Inglewood Brutality Trial Jury Selected

More than a decade after a trial in the Rodney King beating case sparked national outrage and urban rioting, Los Angeles County is readying for another high-profile police brutality trial.

This time the Inglewood Police Department finds itself caught on tape. Racial factors and an amateur cameraman’s video recording of a confrontation between white officers and a black suspect have again drawn the attention of civil rights leaders and federal authorities.

Lawyers for former Officer Jeremy Morse, 25, and Officer Bijan Darvish, 26, and prosecutors selected a jury Tuesday from a pool of 230 candidates. Six were men and six were women; one African American was selected. They will hear opening statements in the case today.

In the video, Morse is seen slamming handcuffed Donovan Jackson, a 16-year-old with no criminal record, onto the trunk of a police cruiser and using his fist to strike the boy in the face.

The district attorney’s office has charged that the slamming was part of an assault under the color of authority. But Morse’s attorneys say he was using a police technique called “wedging” that was necessary because Jackson had gone limp and thus was still resisting.

Darvish, who was suspended briefly after the incident, has been charged with lying in an official police report to cover up his partner’s actions. Prosecutors say Darvish, who denies the charge, lied when he wrote that he and Morse “assisted Jackson to his feet and had him stand facing the vehicle.”

The trial comes just two months after a Los Angeles Police Department disciplinary board overruled a civilian oversight commission and cleared a white officer in the 1999 shooting death of Margaret Mitchell, a mentally ill black woman brandishing a screwdriver.

“That heightens the community’s suspicion that within the law enforcement area, there is special protection for those viewed as violating human rights,” said the Rev. Norman Johnson, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of L.A. “Because we have such a dramatic history, we will have an eye placed on us.”

The national eye was directed on Los Angeles County when the videotape of the July 6, 2002, incident was widely broadcast. Civil rights leaders, including Dick Gregory and Martin Luther King III, converged on the county. Demonstrators marched on Inglewood City Hall, and U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft dispatched his top civil rights lawyer to help investigate.

Protesters returned this week, hoping to sway potential jurors as they walked into the Airport Courthouse on South La Cienega Boulevard by waving gigantic photos of Morse punching and slamming Jackson

The outcome will affect how the rest of the nation views race relations in the county, said attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., who represents Jackson in a civil suit against Inglewood.

“I think it will, especially in the minority communities, where they are always hoping for a better day and better treatment,” said Cochran, who also represented Reginald O. Denny in a suit against the city of Los Angeles. Denny was attacked by rioters in the 1992 unrest that followed the acquittals in the first trial of officers involved in the Rodney King beating.

A case like Jackson’s, Cochran said, “always sends a chill because it makes [people] think, ‘Hey, I thought things were getting better.’ ”

The U.S. Justice Department will be among those watching the case, spokesman Jorge Martinez said last week.

“This is a very important matter,” he said. “The Civil Rights Division is closely looking at the developments of this case as it progresses.”

Less Racial Volatility

The Rev. Johnson said Los Angeles is not as racially volatile as it was before the King case.

“We are at a different place now,” he said, adding that the 1992 riots were “about the verdict and the conditions in the African American community, such as lack of employment and a growing sense of powerlessness that people in the south of Los Angeles felt.”

Justice Department officials have joined with local government agencies and a coalition of Los Angeles County business, civic and religious leaders to plan ways to keep the peace through the verdict in the Inglewood case. The coalition is recruiting and training volunteers to circulate when the trial ends to help squelch rumors and direct people to places where they can peacefully vent their anger.

Because of the group’s work, Ronald K. Wakabayashi, the Justice Department’s regional community relations director, said he believes that the trial verdict will not present “a high-risk situation” overall.

As was demonstrated in the King cases, a videotape provides powerful, but not conclusive, evidence.

King Case Attorney

Deputy Dist. Attys. Max Huntsman and Michael Petterson face a formidable opponent: Morse lawyer John Barnett, who represented LAPD Officer Theodore J. Briseno in the King case’s Simi Valley trial.

For the last year, Barnett and Ronald Brower, Darvish’s attorney, have tried to chip away at the prosecution’s case and spin the images on the tape to favor their clients.

On the day of the incident, Sheriff’s Deputies Daniel Leon and Carlos Lopez had pulled into a Thrifty gas station at Century Boulevard and Freeman Avenue to question Jackson’s father, Coby Chavis Jr., 42, about an expired license tag on his car. While Leon talked to Chavis, Lopez ordered Jackson to sit in a police cruiser. Lopez said Jackson refused and then lunged at him.

Jackson, a special education student at Leuzinger High School in Lawndale, suffers from an “auditory processing disorder,” which means he has difficulty understanding what people tell him, his parents have said.

In testimony to the Los Angeles County Grand Jury, Jackson said he complied with every order he heard. Lopez disputed Jackson, saying that instead of complying, the 5-foot-6 teenager tried to fight him and four Inglewood officers. Morse joined in.

Jackson did not hit anyone, officers told grand jurors. Darvish said he hit Jackson in the face -- once in the mouth and once near his left eye -- and another officer struck the youth’s hand with a flashlight.

The amateur cameraman’s tape shows Morse grabbing a limp Jackson by the back of the collar and the belt line and carrying him to a patrol car, hoisting him about chest high and slamming him down on the trunk of the vehicle.

Jackson’s head bounces off the trunk. Looking dazed but conscious, Jackson lifts his head as Morse grabs the back of his neck with his left hand and hits him in the face with his right. Still holding the back of his neck, Morse then uses his right hand to reach under Jackson’s chin and grab his neck from the front. He looks as if he is choking Jackson until Inglewood Police Officer Mariano Salcedo reaches in and appears to pull Morse’s hand away. At that point, Morse and Salcedo put Jackson inside the car.

To make their case, prosecutors have to prove that Morse used unreasonable or excessive force in trying to detain Jackson.

The slam appears to present the most difficulty for Barnett. Last week, he described the action as a wedging maneuver learned in training. Wedging, he said, is a method officers use to gain control of resisting suspects by pinning them against an immovable object such as a wall or, in this case, the patrol car.

Barnett said Jackson continued to resist by going limp after he was handcuffed. Prosecutors counter that Jackson was limp only because officers had beat or choked him into unconsciousness. Jackson told grand jurors that he passed out during the struggle and that the last thing he remembers is being put inside a patrol car.

Experts on police use of force are expected to give their analyses of what Morse did that day. Barnett and the prosecution have included such experts on their lists of witnesses who may be called to testify.

As for the punch, Barnett says he believes Morse’s contention that it was required to make Jackson let go of Morse’s testicles. The videotapes don’t show whether Jackson provoked the punch. None of the other officers at the scene saw it.

A split second before Morse strikes Jackson, the officer appears to instinctively reach down. And two officers testified to the grand jury that they heard Morse yelling, “Let go of me,” just before he hit Jackson.

Verdict Seen as Tossup

Legal experts who have been keeping up with the case have said the verdict could go either way.

Although community leaders learned a lot from the 1992 riots, tranquillity after the Inglewood verdict could still be in jeopardy.

“The promises that were made after those riots were that there would be infusions of resources to improve the community and a focus on business development and expansion of city services,” Johnson said.

“The conditions now, though better, are still not what they should be.” So, the verdict “has the potential to spark a negative response.”

Times staff writer Jean Merl contributed to this report.