Jury Told Video Proves Case Against Officers : King trial: In closing arguments, prosecutor says no testimony or evidence has explained away scene captured on tape. Defendants ask for all-or-nothing verdicts, precluding conviction on lesser charges.

The lead prosecutor in the trial of four Los Angeles police officers charged in the Rodney G. King beating argued Monday that nothing has explained away the scene captured on a videotape of the Lake View Terrace incident.

Even if there had been no evidence or testimony presented over the past two months, the officers should be convicted based on the 81-second videotape, Deputy Dist. Atty. Terry White said in his closing argument.

“Look at the tape. You have a man rolling on the ground,” White said of King, a black motorist who was beaten and kicked by the white officers after a high-speed chase last year.

“When you look at this video, what you see is a man feeling the pain of these batons. This was a man in pain. You can clearly see it on the video. They continued to hit him and hit him and hit him. And you’ve got to at some point say: ‘Enough is enough! Stop it!’ ”

White’s closing argument was the first in the trial, which began three months ago with jury selection. Defense attorneys are scheduled to begin their summations today.

Lawyers representing Sgt. Stacey C. Koon and Officers Laurence M. Powell and Timothy E. Wind said Monday they will not argue that their clients acted in self-defense when they struck, kicked or shot King with an electric stun gun.

But Officer Theodore J. Briseno’s attorney said he will argue that his client sought to defend King by placing his foot once on the motorist. Prosecutors say Briseno kicked King, but the officer has argued that he was trying make King lie still so Powell and Wind would stop the assault.

Before closing arguments began, the four officers chose to go for an all-or-nothing verdict, meaning jurors must find them guilty or innocent of the felonies they are charged with, rather than convicting them of lesser crimes.

During his 3 1/2-hour closing argument, White presented 16 charts and diagrams to the jury and played the videotape several times. He stressed that it is the four officers who are on trial, not the Los Angeles Police Department, Mayor Tom Bradley or retiring Chief Daryl F. Gates.

“We’re only here to decide if the four defendants’ conduct on March 3, 1991, was unlawful,” White said.

“We expect and we demand that a police officer follow the law,” he said. “We expect them to treat suspects fairly. . . . And we expect them to treat suspects like human beings.”

King, an ex-convict, did not testify during the trial because his memory of the arrest would have been foggy because he was intoxicated and badly beaten during the incident, White said. The 27-year-old motorist suffered five facial fractures and a broken leg, White noted.

“The videotape shows conclusively what happened that night, and no one can rebut it,” White said.

The prosecutor went through the evidence against each officers.

Just 20 minutes before the King beating, Powell sent a computer message to another officer saying that an incident involving a black family was “right out of ‘Gorillas in the Mist,’ ” White noted.

“There is clearly no other interpretation for that statement other than it’s a racial statement,” White told the jurors, none of whom are black. “You have to wonder what was his motive when he was beating Mr. King.”

The prosecutor said Powell laughed after the beating, taunted King at the hospital by joking that officers had played baseball by hitting him, and wrote a false arrest report to cover up misconduct.

White said Powell lied or gave inconsistent statements 26 times in his police report and during testimony. “The only time he told you the truth was when he spelled his name,” White said.

The prosecutor then turned to Koon, the supervising officer at the scene. He refuted Koon’s testimony that the beating was a properly “managed and controlled use of force” within Police Department policy.

“I would say this was a managed and controlled cover-up,” White said. White noted that Koon admitted that he directed the baton blows on King, that he later described the incident as a beating and that he significantly downplayed King’s injuries when he wrote about the incident in his sergeant’s log.

“He knew what the officers were doing, allowed it to go on, and allowed the beating to continue,” White said of Koon.

As for Wind, White said the rookie officer’s actions speak for themselves. He noted that Wind is shown on the videotape kicking and beating King. White also referred to testimony that when Wind was asked at a hospital how King’s facial injuries occurred, the officer patted his baton.

White acknowledged that Briseno is charged with just one kick to King’s neck. But he disagreed with the officer’s contention that he was trying to stop the beating.

Briseno “just got caught up in the frenzy,” White said. Holding up Briseno’s large black boots, White said the videotape shows King recoiling from the kick.

All four officers are charged with excessive force. Koon and Powell are charged with filing false police reports, and Koon faces a charge of aiding and abetting the others in his role as supervisor.

If convicted, Koon, 41, and Powell, 29, could be sentenced to 7 years, 8 months in prison. Wind, 31, faces a maximum of seven years; Briseno, 39, four years.