Penn Jury Visits Scene of Shootings : Fatal Encounter Re-enacted by Defense, Prosecution

The judge and jury in Sagon Penn’s retrial took a field trip Monday, traveling to the quiet Southeast San Diego neighborhood where Penn shot and killed one police officer and wounded another officer and a civilian two years ago today.

The morning journey was designed to give the 12 jurors and four alternates a feel for the dirt driveway on Brooklyn Avenue where a traffic stop erupted into a violent confrontation that left Police Agent Thomas Riggs dead and Police Agent Donovan Jacobs and Sarah Pina-Ruiz wounded.

In addition to touring the site with Superior Court Judge J. Morgan Lester and three armed marshals, the jury watched two reenactments of the precise location of Jacobs, Riggs and Penn as they scuffled on the ground before Penn grabbed Jacobs’ revolver and fired six shots.

One re-enactment was staged by the defense, the other by the prosecution.

As television crews scurried about, the jurors also saw Pina-Ruiz--a civilian observer riding with Riggs at the time of the shootings--demonstrate her position as she peered out of the patrol car and saw the deadly encounter.

Acquitted Last Summer

Penn, 25, was acquitted last summer of murder and attempted murder in the death of Riggs and the wounding of Jacobs, 30. The Encanto resident is being retried on five charges--from assault to voluntary manslaughter--on which the first jury deadlocked, heavily in favor of acquittal.

Defense attorney Milton Silverman argues that Penn acted in self-defense when he grabbed Jacobs’ .38-caliber revolver and shot him once in the neck, shot Riggs three times and then fired two shots into the patrol car at Pina-Ruiz.

Numerous defense witnesses testified in the first trial that Jacobs called Penn a “black bastard,” used other racial epithets, and pummeled Penn with his fists and police baton during the confrontation. Silverman has characterized Jacobs as a “Doberman pinscher” and has made the officer’s behavior and attitudes major issues in the retrial.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, have portrayed Penn as a “time bomb” who exploded after Jacobs asked him to remove his driver’s license from his wallet and later made a legitimate attempt to arrest him.

So far, Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Carpenter has called Jacobs, Pina-Ruiz, Penn’s grandfather, Yusuf Abdullah, and a few peripheral witnesses in the retrial, which is in its fourth week.

On Monday, jurors climbed into two Sheriff’s Department vans for the 20-minute ride from the downtown county courthouse out California 94 to the neighborhood where the shootings took place. Clad in casual clothes and sneakers, the courtroom entourage then was guided slowly around the scene of the fatal confrontation by Judge Lester, as a cadre of police officers, reporters and half a dozen spectators looked on.

Dramatically Different

Notebooks in hand, the jurors diligently inspected the dirt driveway and surrounding vantage points of various witnesses as Lester described how the landscape has changed in the last two years.

Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the outing concerned the two dramatically different reenactments of where Penn lay as he struggled with Jacobs and Riggs near the edge of the driveway, about two feet from Riggs’ patrol car.

Most witnesses testified in the first trial that Jacobs was facing away from the squad car as he straddled Penn before being shot. Such a position would have obstructed Pina-Ruiz’s view of the shooting--which she has described seeing in vivid detail in a manner that contradicts testimony of others who were at the scene.

Pina-Ruiz on Monday directed Carpenter, posing as Penn, and district attorney investigator Guy Johnson, playing Jacobs, to lie parallel to the patrol car--in a manner that would have afforded her a clear view of the scuffle.

During the demonstration, several jurors clambered into the squad car and assumed Pina-Ruiz’s position for a look at what the 34-year-old mother of two claims to have seen.

Later in the day, proceedings resumed in the courtroom, where the first member of a crowd of residents who witnessed the March 31, 1985, shootings testified.

Patricia Smith is a defense witness, but she was allowed to testify out of order--during the prosecution’s case--because she is moving out of state. Smith testified that she saw Jacobs and Riggs hit Penn on the face with their police batons while he was lying on his back on the ground.

“Call the police, that’s not fair,” Smith said, recalling the phrase she yelled during the melee. The trial’s eighth witness, Smith also said she heard one officer say, “I’m going to beat your black ass,” a comment that Jacobs has denied making.

During cross-examination, Smith insisted that she was able to hear such remarks and witness the beating despite her position in the middle of Brooklyn Street, roughly 25 feet from the scene.

In a statement inconsistent with the testimony of other witnesses, Smith also maintained that Riggs was shot first. Jacobs himself recalls being the first hit by a bullet.

Also testifying briefly on Monday was Officer Raymond Beattie, who was on duty at the downtown police station when Penn surrendered 15 minutes after the shootings.