Photos of gloves put OJ on the spot

The pendulum swung back towards the prosecution team in the OJ Simpson trial yesterday after the court saw photographs showing Mr Simpson wearing the same kind of gloves as those believed to have been used by the killer in the double murder case.

Richard Rubin, a former vice-president of the company that manufactured the gloves, said he was 100-per-cent certain that the photographs showed Mr Simpson wearing exactly the same model of glove as one found at the murder scene and another, matching glove, found on the night of the murder, spattered with blood, at Mr Simpson's estate.

Of all the items of evidence submitted to the court, none is more important than the glove. The defence have gone some way towards mitigating the impact of the evidence by fixing the thought firmly in the minds of the jury that the detective who found the glove in the grounds of Mr Simpson's home, Mark Fuhrman, was a racist.

What the defence lawyers suggested is that Mr Fuhrman might have planted the glove, providing Mr Simpson with the best hope he has that the jury will find him not guilty because of the impossibility of establishing beyond reasonable doubt that he committed the murder.

What the photographic evidence yesterday did was switch attention of the jury from Mr Fuhrman to Mr Simpson. Mr Rubin's testimony was all the more compelling because it has been established that the make of glove in question is expensive and rare, and that Mr Simpson's murdered wife, Nicole Brown, once bought such a pair - presumably for her husband - at a department store.

In a measure of the defence's concern at this development, Robert Blasier, a Simpson lawyer, aggressively cross-examined Mr Rubin, seeking to question his impartiality and undermine his expertise.