Nicole Brown Simpson lay face down on the ground-possibly unconscious-when a right-handed assailant delivered the final fatal knife wound, lifting up her head by the hair to expose her neck, according to the medical examiner’s testimony Wednesday.
As grim-faced jurors looked at a display of grisly autopsy photographs, Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran described how the injury pattern on Nicole Simpson’s body suggested an attack that lasted just minutes.
Lakshmanan, with his fist clenched and arm extended, demonstrated on prosecutor Brian Kelberg how an assailant probably stood facing Nicole Simpson and stabbed her four times in the neck before delivering the final throat wound.
The four stab wounds in a close-set pattern suggest that Nicole Simpson was held in some way and gave little struggle, Lakshmanan said.
The medical examiner went on to detail how a bruise to the right side of her head, caused by a blow from a fist or knife handle, may have left her unconscious before the final attack.
The prosecutor asked if an assailant could have knocked out Nicole Simpson, attacked Ronald Goldman and then returned to cut her throat.
“It is possible,” Lakshmanan answered. He said he could not determine the extent of a brain contusion because only a portion of the tissue was preserved for later examination.
It was just one of many errors Lakshmanan frankly admitted as part of the prosecution’s strategy to defuse an expected tough cross-examination of the assistant who actually performed the autopsy, Dr. Irwin Golden.
None of Nicole Simpson’s smaller stab wounds or head bruise would have been fatal right away, the medical examiner said. “She was alive at least a minute or more before the last wound was inflicted,” he said. He said he knew she was lying face down because the blood flowed to the ground rather than in her lungs or esophagus.
“I would say she died within a few minutes, probably less,” said Lakshmanan, who added that the entire attack probably lasted only a few minutes, as indicated by the few defensive wounds on her hands.
“These kinds of altercations can take place pretty rapidly,” he said.
All the slash wounds to her body could have been left by one single-edged knife about 6 inches long, he said. A double-edged knife could also have left some of the smaller wounds, but those cuts could also be attributed to the tapered tip of a single-edged knife.
A single-knife theory is central to the prosecution’s contention that one assailant committed both murders in a short period of time.
During the graphic testimony, with the photographs displayed so only the jury could see them, defendant O.J. Simpson looked toward the wall on the opposite end of the room. His close friend, Robert Kardashian, sat beside him to block his face from the television camera.
When the afternoon session began, defense lawyer Johnnie Cochran Jr. complained that the television camera was focusing on Simpson too much. The judge replied that the camera operator didn’t have too much choice what to show because of the banned autopsy photographs’ central position in front of the jury box.
The judge had earlier granted Simpson’s request to be excused during the graphic testimony. Simpson, nonetheless, remained in the courtroom, chatting throughout the day with his lawyers, rather than listening to the clinical description of the fatal injuries to his ex-wife.
In the audience, Simpson’s sister, Carmelita, who has been a loyal and constant supporter, grew red-eyed, covered her mouth with her hands and buried her face in her husband’s shoulder upon hearing the description of a photograph the judge himself called “horrible.” The picture shows Nicole Simpson’s face, her eyes open, with her throat slashed to the spinal cord.
At the beginning of the day, the judge again instructed the jury that any of their number who felt too uncomfortable should alert him in order to call a break in testimony. No one did, although most jurors did not study the photographs for long periods.
