Defense Details Simpson Ailments

Defense attorneys Friday provided a detailed view of their client’s body to assert he is not a murderer, eliciting medical testimony that O.J. Simpson was physically limited by arthritis and that broken glass, rather than a knife, probably caused the cuts on his fingers.

The day’s only witness, Dr. Robert Huizenga, attributed most of the defendant’s ailments to injuries during his football career. And he said some were so serious that Simpson could not jog or even walk quickly.

Perhaps most important for the defense, Huizenga also said several cuts he examined in June 1994 on two fingers of Simpson’s left hand “seemed to me to be more consistent with glass” than with a knife wound. At the request of Simpson’s lawyers, Huizenga examined him twice in the week following the slayings of his former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.