Jury Acquits Penn in Slaying of S.D. Officer : Retrial in Racially Charged Case Brings Verdicts of Innocent on Main Counts, Deadlock on Others

A Superior Court jury Thursday found Sagon Penn innocent in the death of one San Diego police officer and the wounding of another and a civilian, closing what may be the final chapter in a painful, two-year saga that exposed a deep rift between the city’s police force and its black community.

As in Penn’s first trial a year ago, the jurors deadlocked on several lesser charges against the 25-year-old black man--torn, they said, over the extent to which the officers’ conduct in their March, 31, 1985, confrontation with Penn justified his firing a police revolver in self-defense.

San Diego County Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller, who had insisted after the first trial that Penn be retried on the unresolved charges, said after Thursday’s verdict that he was not inclined to bring Penn to trial a third time.

The racially mixed panel found Penn innocent of voluntary manslaughter in the killing of Police Agent Thomas Riggs; of attempted voluntary manslaughter in the wounding of Police Agent Donovan Jacobs, and of attempted murder and attempted voluntary manslaughter in the wounding of Sarah Pina-Ruiz, a civilian who was riding with Riggs as an observer.

Deadlocked on Assault Charge

The jury came closest to convicting Penn of assault with a deadly weapon in the shooting of Pina-Ruiz, deadlocking at 7-5 in favor of a guilty verdict. But the jurors strongly favored acquittal on the other unresolved charges, voting 11-1 to clear Penn of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Riggs, and 10-2 to find him innocent of assault with a deadly weapon in the wounding of Jacobs.

The case galvanized mistrust of police among minorities in San Diego. More than any other single event, the confrontation in an Encanto driveway was responsible for establishment of a citizen commission to study police-community relations, an overhaul of the San Diego Police Department’s human relations training for officers, and the city’s decision to inaugurate formal citizen review of charges of police misconduct.

Though several officers interviewed Thursday were upset by the verdicts, San Diego Police Chief Bill Kolender said the department accepted the jury’s decision and would continue to work to improve relations in the city’s minority neighborhoods.

“I wish that I had the power to soothe the awful pain of everyone who has been devastated by this incident and the tedious legal trials that have followed, but that power lies in a much higher authority,” Kolender said in comments more subdued than his reaction after Penn’s first trial. “I pray that time will heal all wounds.”

Black leaders warned against allowing the jury’s decision to further polarize race relations in San Diego.

“Blacks are saying, ‘Thank God,’ and some whites are saying, ‘It’s a disgrace,’ ” said Willie Morrow, a black businessman who owns a radio station, a cosmetics company and The San Diego Monitor and News, a weekly newspaper. “The danger is black citizens applauding it and white people denouncing it . . . because it’s not who won and who lost as far as race is concerned.”

City Councilman William Jones, who represents a predominantly black district, called on police and residents to cultivate mutual respect. “We must not allow this difficult period in our city’s history to damage the relationship between our citizens and our police officers,” he said.

Commending the jury for its service, Judge J. Morgan Lester underscored the significance of the proceedings.

“This is probably one of the most controversial cases in the history of this city--if not the most,” said Lester, whose easygoing humor during the 14-week trial was often the only leavening note in the relentless drama.

Jury Out 23 Days

In the packed courtroom, the verdicts--delivered after 23 days of jury deliberation, the last three intensified by the jurors’ unusual request that they be sequestered--were received with little outward emotion by principal actors in the case.

Penn, a student of Buddhism and the martial arts who sat silently through both trials, kept his gaze fixed straight ahead as his defense lawyer, Milton J. Silverman, drew up close and clasped his shoulder.

Colleen Riggs, the slain officer’s widow, held tightly the hands of her mother and a sister-in-law, seeming to blink back tears. Pina-Ruiz sat stoically behind her.

Afterward, Penn--who wore a bulletproof vest because of threats to his life--was whisked from the courthouse by three guards hired by Silverman. He made no comment, and his father, Thomas Penn, said his son has no intention of breaking his silence on the case.

“I don’t know how he’s managed to deal with it,” said Penn’s mother, Peggy Barnes. She predicted that her son would be able to resume a normal life. But Silverman said that he could not imagine Penn being able to continue living in San Diego.

Pina-Ruiz, ashen-faced, stormed from the courthouse. Her only comment: “The jury is blind.”

Riggs and her family were also angry, saying Silverman had succeeded in putting the two officers on trial and turning the case into a referendum on racial prejudice.

“Those two officers would have handled the situation in exactly the same manner if Sagon Penn were a white man,” Riggs said, rejecting the defense claim that Jacobs in particular escalated the conflict to a deadly proportion by beating Penn and barraging him with racist epithets.

“But because Sagon Penn is a black man, he is free today,” Riggs said. “If he were white, he would have been convicted.”

Called Character Assassination

The officer’s widow also complained that court rules had stopped prosecutors from introducing evidence of Penn’s prior conduct--including an arrest on a robbery charge and other contacts with police--that might have made him seem less like a victim in the jury’s eyes.

“Sagon Penn was really in essence not even present at the trial,” she said. “Why should you pay attention to Sagon Penn when it was Donovan Jacobs who was on trial? All they did through the whole trial was assassinate Donovan Jacobs’ character and my husband’s character.”

Jacobs, who remains semi-paralyzed in one arm from the shooting, went home early Thursday from his desk job at police headquarters. A police spokesman said Jacobs would have no immediate comment on the jury’s decision.

Jurors who met with reporters after the verdict insisted that race--and the larger questions of police-community relations that swirled around the case--had not been an issue in their deliberations.

Instead, they said, they focused on the question of Penn’s intent, and concluded that the prosecution failed to prove that Penn set out to kill the two officers and Pina-Ruiz.

The prosecution’s witnesses were inconsistent, one juror said, while several said they were impressed by the consistency and seeming truthfulness of the anguished statements Penn made to police after turning himself in the night of the shooting.

Penn insisted in the taped statements--which were not introduced as evidence in his first trial--that he was under attack and acting in self-defense.

“They proved to me Sagon Penn was a very reasonable 22-year-old,” said juror Janet Geisler, 25, a bank cashier from San Diego.

Heard 130 Witnesses

Among the 130 witnesses who testified in the retrial and the nearly 400 pieces of evidence introduced, no single statement or item was the linchpin of their decision, the jurors said. Rather, they described a painstaking process of breaking each charge against Penn down into its legal elements, and weighing them against the evidence and the dozens of instructions Lester had given to guide their deliberations.

“We just took a reasonable, logical, methodical process to this, and openly discussed it among everybody,” said jury foreman Howard McDowell, a 34-year-old salesman from San Diego.

Geisler added, “We had written on the back of our door throughout the whole deliberation, ‘Beyond a reasonable doubt until moral certainty.’ The prosecution never proved beyond a reasonable doubt . . . that he was unlawful.”

The retrial jury considered a series of charges on which jurors in Penn’s first trial deadlocked, heavily favoring acquittal, 13 months ago. That panel found Penn innocent of first-degree and second-degree murder in Riggs’ death, and of attempted murder in the wounding of Jacobs.

In both trials, the prosecution and defense painted starkly different pictures of the deadly encounter more than two years ago.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Carpenter insisted it was an “arrogant” Penn who refused to take his driver’s license out of his wallet when Jacobs stopped him during an investigation of gang activities, and who then insolently walked away from the officer rather than cooperate with his interrogation.

Penn, he argued, escalated the minor incident “into a life and death struggle,” drawing Jacobs and Riggs into a wrestling match and grabbing Jacobs’ gun as the officer tried to subdue him. Penn emptied the revolver, intended to kill the two officers and hoped to eliminate Pina-Ruiz as a potential witness against him, the prosecution said.

Silverman--who prevailed in a case few initially gave him a chance of winning--contended from the start that Jacobs instigated the confrontation, arguing that eight years of misconduct by the agent dating back to his training at the San Diego Police Academy attested to his racist, belligerent tendencies.

The defense lawyer argued that police and prosecutors had spun a web of lies to ensnare Penn, eliciting misleading testimony and seeking to cover up evidence that Penn was forced to act in self-defense.

New Awareness Seen in Ranks

Silverman said on Thursday that the legacy of the case was a new introspection in the ranks of San Diego police, and an alertness by civic leaders to the tensions dividing police and the black community.

“If this case has done anything that’s positive, I think it has alerted everybody of honor and dignity in the Police Department that they need to be ever conscious of the fact they have duties to discharge which are very important,” Silverman said. “And I think they’re very sensitive to that. I think Chief Kolender has taken great strides in sort of firming that up.”

Carpenter, interviewed by telephone from Michigan, where he is on vacation, said the deepest legacy of the events would be more personal. Tom Riggs’ son Adam, 4 1/2, was left without a father, Carpenter noted, and the boy never may be able to understand why.

“If I was little Adam Riggs and I grew up without a father,” Carpenter said, “I’d have a great number of questions about what happened to my father.”

Meanwhile, memories of the dead officer subdued any inclination to celebrate that Penn’s family might otherwise have felt.

“I can’t rejoice in something like this,” Thomas Penn said. “Everybody is scarred and hurt, one man’s dead, another is wounded, a boy is hurt. How can you see a victory in that?

“I’d consider it a victory if everybody was OK and well and Mr. Riggs was back.”

Times staff writers Armando Acuna, Glenn F. Bunting, Barry M. Horstman, Janny Scott and Jenifer Warren contributed to this story.

CHARGES AGAINST PENN

Count 1: The death of Police Agent Thomas Riggs

Voluntary manslaughter: Not guilty.

Involuntary manslaughter: Jury deadlocked, 11-1, favoring acquittal.

Count 2: The shooting of Police Agent Donovan Jacobs

Attempted voluntary manslaughter: Not guilty.

Count 3: The shooting of Sarah Pina-Ruiz

Attempted murder: Not guilty.

Attempted voluntary manslaughter: Not guilty.

Count 4: The shooting of Jacobs (assault)

Assault with a deadly weapon: Jury deadlocked, 10-2, favoring acquittal.

Count 5: The shooting of Pina-Ruiz (assault)

Assault with a deadly weapon: Jury deadlocked, 7-5, favoring a verdict of guilty.

In his first trial, the jury found Penn not guilty of first-degree and second-degree murder in Riggs’ death, but deadlocked on the lesser offenses of manslaughter, strongly favoring acquittal.

Penn was found not guilty of attempted murder in the shooting of Jacobs, but the jurors deadlocked in Penn’s favor on an array of lesser charges, including attempted manslaughter, assault with a deadly weapon and resisting arrest. He also was acquitted of attempted murder and attempted manslaughter for driving over Jacobs with the officer’s police cruiser as he fled the shooting scene. On that count, the jury deadlocked in Penn’s favor on a lesser charge of assault with a deadly weapon.

In the shooting of Pina-Ruiz, the first jury deadlocked heavily in favor of acquittal on a charge of attempted murder.

Penn also was acquitted of two theft charges related to the use of Jacobs’ cruiser and Riggs’ service revolver.