Putting Justice in the Dock

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

The first time police officers went on trial for beating Rodney King, Los Angeles looked at itself in the mirror and saw Caliban. Not everyone recognized the same monster. Some saw racist authority and biased justice. Some saw a lawless citizen and mob madness. But for almost everyone, inside and outside the smoking city, the trial became a symbolic test of national values -- something that trials, with their focus on factual specifics and winner-take-all outcomes, are not constructed to be. The acquittals were so shocking to a nation mesmerized by a videotape, and so achingly rejected in riot and rage, that it was inevitable the case would somehow be tried again. This time, with the jurisdiction federal rather than local and the charges focused on civil rights, the burden on participants is greater. The result will be momentous, but the nation is really watching for what comes after. As defense attorney Ira Saltzman challenged jurors last week in a closing statement, "Your verdict might result in some . . . something. Can you withstand that pressure?"

If the judgment this time is harsher for the police, there will be some suspicion that it represents expediency and fear of another riot rather than fair weighing of the evidence. Maybe so. But guilty verdicts would also reflect the fact that this prosecution, led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Clymer, did a better job. It relied less on the celebrated videotape, which the defense at the first trial dismissed as a partial record, and more on live testimony -- from weeping or infuriated police who rejected clubbing and kicking as unnecessary and wrong, from seasoned medical experts who debunked the defendants' blow-by-blow account, above all from previously unheard civilian eyewitnesses, including the victim himself.

The defense, too, was probably better this time. For one thing, it presented a united front. In the first trial, Officer Theodore Briseno testified that his fellow officers were "out of control." This time he and two other defendants opted military style to leave the talking to the senior officer, ) Sergeant Stacey Koon -- although a tape of Briseno's testimony was shown over vociferous objections from the defense.

Far from pleading for understanding, Koon insisted his explicit intention had been to "break bones" to get King to submit: "The intent I had was to cripple him, to make him unable to push off the ground. You can't push off the ground if your elbows are broken. You can't push off the ground if your knees are broken." Any taint of sadism was probably reinforced by testimony that another of the accused, Laurence Powell, left the battered King in the back of a patrol car for nearly an hour while swapping "war stories" with colleagues before taking him to a hospital.

Koon's roughhewn rhetoric reminded some onlookers of the unyielding officer played by Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men and seemed likely to polarize jurors the way that character polarized moviegoers. But the defense does not need to win acquittal; it is almost as effective to persuade enough to hang a jury. Outside the courtroom, Koon and Powell boasted of having won at least one female admirer on the jury. Many observers predicted a split verdict -- a slap at most for Briseno and Timothy Wind, something sterner for Koon and especially Powell, who struck the most blows. Powell's attorney Michael Stone tacitly acknowledged this scenario in a closing statement pleading that his client not be made a scapegoat.

Legally, the case centers on three questions. Did officers hit King in the head while he was standing up? By itself that is illegal "deadly force" unless King imperiled officers' lives. The preponderance of evidence says they did, but the videotape is inconclusive and witnesses differ. Did the police use too much force when King was on the ground? That depends on whether he was "aggressive" and "combative." Third, did the officers intend to violate King's civil rights? That depends on whether they knowingly broke department policy. This point, which the earlier prosecution did not have to address, makes conviction tougher to reach.

Where the suburban Simi Valley jury in the first trial heard prosecutors harp on the videotape, this team meticulously countered defense evidence. On whether King's facial wounds came from police batons, Koon testified, "Mr. King fell like a tree. He made a one-point landing on his face." Dr. Harry Smith of San Antonio, Texas, a leading expert witness, asserted this scenario was impossible. The bones beneath King's right eye were crushed to powder, which required a pressure equivalent to 350 lbs., while his nose, which would have been broken by pressure of about 50 lbs., remained intact. Such uneven damage could not come from a flat surface like a parking lot, said Smith, only from something selective, like a baton.

Against defense witness Sergeant Charles Duke, who asserts that the beating was within department guidelines and that there were no "head shots," the first prosecution answered with a career desk officer. This time Duke was rebutted by witnesses with street wisdom: the police academy's trainer in the use of force, Sergeant Mark Conta, and a California Highway Patrol member who saw King beaten, Melanie Singer. Conta said, "We never teach to break bones. I see excessive force here. The picture I see is that of a beaten man who is not combative or aggressive." He faulted each defendant: Koon for failing to intervene, Wind for six "brutal kicks," Briseno for stomping on King's neck, and Powell for a fusillade of chest blows that he termed "the most flagrant violation."

Singer, called by the defense, turned into a booby trap under cross- examination. She saw King hit on the head six times and broke into tears remembering it: "There was blood dripping literally from his mouth, and there was a pool of blood beneath his chin." She described officers on the scene as "standing around" and "joking." She also faulted the claim that King was dangerous because he was apparently high on the drug PCP, saying he showed none of the signs, such as profuse sweating and a trancelike stare.

Two Hispanic musicians who were not called at the first trial said King never attacked police and seemed to submit before being beaten. Dorothy Gibson, a black woman who lives across the street from the beating site, said, "He didn't do anything. He was just dodging blows."

By far the most significant new witness was King. From the beginning he has found himself in a position akin to that of a rape victim. There is no question, beyond niggling over details, about what was done to him. The issue is whether he, by his character and behavior, somehow invited and justified the abuse. Although he is not on trial -- his assailants are -- the core question is if he was scary or erratic enough to legitimize almost any level of force. At the first trial, prosecutors chose not to put him on the stand. He is a high school dropout. He has a criminal record. He was drinking that night. His memory is hazy, whether because of alcohol or injury. He has changed his story more than once. And he is a large black man in a nation often frightened of black men.

Yet many observers felt he provided this trial's most compelling moments. Rather than experience him only as a silent presence or a moving shadow on videotape, jurors could see the fateful night through his eyes. He described lying on the ground waiting to be handcuffed, only to be shocked by Koon with a stun gun. He recalled running toward his car, throwing his hands over his face. He said, in complete accord with the evidence, "I wasn't trying to hit any police officer." Said Denver trial lawyer Dan Caplis, a consultant on the case for NBC News: "The whole defense is based on King as a PCP-crazed monster. His appearance undermined that. He showed no hint of anger; he appeared a very sincere, passive person."

The jurors, eight men and four women, are volunteers. A mailing to 6,000 residents netted about 300 willing to face the pressure and the prospect of being sequestered for a couple of months. The one black woman placed her child with relatives for the duration. The one black man would have been dismissed by defense lawyers. To their astonishment, Judge John Davies blocked them, citing a 1991 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that prohibits exclusion based on race. One juror is Hispanic and the other nine are white, in a city where the population is more than 60% minority. Defense attorney Saltzman insists, "This case has never been about race." In the law, that may be so. In the eyes of the world, as in the eyes of Rodney King and perhaps of his assailants that sad night, race has been at the center of the case -- nettlesomely reminding us that freedom and justice are not settled conditions but eternal debates.

With reporting by James Willwerth/Los Angeles