Scheck Pounds Fung

Scheck will make his point.

“How about that, Mr. Fung!”

A witness skewered.

4/4/95

Here’s how I recounted the episode of The People vs. O.J. Simpson prosecution witness Dennis Fung in Anatomy of a Trial:

“One day during a break in defense attorney Barry Scheck’s withering cross-examination of Los Angeles Police Department criminalist Dennis Fung, [defense attorney Robert] Shapiro handed out Chinese restaurant fortune cookies to his colleagues, saying they were “compliments of the Hang Fung restaurant,” for which he later apologized in court.  The next day, at the conclusion of Fung’s testimony, during which he made embarrassing concessions about mistakes he had made handling evidence, [defense attorney Johnnie] Cochran cavorted in the hallway, singing, “We’re having Fung! Oh, we’re having Fung!”

“For his part, Fung did something himself that raised eyebrows. After stepping down from the witness stand at the end of his testimony, he crossed the courtroom to the defense table to shake hands with Simpson’s attorneys. The next day, newspapers carried a photograph of the lawyers grinning and gripping Fung’s hand and slapping him on the back.

“It was puzzling. The defense had attacked and humiliated the guy for days on the stand during which Scheck skewered him with his infamous, “How about that, Mr. Fung!” over evidence that Scheck believed proved Fung wrong.

“Yet when Fung left the stand, they all greeted each other like old friends. Granted he did do them a great favor, given how his testimony had damaged the prosecution’s case, but their behavior made it look like the attack had been staged or like Fung was in cahoots with them.”

 

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