, nobody was going to bleed to death with that little, tiny, quarter-inch smear. We all cut ourselves and get much more blood than that little, tiny smear."
Lee wont say whether he thinks that the police framed O.J. Simpson; that would be trying to stretch the evidence too far. His job, he explains, is to discover what the evidence is and let the attorneys argue about the conclusions that people should draw.
As he testified in the criminal trial, Lee still believes that there was "something wrong" with the evidence against O.J. Simpson. But that doesnt necessarily mean anybody planted evidence, he explains. Part of being a good forensic scientist, he tells us again and again, is being disciplined, and not trying to make the evidence tell you more than it can. Just because the police jumped over the fence doesnt necessarily mean that they "rushed to judgement," in the words of Johnnie Cochran.
"Much of the evidence in this case may be because of an initial unintentional mistake," Lee says. "Maybe they improperly collected some evidence. Thats fine, just say it. I did not dry this swatch of blood completely. But if you say you dried it completely, then how can you have this wet transfer? The more you cover it up, the more it looks like a conspiracy.
"Unintentional mistakes are still excusable because the individual is not trying to frame somebody. You should not punish somebody for these unimportant types of mistakes. Hopefully the person has the decency to say, Yes, I made a mistake. If you try to hide the mistake and sweep it under the carpet, or say theres no mistake, then you create an additional problem."
If some of the scientists who worked for the prosecution tried to cover up mistakes, Lee says, the prosecuting attorneys didnt do much better. That they didnt have a better plan for handling Lees testimony is even more surprising since they knew exactly what he would say beforehand. Lee says he went to the Los Angeles District Attorneys Office long before the trial started and told them what his conclusions were based on the evidence.
"I talk[ed] to the prosecution in the objection of defense attorney. I tell them, Thats my principle, always talk to both sides. I cannot say, I am a defense witness, I will not talk to the prosecution. "I did it. I went up to them, I talked to them. I tell them [about] the second shoe print. I tell them the timeline is pretty short. I tell them I deeply believe there was a struggle. I think Ron Goldman and Nicole both put up a big fight, fighting for their lives," Lee said.
He also told them what he didnt know. "Whether or not there [is] a second suspect, I cannot tell. There are indications definitely [of] evidence linked to O.J. Simpson. Theres DNA. I testified to that. As a matter of fact the prosecution liked my testimony because I said the DNA [is] fine. "So you see what I mean?" Lee says. "Thats called fair. Unfortunately, a lot of attorneys - not just the O.J. Simpson attorneys - they dont see the forest. They only want to see the trees. They want to beat the witness a couple of times to show who is running the ship.
"The civil attorneys representing Ron Goldman and Nicole were much smarter. They said, Dr. Lee, we can see thats a shoe print. Nobody argued about the parallel lines. Do you know when that shoe print was made? Of course I dont know. So as a good forensic scientist, I said, No, I dont know."
I THOUGHT THE POLICE OFFICERS, THE DETECTIVES, ETC, WERE ALL RULED OUT FOR LEAVING THAT SHOE PRINT?
DID THE DA'S ALSO KNOW IT WAS SHOE PRINT AND THAT IS WHY THE SENT DR. LEE SUCH POOR QUALITY PICTURES AS WELL AS MAKING SURE THAT POOR QUALITY OF THE PICTURES WOULD MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR DR. LEE TO SEE THE NEW BLOOD TRAIL?
Lesson 4: Smile in the Face of Adversity
Lees speech is punctuated by a Chinese accent and the word choices of a man who had to learn an entirely new language after nearly 30 years. His nouns and verbs dont always agree on tense or conjugation. But he is exceedingly articulate. He captivates juries. His subtle, deadpan wit can be devastating.
The story of an exchange in the William Kennedy Smith rape case has become the stuff of legend. On cross-examination, the prosecutor challenged Lee for rubbing a silk handkerchief on the grass in front of the Kennedy compound in Palm Beach, Fla. in an attempt to determine how much of a grass stain should have been on the alleged victims undergarments.
Wouldnt it have been more useful, the prosecutor asked, if he had conducted the experiment with womens panties?
"Usually, I do not carry panties. I carry handkerchief," Dr. Lee replied. The courtroom erupted into laughter.
Dr. Lee laughs a lot because he has to. "You have to keep your sense of humor because every day you see hundreds, hundreds of misfortunes.
"You see, Ive seen billionaires die. The bodys still warm, and the family starts arguing about who gets what. Ive seen winos lying in the street. Middle of winter, outside, raining, drizzling, the body lying there. Those are human beings. One so rich, so powerful, the other has nothing. When that moment comes, we are all equal."
Lesson 5:
Ask the Right Questions In 1993, Dr. Lee wrote an article for the Connecticut Law Review on the proper role of a forensic scientist when in court. In it, he coined an analogy that has served him well over the years.
"Our court system is much like a symphony," he wrote. "The forensic scientist is like a musical instrument while lawyers are like the musicians. The musicians skill determines whether the instrument will produce music, or simply make noise."
Lee begins to get exasperated when he talks about the subject.
"Attorneys, do the preparation, the pretrial preparation. Discuss the questions. Ask the right question. Know what to ask and what not to ask. Dont [ask], Do you think my clients guilty or innocent? Thats not my job to tell you. You are the musician. Find a way to put the whole case together."
Dr. Lee rises from his chair. The interview, he apparently believes, is winding down. "All right," he asks. "I answered all your questions now?"
Jamie, moving quickly, picks up the gauntlet. It is our turn to ask The Right Question. The question Geraldo and Larry and all those other talk show hosts are dying to ask. Jamie phrases it almost apologetically.
"I guess I wouldnt be doing my job if I didnt ask, from a personal level, do you think that O.J. . . ." Lee finishes his sentence. "Did it or not do it?"
I freeze, not wanting to ruin the moment. The whole time weve been sitting here, it suddenly occurs to me, Dr. Lee has known exactly what we wanted to ask him.
Jamie presses on. "Was he the most likely suspect?"
"OK," Lee begins. "As a scientist I dont make up my mind. As an investigator, of course he is a suspect. Whether or not he did it himself, he have knowledge of somebody else or he participate, I have no idea.
"As a scientist, we should not judge somebody. We should look at the evidence. Let the chips fall. Thats the beauty of this judicial system. Sometimes, yes, you have a gut feeling..."
Lee pauses for a second that seems like an hour. He points at me.
"He have a gut feeling. I have a gut feeling. But if we start letting our gut feeling run our courts, then we probably go back to so me other country, live under martial law."