Dancing Naked in the Mind Field by Kary Mullis Read Free Book Online Page A

have been more scholarly debate on the missing link status of the dodo. DNA evidence as advanced by PCR in the latter part of this century made our avian ancestry less likely. On the contrary, it supported our very close connection to the apes. In 1995, in Los Angeles, California, our collective behavior in the O. J. Simpson trial was not helpful in refuting that connection. If we hadn’t been already, then there we made apes of ourselves.
    The Nobel Prize splattered me a bit, birds and all that. But if the O.J. trial did also, then there, at least, I was not alone.
    Among the evidence found at the murder scene were several drops of blood not from the victims. Presumably from the killer. DNA tests conducted by the prosecution indicated they belonged to Mr. Simpson. It placed him at the murder scene. It was the most incriminating evidence against him. The defense lawyers knew that if they couldn’t raise doubts about that, O.J. was in trouble.
    Mr. Simpson hired a number of lawyers, including Robert Shapiro, Johnnie Cochran, and F. Lee Bailey. Because of the DNA evidence, they brought in Barry Scheck, Peter Neufeld, and Bob Blasier.
    It didn’t surprise me when I got a call from them. Barry and Peter wanted to come down to La Jolla.
    In the American judicial system, you don’t come into a trialas a neutral observer for the court. You have to be on one side or the other. You can’t just be an expert. You have to be for somebody. It’s called an advocacy system, and it’s a little weird. You swear to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God.”
    “So, help me, God. Do I tell the truth differently depending on which side I’m on?”
    “Sorry, pal, can’t help you there. You want to talk about sin, I can do that. You want to talk about the law, get a lawyer, or talk to the other guy.”
    You work on it in the wee hours when you have to get up and testify. You get to know the system and you discover that the “whole truth and nothing but the truth,” regardless of the poetic flow of the oath, is not what they are expecting. And they do have their reasons. You can especially forget about the “whole” business. Only selected parts of the truth are of interest. And only certain parts are required. What is required is determined by a dusty web of law and precedent stretching back to England, and then by the daily pleadings of the lawyers, and then by the learned rulings and whims of the judge, and always waiting just offstage, the sudden and unpredictable turn of the cards.
    If you are a lawyer, you have started pondering these things in school, and as your career advances, they seem more and more reasonable. Advocacy is at the root of this. It is a very large and very loaded word. It is our system of justice. We don’t trust our system and we need an advocate of our own. And if we can afford it, we need a damn good one. Maybe several. If he’s been on Larry King, so much the better.
    I had previously testified in murder trials for the defense,and I’d felt that my role there was to make sure the PCR-DNA work had been done fairly and correctly. I was not there to be on someone’s side. I found in almost every case that the testing protocols did not stand up under careful scrutiny and that the errors were neither inconsequential nor insubstantial. Was I falling under the spell of advocacy? I don’t know. I think I was being objective.
    Technical testimony by an expert witness, ironically enough, isn’t. It’s very much a matter of style, not content. You can’t talk to a jury about the technical details of your specialty and make any sense. The jury won’t know what you’re talking about, and that is precisely why you were hired.
    So what you say is much less important than how you say it. It’s like when you get off the beaten trail in Mexico—you can’t speak Spanish and they can’t speak English—but you don’t start acting like an asshole if you want some help. You