HALF A LOAF FOR THE PROSECUTION

A key prosecution witness was allowed to testify after Judge Lance Ito rejected an impassioned defense plea to keep him off the stand.An angry Johnnie Cochranaccused the prosecution of deliberately witholding until yesterday FBI special agent Doug Deedrick's report about carpet fibers found on crime scene evidence. Prosecutor Marcia Clark insisted that she had not known of the report until a few days ago. Ito ruled that the defense had had adequate access to photos and evidence, and said the prosecution could present photos showing a blue fiber that was found onthree key pieces of state evidence: a victims shirt, the famous bloody glove, and the socks found in Simpson's bedroom. But Ito refused to allow Deedrick to give the most powerful part of his testimony:that the mysterious fiber almost certainly came from the carpeting of Simpson's Ford Bronco.

Quotes of the Day »

RAY KELLY, New York City Police Commissioner, on the arrest of a New Jersey man in one of the nation's most baffling missing-children cases, the disappearance more than three decades ago of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
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