Lawyers Agree on Selection of Penn Jury

After five arduous weeks of questioning, lawyers in the Sagon Penn retrial settled on a diverse jury Friday to hear the racially divisive case.

The six-man, six-woman panel includes two Latinos, an Asian and a black--an array that defense attorney Milton J. Silverman said represents a “cross-section of this community.”

Beginning Monday, the jurors will begin digesting the details of the case against Penn. A jury last year cleared him of the most serious charges stemming from a confrontation with two San Diego police officers in Encanto in March, 1985. But he still is accused of attempted murder and other charges in the incident, which left Police Agent Thomas Riggs dead and Police Agent Donovan Jacobs wounded.

The defense contends that Jacobs incited Penn with racist remarks and a physical beating, and the case has cut a wide rift between police and the city’s black community. Yet, earlier this week, it appeared that there might be no blacks seated on the jury for the retrial.

Only one black, Baptist minister Matthew Frazier, survived an initial screening and remained in the 45-person pool from which Silverman and prosecutors Michael Carpenter and Wayne Mayer were drawing a jury--a circumstance that especially concerned Silverman, who stood to gain from the presence of blacks on the jury.

But once Frazier was seated in the jury box during the selection process, Carpenter stunned both Silverman and San Diego Superior Court Judge J. Morgan Lester by seeking to use one of his juror challenges to remove the Southeast San Diego man from the panel.

Though Carpenter insisted otherwise, Silverman argued that Frazier was being challenged because of his race. In a rare legal call, Lester disallowed the challenge and seated Frazier on the jury.

“I think it would have been terrible for this community to have an all-white jury,” Silverman said Friday.

“The color didn’t have anything to do with it,” said Carpenter, who attributed the challenge to Frazier’s deep religious feelings and other grounds.

Carpenter and Silverman both expressed satisfaction with the composition of the jury, but declined to compare it to the panel that acquitted Penn in June on charges that he murdered Riggs and attempted to murder Jacobs. That jury included two black women.

“We were looking for a fair and impartial jury, and that’s exactly what we got,” Carpenter said.

Silverman was more voluble. “When you look at their faces, you see America,” he said. “We have young and old and white collar and blue collar, and people with book learning and people with street smarts. . . .

“I’m very pleased with that, and I’m very pleased with the jury.”

The lawyers still must select a fourth alternate juror before making their opening statements Monday. Three white men had been selected as alternates when court adjourned Friday.

Attorneys expect the retrial to last as long as three months and cover much the same ground as the first trial, which pitted Silverman’s animated style and his effort to pin responsibility for the confrontation on Jacobs against Carpenter’s low-key prosecution of Penn.

This time, Carpenter will be aided by Mayer, while Silverman will be bolstered by the availability of an 8-year-old Police Academy transcript that he says shows early evidence of hostility in Jacobs’ approach to police work.

Penn will be tried on charges on which the jury in his first trial deadlocked, strongly favoring acquittal. The charges include voluntary manslaughter in Riggs’ death; attempted murder in the wounding of Sara Pina-Ruiz, who was a civilian ride-along in Riggs’ police car the evening of the shootings, and attempted voluntary manslaughter in the wounding of Jacobs.