Jury Acquits Penn of Murder Charge : Cleared of All Major Count, Freed From Jail; Mistrial on Other Charges

In a decision that stunned police and prosecutors, Sagon Penn was found innocent Thursday of murder and attempted murder in the shooting death of one San Diego police officer and the wounding of another.

The jury deadlocked on four other charges--attempted murder of Sarah Pina-Ruiz, a civilian observer accompanying the slain policeman; voluntary manslaughter of Police Agent Thomas Riggs, and attempted voluntary manslaughter and assault with a deadly weapon against Police Agent Donovan Jacobs.

The jurors overwhelmingly favored acquittal on each of those counts. The vote was 11-1 for acquittal on the attempted murder of Pina-Ruiz.

Superior Court Judge Ben W. Hamrick declared a mistrial on those four counts.

Penn, a 24-year-old black man, was released from jail after 15 months on $25,000 bail Thursday night.

The gruesome shootings on March 31, 1985, exposed the deep division between police and San Diego’s black community. The verdict elated many blacks in Southeast San Diego and reinforced a widespread belief that police use a double standard in dealing with blacks. Police officers, angry and bitter over the verdict, said they continue to have the respect and support of minority communities.

Numerous witnesses during the trial testified that Jacobs provoked Penn with racial slurs and by beating him with a night stick. The jury believed Jacobs’ conduct was responsible for the confrontation that ended in Riggs’ death, according to juror Sally Naley, 36.

“There was, early on, a general consensus that people thought he wasn’t guilty of murder,” said Naley, a clerk for a photo-finishing company. “To me, none of it was murder. It was just a bad situation that got worse, tragically, and ended with somebody losing their life.”

Police Chief Bill Kolender filmed a video message, to be shown to officers today, offering them his support in the wake of the verdict. Kolender said Thursday that he still feels Penn is guilty and stands by his earlier statement calling him a “cop killer.”

“I’m very disappointed,” Kolender said. “This is going to leave my officers angry and sad, but San Diego police officers are mature, professional people, and they’ll continue to act as professionals.”

Defense attorney Milton J. Silverman said, “There’s no victory celebration here. This is a terrible thing that has happened to Officer Riggs, his family, his widow, his children and to Sagon Penn. This began as a tragedy and it ends as a tragedy.”

Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller said he was “stunned” by the verdict. “It certainly isn’t a happy moment for me,” he said.

Miller declined to say if he would retry Penn on the undecided charges. He said it will take several days before he and his assistants can sift through the evidence and decide “whether we have salvaged a prosecuteable case.”

Miller said the jury’s strong votes for acquittal would have no bearing on his decision. “I’m going to decide if we can retry, and whether we should retry it, based upon the full and complete consideration of what we have as far as evidence is concerned,” Miller said.

Silverman said that, under normal circumstances, the district attorney’s office would not consider a retrial because of the high number of votes for acquittal.

“But as you know, there are a lot more things involved here,” Silverman said. “You know, politics, egos and that sort of thing.”

Penn’s father, Thomas Penn, called for the Police Department to “clean itself up” and said he won’t be satisfied “until my baby is here with me--free.”

Asked whether he was going to celebrate the verdict, Thomas Penn said, “What kind of party could you give for getting a beating and being locked up for a year? We’ve been in slavery all our lives. Now we’re kind of franchised slaves. This is nothing to celebrate.”

San Diego black leaders said the verdict vindicated their criticism of the police.

“The verdict reinforces what we in the black community have been telling people,” said Kathy Rollins, executive director of the San Diego Black Federation. “There’s a real problem with the Police Department. . . . the Penn incident was an extreme example of what does exist.”

Police responded to the Penn incident, which resulted in the death of the ninth police officer in San Diego in 10 years, by forming an Officer Safety Task Force. Among the more than 100 recommendations, the committee suggested changes in tactics allowing officers to be more aggressive in combating street violence.

Police officers and the Riggs family reacted bitterly to the verdicts.

Riggs’ widow, Colleen, called Silverman “a great storyteller” and credited the defense attorney with swaying jurors through his dramatic courtroom argument.

Riggs’ sister, Cynthia Wibe, said, “It sounds like the jury did everything in its power to insure that Mr. Penn would be given absolutely the lightest sentence.”

At the Southeast San Diego substation where Riggs and Jacobs worked, some officers expressed outrage.

“There was anger. There was hurt,” said Lt. Cliff Resch, second in command at the station. “ . . . Police look at juries as a reflection of the community. They’re thinking, ‘Where’s my backing? What’s going to happen if I get involved in a situation like this?’ ”

Assistant Police Chief Bob Burgreen said: “We lost an officer. We had another officer seriously injured who may never be the same. All of that seems to be somehow forgotten.”

Sagon Penn was stopped by police on March 31, 1985, in the Southeast San Diego community of Encanto. According to witnesses, an altercation developed when Penn showed Jacobs his driver’s license in his wallet and Jacobs demanded that he remove the license from the wallet.

When Penn refused and turned away, Jacobs grabbed him by the arm and threw a punch, according to observers. Numerous witnesses testified that Jacobs told Penn: “You think you’re bad, nigger . . . I’m going to beat your black ass.”

Jacobs testified that he did not use racial slurs and said he has never used the word nigger.

As he lay on his back, Penn reached for Jacobs’ gun, put it to the officer’s neck and fired one shot. The defense claims that Penn warned Jacobs and the gun went off when Riggs kicked Penn’s arm.

Penn turned and shot Riggs three times before standing and pointing the weapon at Pina-Ruiz, who watched in terror from the front passenger seat of Riggs’ police car. Penn emptied the six-shot revolver by shooting Pina-Ruiz twice.

All six shots were fired within less than six seconds. Penn then took Riggs’ fully loaded revolver and jumped in Jacobs’ police car to flee from the sound of oncoming sirens. On the way out, Penn ran over Jacobs, who lay wounded on the dirt driveway. Penn drove to his grandfather’s house to tell him what happened. Within 30 minutes, he turned himself in to police.

After the verdicts were announced, Silverman said he plans to file a motion to prevent the prosecution from filing new charges because of “outrageous governmental misconduct” by the district attorney’s office.

Silverman accused Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Carpenter of failing to disclose for 12 days a potentially damaging taped conversation of Jacobs, which surfaced after the jury began deliberations. The transcript consisted of statements Penn made to his training officers in 1978 regarding his support of using epithets and aggression when confronting minorities, Silverman said.

“If I had had that document, Penn would have been acquitted of everything,” Silverman said.

The jury notified Hamrick at 11 a.m. Thursday that it had arrived at verdicts. Before announcing the verdicts at noon, Hamrick called the two attorneys to a corner of the courtroom to discuss in what order to read the verdicts.

Silverman said he looked at the verdict form that said not guilty of first-degree murder and told Hamrick: “I don’t know if my heart can stand looking at the rest of it.”

As Hamrick turned the pages to the other verdicts, he said, “Yeah, it can,” Silverman recalled. Carpenter stood stone-faced as he glanced at the verdicts.

On the way back to his seat, Silverman whispered to Penn: “It’s OK.”

Colleen Riggs sat expressionless in the back row of the courtroom as Hamrick pronounced Penn not guilty of murdering her husband. Two friends, who sat crying beside Mrs. Riggs, responded with profanity after each verdict.

The jury deadlocked, 10-2, in favor of acquittal on a charge of manslaughter in Riggs’ death; 10-2 for acquittal of attempted voluntary manslaughter in Jacobs’ shooting; 8-4 for acquittal of assault with a deadly weapon for running over Jacobs with the patrol car, and 11-1 for acquittal on the charge of attempted murder in the Pina-Ruiz shooting.

They also acquitted Penn of stealing the dead officer’s gun and the wounded policeman’s patrol car.

On May 20, the jury convicted Penn of assault with a deadly weapon for running over Jacobs with a police vehicle. The verdict was announced while deliberations were recessed for a week, as juror Vernell Hardy had a baby. The verdict was set aside when Hardy told Hamrick from her hospital bed that she had second thoughts.

When the jury initially returned the guilty verdict, Jacobs said: “I think it’s great. Convict him on all of ‘em.” Jacobs was in Los Angeles on Thursday and could not be reached for comment.

Penn’s bail was reduced from $250,000 to $25,000 by Hamrick, who based his decision on “the findings of the jury and the heavy weight toward acquittal.”

Hamrick initially scheduled a bail review hearing for next week, but Silverman persuaded the judge to act immediately when he said Penn had received numerous death threats throughout the trial from “neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan types” in County Jail downtown.

As the media crowded around the jail entrance to await Penn’s release, sheriff’s deputies whisked him out a back way for security purposes.

Contributing to this report were Times staff writers Jim Schachter, David Smollar, Daniel M. Weintraub, Ralph Frammolino, Barry M. Horstman and Townsend Davis.