Doctor Testifies on Simpson’s Many Injuries

O.J. Simpson’s lawyers assaulted the prosecution’s case against the accused double-murderer with the first of their own medical witnesses Friday, continuing their attempt to punch open a hole large enough to allow reasonable doubt.

Under questioning by defense attorney Robert L. Shapiro, Dr. Robert Huizenga, onetime team physician to the Los Angeles Raiders, told the jurors that when he examined the former running back just two days after the murders, he saw a man who “looked like Tarzan” but walked “like Tarzan’s grandfather.”

Huizenga, a boyish-looking 42-year-old who took the stand in shirt and tie but no coat, said Simpson displayed all the symptoms of “typical post-NFL syndrome.” Those included, he said, a host of serious orthopedic injuries, which limit the movement of the defendant’s knees, ankles, elbows, wrists and hands and make him “a strong candidate for a total replacement” of his left knee.

Huizenga said Simpson’s long college and professional football career had left him with such “significantly limited mobility” that he was unable to “walk fast or slow jog.”

The Beverly Hills internist also testified that when he examined Simpson, he found signs of severe arthritis, but “no evidence of bruises, scrapes or other injuries” that might have occurred during a struggle. His testimony on these points was supported by a series of close-up photographs of Simpson during the examination.

Finally, Huizenga, who said he moonlighted for a number of years as an emergency room physician, told Shapiro that while the cuts on Simpson’s left hand could have been caused by a knife, it “appeared” to him “that glass was the cause.”

Prosecutors contend that Simpson suffered the cuts while wielding the knife with which the throats of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman were cut. The defense says he suffered a small cut while using his cellular telephone on the day of the murders and several other cuts when he broke a glass in his Chicago hotel room.

Jury Riveted by Testimony

In less than an hour of cross-examination during Friday’s half-day court session, Deputy Dist. Atty. Brian Kelberg forced Huizenga to admit that, despite his football injuries, Simpson “certainly could hold a knife.”

At another point, the prosecutor asked whether anything the doctor observed in his examination would have prevented Simpson “from murdering two human beings on June 12.” “No,” Huizenga replied.

The jurors clearly found the physician’s testimony engaging, and avidly took notes. Several of the panelists, including those who exhibit habitual impassivity, smiled at Huizenga, who was an All-American wrestler at the University of Michigan.

Outside the courtroom, defense lawyer Carl E. Douglas said his side was pleased with Huizenga’s testimony, which was intended to “dispel the notion that O.J. is a superman, not to show that O.J. was unable to commit the crimes.”

Kelberg said that when he resumes his cross-examination Monday, he will play a videotape Simpson made not long before the murders in which he leads a group of people in vigorous aerobic exercise.

“Simpson learned to play through injuries” during his long football career, Kelberg said. “In the long run, this witness will not be able to establish that the defendant was physically unable to commit murder.”

The prosecutor also said he would take up the subject of Simpson’s injured hand in greater detail. He accused the defense of “playing games” with the jury by having several witnesses testify that they had not seen cuts on Simpson’s hands when they saw him on his way to Chicago on the night of the killings.

The prosecutor said it was possible that the prosecution would attempt to introduce the section of Simpson’s June 13 statement to Los Angeles police detectives in which he said he had cuts on his hand before he left Los Angeles. Kelberg contended that recent decisions by the state appellate court permit the introduction of such partial statements in rebuttal, so long as they are not taken out of context.

Legal analyst Gerald L. Chaleff agreed with Kelberg. He noted that “thus far, the prosecution has not used the statement because they do not want O.J. to have the opportunity to, in effect, testify without being cross-examined.”

Chaleff, a Los Angeles defense attorney, added that if Simpson’s lawyers believe Judge Lance A. Ito is inclined to permit prosecutors to play only a portion of Simpson’sstatement to police, that anticipation may force the defense “to reconsider whether to have O.J. testify.”

However, as he left the courthouse Friday, lead defense attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. appeared ebullient. “Tell them to play his statement!” he shouted. “Tell them to play the videotape. We’re ready!”

When Kelberg resumes his cross-examination Monday, he also may take up the question of how and why Huizenga came to examine Simpson shortly after the murders. Sources have told The Times that Shapiro selected Huizenga, who practices with the lawyer’s personal physician, to examine Simpson instead of the former NFL star’s own longtime doctor. That local physician reportedly had examined Simpson not long before the killings.

Since Huizenga testified Friday that he was asked to evaluate Simpson’s “mental status,” questions may arise over why the doctor who had treated Simpson before the murders would not have been better able to determine whether his emotional condition had been affected by the trauma of his ex-wife’s death. Similarly, prosecutors may inquire about why Simpson’s personal doctor was not in the best position to describe how his arthritis and numerous orthopedic injuries had restricted his mobility over time.

“There may also be a perceptual problem,” Chaleff said. “Jurors may find it curious that a new doctor was brought in to examine Simpson just two days after the murders, and that he took the sort of photos no routine physical involves. They may believe that he already was planning a defense and wonder why. What they may not understand is that this is what defense lawyers should do in every case, though they seldom get the opportunity.”

Doctor Wrote of Treating Raiders

Though Friday marked his first appearance in a court case, Huizenga is no stranger to publicity. While serving as the Raiders’ team physician, he co-authored a widely discussed medical study of the effects of jet lag on professional football players’ performance.

Earlier this year, he published an account of his service with the Raiders titled, “You’re Okay, It’s Just a Bruise: A Doctor’s Sideline Secrets About Pro Football’s Most Outrageous Team.” In it, he accused the team’s owner, Al Davis, and the late Robert Rosenfeld, the team’s orthopedist, of putting winning ahead of the players’ physical welfare.

One reviewer noted that “Huizenga clearly cared about his charges beyond the football field; his lengthy and, by and large, sensitive recounting of the last days of Lyle Alzado is ample proof of that. On the other hand, the tone of too much of this book is self-serving. Huizenga clearly loved being one of the boys, and made every effort to fit in, short of hitting on the Raiderettes. The book’s humor is largely of the gross-out variety, not for the fastidious.”

Alzado died of a rare form of brain cancer he believed was engendered by his use of unprescribed anabolic steroids and growth hormone. At the time of Alzado’s death, Huizenga told reporters that when he tested Alzado in the early 1980s, he “saw signs on his exams and in his blood tests that he had side effects from anabolic steroid use. . . . I encouraged Lyle to get off of them.”

Before testimony began Friday, Cochran renewed his disagreement with the most serious of a series of setbacks that Ito handed the defense Thursday.

Speaking outside the jury’s presence, the attorney attacked Ito’s decision to preclude testimony by Christian Reichardt about drug use by Nicole Simpson’s friend Faye Resnick, a self-described cocaine abuser. The defense had hoped to use Resnick’s former boyfriend to further its theory that Nicole Simpson and Goldman were murdered by drug dealers pursuing Resnick, who had been staying in her friend’s condominium.

“The court’s ruling, it seems to us,” Cochran argued, “violates Mr. Simpson’s right to present a defense and to due process of law under both the state and federal constitutions.”

Ito replied that he was mindful of those issues, but that he had relied upon rulings by the California Supreme Court.

Man Who Dated Victim to Testify

Across the country from Ito’s courtroom, another significant development in the case occurred in a Tampa, Fla., court. There, Keith Zlomsowitch, who briefly dated Nicole Simpson in 1992, agreed to testify for the Simpson defense.

“I do not wish to contest the subpoena,” Zlomsowitch told a Florida state court judge, referring to a subpoena served on him by Simpson’s lawyers.

In court documents, Simpson’s attorneys said Zlomsowitch can rebut prosecution contentions that their client “is a maniacal, jealous fiend.” Both sides say Simpson observed Zlomsowitch and his former wife engaged in a sex act on her living room couch. The prosecution contends that Simpson later stalked the pair while they dined at a restaurant, but the defense says he simply discussed with his ex-wife the inappropriateness of such behavior while their children were in the house.