When Barry Scheck speaks at the O.J. Simpson trial, the media has hated to listen.

Scheck, one of the nation's foremost legal experts on DNA, has taken the lead for the Simpson defense team in arguing against the admission of such evidence.

It's a complex task, and Scheck hasn't made it any easier. He doesn't miss a precedent or a twist in the DNA legal road that leads from the laboratory to the courtroom. He does it in a slightly rasping tenor, unrelieved by humor, or even a light remark.

The attention has gone to the media star lawyers--Cochran, Clark, Bailey, Shapiro. Some of the stars have cultivated the attention, with leaks, press conferences and efforts to try their case in the media.

And so it was with considerable surprise that we journalists found ourselves watching intently as the previously ignored Scheck began late Tuesday afternoon to relentlessly take apart Los Angeles Police Department criminalist Dennis Fung and inflict major damage on the prosecution's case.

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Nobody should have been surprised.

Barry Scheck, 44, a graduate of Yale University and the UC Berkeley Law School, has become famous in the world of DNA experts for using DNA testing to exonerate and free falsely accused felons. He and attorney Peter Neufeld direct this effort through the Innocence Project at Yeshiva University's Cardoza School of Law in New York. Neufeld is also part of the Simpson team.

The Scheck-Neufeld team, assisted by law students, have used DNA testing to show that the accused was not at the scene of the crime in 15 cases. In this case, they are trying to cast doubt on DNA tests the prosecution says show Simpson killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman.

Scheck, a short man in a dark blue double-breasted pin-striped lawyer-like suit, looked confident and aggressive as he cross-examined Fung. His brown hair hung over his forehead, giving the impression of a man so preoccupied with his task that he doesn't have time to comb his hair.

His quarry, Fung, looked nervous Wednesday after Scheck had hammered him the day before. Fung's voice was soft and a bit shaky. He paused before answering. Once he stretched, as if his back was cramping up.

Scheck took Fung slowly and carefully through the crime scene. Where Tuesday afternoon the lawyer hammered the criminalist into submission, Wednesday he sliced him up inch by inch.