JURY SEES PHOTOS OF SIMPSON'S HANDS.

Byline: Anne Burke Daily News Staff Writer

Jurors in the O.J. Simpson civil trial Thursday saw close-up photographs of cuts and bruises on the football star's hands, shot just days after the double slayings in Brentwood.

Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Rob Huizenga testified that Simpson had three small cuts and several scrapes on his left hand, and one cut on his right hand when he examined the defendant June 15, 1994, and again two days later.

``These injuries had occurred within the last five days to a week,'' said Huizenga, testifying for the victims' families in the wrongful-death trial.

Simpson, wearing a blue suit, rushed out of the courtroom as plaintiff attorneys displayed photographs of the Chicago hotel room he was staying in when a Los Angeles police detective called to notify him of his ex-wife's killing.

Among the photographs were some showing small blood smears on the sheets of the bed in which Simpson slept the night of the killings, and blood on a washcloth.

Lead defense attorney Robert Baker said Simpson left because he was feeling ill, and his hasty departure had nothing to do with the photographs.

Attorneys for the families of the slain Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman contend that O.J. Simpson was cut in a brief but violent struggle with his victims during the bloody knife attacks outside his ex-wife's condominium on June 12, 1994.

Simpson has claimed that he cut himself on a broken glass in a Chicago hotel room the morning after the killings. His attorneys insist that the struggle at the crime scene was so long and violent that the killer surely would have had more cuts than Simpson displayed.

Huizenga's turn on the witness stand was remarkably shorter and more to-the-point than during Simpson's criminal trial. In that case, Huizenga testified for the defense that Simpson in recent years may have looked as physically fit as Tarzan, but ``he was walking more like Tarzan's grandfather.''

Today, Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki is expected to decide whether plaintiff's attorneys can show jurors as many as 35 autopsy photos of Goldman and Nicole Simpson.

They may be in for a fight with defense lawyers. ``It is our position the photographs are calculated to inflame the jury,'' said Simpson attorney Dan Leonard.