Emanuel Verdict Is Reached : He’s Found Guilty on Reduced Charge

A jury in Pasadena Municipal Court Friday found USC football player Aaron Emanuel guilty of hitting Sharon Hatfield at a party but not guilty of striking Tammy Baird in an incident in a bar.

In the Hatfield case, the jury reduced the charge from battery with serious bodily injury to a charge of simple battery.

Emanuel, a sophomore tailback for USC last season, was charged with slugging Hatfield, 23, at a party May 3. Hatfield was knocked unconscious and suffered a concussion. Emanuel was also charged with misdemeanor battery in connection with the alleged incident involving Baird, 23, at a bar last Dec. 18.

Both women were USC students.

Emanuel stood silently as the verdicts were read to a packed courtroom late Friday afternoon.

“I am elated that Aaron was exonerated on the one count,” his attorney, Lawrence Elkins, told reporters. “I am more baffled because Miss Hatfield just simply didn’t make a credible witness.”

At least two jurors agreed. Alyce Qualls and Nancy Simo said the jury of nine women and three men began to discuss the Hatfield case first but could do little but argue, then moved to the Baird case.

Qualls said the jury wasn’t provided with enough evidence in the Baird case. Emanuel was accused of having hit Baird twice and pushing a beer bottle into her throat.

Baird could not be reached for comment.

Throughout nearly two days of deliberations, the jurors voted five or six times on each case but could not reach a unanimous verdict.

Qualls said it was difficult to accept the defense’s argument of self-defense in the Hatfield case because there wasn’t conclusive evidence that Hatfield struck Emanuel, thus provoking his punch.

“We felt that he wasn’t really guilty,” Qualls said. “But since we didn’t have proof that she hit him, under the law, we had to find him guilty. If we had that proof, he would have been not guilty for sure.”

Simo said that even if Hatfield had struck Emanuel, “He overreacted. He acted more strongly than a reasonable man would have.”

Elkins said that there were “underlying social issues.”

“The fact that Aaron was a strapping athlete, and Sharon was a woman, coupled with the fact that Aaron is a black man and Sharon is a white woman . . . “

Hatfield was a heptathlete on the USC women’s track team.

Qualls said that Hatfield was not a credible witness. “We didn’t believe her at all,” she said.

Contacted at home Friday, Hatfield expressed mixed emotions about the verdict.

“I knew justice would prevail,” she said. “But poor Tammy, that’s a crime. I saw him do that to her.

“I want to see Aaron get help. He’s hurt people in the past. He’s got priors. He’s got a violent streak in him. I just don’t want to see him pummel someone else.”

Emanuel also was booked by Los Angeles police March 19, 1986, on misdemeanor battery charges in connection with an altercation in a USC dormitory.

According to a police report, a USC campus patrol responded to a report of screams heard in a parking garage. Police arrived at 1 a.m. and questioned Emanuel and Leroy Holt, another USC football player. They told police they had been goofing off with female friends and caused the noise.

Four male students, hearing the noise, had also gone to the parking garage, one of them carrying a golf club.

According to the report, the police received a call 15 minutes later of a fight in Fluor Tower, a USC dormitory.

The police report said Emanuel and Holt had gone to the room of one of the men from the parking garage, Rick Yeater, and asked if he had called the police. According to the report, Emanuel pushed Yeater’s head against a wall and struck another student, Luke Nelson, in the face. Nelson’s face was bruised and Yeater’s head was cut, requiring three stitches.

Holt was not charged.

According to James Hunt Garcia, an attorney in Westlake Village, Yeater and Nelson agreed not to go to court if Emanuel would pay their medical costs, which totaled $1,523.

Emanuel declined to comment on that incident or Friday’s verdict.

According to Elkins, Emanuel will meet with a probation officer, whose report will be given at a probation sentencing hearing Oct. 1. “I don’t anticipate Aaron will spend time in jail,” Elkins said.

Emanuel has been suspended from school for a year by a USC administrative review panel. He also has been ordered to complete 100 hours of community service and to undergo psychiatric treatment once a month while serving the suspension. He said that if he fulfills certain counseling requirements, the suspension will be reduced to one semester.

Emanuel said earlier that he would decide after the trial whether he will return to USC or transfer to another school.