Penn’s 2nd Slaying Trial Opens on a Calmer Note

The retrial of Sagon Penn began Monday with a prosecutor giving jurors his interpretation of the March, 1985, confrontation that left one police officer dead and a second officer and a civilian passenger in a police car wounded.

In an opening statement scheduled to continue today, Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Carpenter told a Superior Court jury that Police Agent Donovan Jacobs was justified in stopping and questioning Penn in an Encanto driveway on March 31, 1985, because he resembled an armed gang member the officer was seeking.

Establishing Jacobs’ reasons for stopping Penn is central to the prosecution’s argument that the officer handled the episode appropriately. It is Penn, Carpenter maintains, who must bear the blame for the encounter’s deadly consequences.

“When (Penn’s) truck passed him, Donovan Jacobs saw a black cap and felt there was a possibility of a Crips (gang member) in that truck,” Carpenter said during his 30-minute address. “He felt there was a possibility that there was a Crip with a gun in that truck” and that the suspect could be a danger to residents in the area.

The routine traffic stop, which occurred after Penn had spent a balmy Sunday afternoon with friends in Balboa Park, ended in a violent scuffle that left Police Agent Thomas Riggs dying and Jacobs and Sarah Pina-Ruiz, a ride-along in Riggs’ car, wounded.

Penn, 25, was acquitted last June of first-degree murder and several other major charges in connection with the shootings. Jurors, heavily in favor of acquittal, deadlocked on four additional charges.

Penn is being retried for voluntary manslaughter in Riggs’ death; attempted voluntary manslaughter and assault with a deadly weapon in the wounding of Jacobs, and attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon in the wounding of Pina-Ruiz.

The first trial took 12 weeks, and more than 150 witnesses testified. The case has aggravated racial tensions and soured relations between the San Diego Police Department and the black community.

So far, there appears to be less interest in the second trial. An overflow crowd watched the first trial on a television monitor outside the courtroom. Monday’s turnout didn’t fill Judge J. Morgan Lester’s 36-seat courtroom, and was composed of reporters, law students and Penn’s relatives and supporters.

In today’s remarks, Carpenter is expected to outline the prosecution’s contention that Penn instigated the tragic series of events by refusing Jacobs’ request that he remove his driver’s license from his wallet. As in the first trial, Carpenter will argue that Penn illegally resisted arrest and that Jacobs used reasonable force in attempting to place Penn in custody.

In his opening remarks, defense attorney Milton Silverman is expected to try to persuade the jury that Penn was the victim of a racially motivated assault by a police officer who behaved, as Silverman said in the first trial, like a “Doberman pinscher.”

Numerous witnesses testified during the first trial that Jacobs struck Penn repeatedly with his police baton and called him a “nigger” and used other racial slurs before Penn wrested Jacobs’ revolver from the officer and opened fire. Silverman argues that Penn feared for his life and fired the six shots in self-defense.