Many Jury Candidates Sympathetic to King : Trial: First one called says L.A. officers beat his father in 1930s. Others say videotape shows excessive force.

The first potential juror in the trial of four officers accused in the beating of Rodney G. King said Wednesday his own father was assaulted by Los Angeles police officers in the 1930s.

He was followed by a woman who said she believes the King beating was the product of institutional racism within the Police Department.

And after her came another potential juror who said she believes the videotape of the King incident shows the assault was “obviously unnecessary” and “inexcusable” and a fourth who said it shows “excessive abuse of violence.”

Wednesday was the first day of oral questioning of 260 prospective jurors. By day’s end, 31 had been examined by Judge Stanley M. Weisberg and attorneys for both sides in the case, with nine excused.

The nine were stricken for a variety of reasons, such as their admission that the highly publicized videotape of the March 3 beating has made it impossible for them to fairly judge the four indicted officers. Another 10 prospective jurors were excused without questioning.

But beyond the numbers and the jousting by attorneys to keep or strike individual jurors from the pool, signs began emerge that Ventura County may not be as favorable a place for the trial as the defendants’ attorneys once thought.

There has been speculation all along that a jury drawn from Ventura County--which is conservative, predominantly white and home to scores of peace officers--would be more likely to acquit the four defendants.

“This shows the magnitude of the exposure of the video on the community and the impact and influence the video and all of the media attention has had,” said Michael Stone, attorney for Officer Laurence M. Powell.

Asked after the first eight hours of jury questioning if he now wished the trial had been moved farther from Los Angeles County, Stone said: “I’d like to be on the other side of the Earth, but that’s impossible.”

Of the nine potential jurors excused after questioning, six said they already had formed an opinion about the beating and one said he believes the officers used excessive force when King was clubbed and kicked after a car pursuit that ended in Lake View Terrace.

“If a person is laying on the ground, you have some kind of control over him,” said Benay Cain. “Is it necessary to keep on beating him?”

James Brooks, a Southland resident for 57 years, said he views the King beating as an example of “corruptible power.”

“There are times people abuse authority,” he said. “There are times when people have absolute power. And this is a case where some people--the police in this case--thought they had absolute power.”

But Raymond Nelson told the courtroom that after hearing stories from his wife’s two uncles who were police officers, “I am very favorably disposed to the police officers in this case.”

And Nelson, in a written jury questionnaire, added: “I believe the LAPD is one of the best organizations of any police force in the country. The defendants are being made an example of.”

Brooks, Nelson and Cain were excused from the case.

But equally strong feelings were expressed among many of those still left on the jury panel.

Emanuel Valencia, for instance, said that after the videotape aired, his father reminded him of the story of how he was beaten by police officers when he was a young man living in Los Angeles in the 1930s.

“I love my father dearly, but he has an extremely low level of self-confidence” because he was beaten by the police, Valencia said. “Only two or three times has he even mentioned it in my life, and I never pressed him on it.”

Laura Wilcox, who is white, said she believes racial prejudice was a possible reason that King, a black man, was pursued and stopped by the largely white group of police officers that night.

“Racism could spark something like this,” she said. “There are more white officers than black or Hispanic officers. But there should be a different composition on the police force.”

Others, such as Beverly Bree, said that after viewing the videotape on television, they believed that excessive force was used on King. Although she admitted she did not know what led to the events seen on the videotape, she described the images as similar to “children hitting one another for no reason.”

“Violence against other people is inexcusable,” she said. “You shouldn’t use violence. There are better ways than hitting and kicking people.”

Jury selection continues this morning when another 40 panelists will arrive for evaluation at the courthouse. The officers, Powell, Timothy E. Wind and Theodore J. Briseno, and Sgt. Stacey Koon, have all pleaded not guilty in the case.