Courtroom Tensions High as King Case Goes to Jury

After two months of often dramatic and contradictory testimony, the Rodney G. King beating trial edged closer to its long-awaited culmination Wednesday as the prosecution and defense took some final stinging slaps at each other in an effort to sway the 12 jurors who begin deliberating today.

Wednesday was a day filled with raw emotions and heightened tempers as attorneys for the four accused Los Angeles police officers completed their closing arguments and the chief prosecutor offered a rebuttal so sharp-edged that he later apologized. The weariness of many of the participants in the nationally watched trial was evident.

Two of the attorneys, their voices thick and hoarse, coughed continuously. Several jurors appeared tired and worn. And some courtroom spectators, despite warnings from sheriff’s deputies, muttered under their breaths when they heard words with which they disagreed.

For 29 days, the courtroom in this Ventura County city has been packed with reporters, police officers and relatives of King and the four accused officers. But sometime late this morning, after Judge Stanely M. Weisberg issues his final instructions to the six men and six women of the jury, the room will be emptied.

The action--and the fate of the accused officers--will move behind a closed door in the town’s new courthouse, where the jurors will select a foreman and then decide whether King was criminally assaulted or whether the officers complied with department policies in subduing a runaway motorist whom they called combative and potentially dangerous.

Because of the extensive publicity that has surrounded the case since the beating occurred on March 3, 1991, the jurors will not be allowed to go home until they have reached a verdict. Court officials have indicated that the jury will also deliberate on weekends.

On Wednesday, the parties summarized their cases for the jury in language that was as assertive as at any point in the trial.

The sharpest flash of emotion came at the end of the long day when the lead prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Terry White, angrily rushed across the courtroom and stopped next to Officer Laurence M. Powell, who is accused of striking the most baton blows on King and of mocking him afterward.

With his finger jabbing at the accused officer, White screamed: “This man laughed! This man taunted! And he’s denying it! He’s denying it!”

Powell’s attorney, Michael Stone, jumped to his feet and Weisberg ordered the prosecutor back to the podium. White, delivering his final words to the jury, apologized for his “uncalled for” behavior.

An equally passionate closing argument was given by John Barnett, the attorney for Officer Theodore J. Briseno, who has pitted himself against his three colleagues. Briseno, who is accused of only one kick, testified that he believed the co-defendants were “out of control” and that he tried to help, not hurt, King.

For his actions, Briseno was ostracized by the department, and in the courtroom his reputation was damaged by witnesses for the other officers who sharply challenged Briseno’s credibility, Barnett said.

He said Briseno is being punished for failing to be a “team player,” for refusing to go along with a “bunker mentality” among many officers that it is a “jungle” out on the streets and that only the police can bring about order.

“They believe and they truly believe that it’s a jungle and that there is this thin blue line,” Barnett said. “And they believe that if force is necessary, if coming in here to tarnish a good man’s reputation is necessary, it’s OK for the greater good.”

Barnett told the jury that Briseno “stands alone before you,” firm in his belief that he tried to stop his fellow officers from what he feared would end in King’s death.

“This is a 10-year officer who intervened in a holocaust of batons and boots and blood, and tried to stop it,” Barnett said.

The lawyer for Sgt. Stacey Koon, who was the ranking supervisor at the scene, said that King had only himself to blame. According to attorney Darryl Mounger, the violence would have immediately ceased had King complied with the officers’ demands to lie prone on the ground. Further, Mounger suggested that Koon actually prevented King from being shot and killed by one of the officers.

He also suggested that King was attempting to flee or fight back because he feared being returned to prison. He had just been released on parole 65 days earlier.

“Sixty-five days is a very short time to know where you came from and where you don’t want to go back to,” Mounger said.

The lawyer also said it was unfair to second-guess the supervisor based on the 81-second videotape made of the incident. He said that Koon had to make on-the-spot decisions in directing his officers in how to safely arrest King and that the sergeant did not have the luxury of “instant replay.”

“Sgt. Koon was making instantaneous decisions,” Mounger said. “He didn’t have 81 seconds. He had fractions of seconds and he was doing what he had to do when he had to do it.”

Though Koon, Briseno and Powell testified on their own behalf during the trial, Wind chose not to take the witness chair. But his attorney, Paul DePasquale, summed up his defense in a way that revealed what his client would have told the jury.

“It may not be nice,” DePasquale said of the videotape. “It may be kind of cruel and violent. But it is police work, and it is what Tim Wind was sent out there to do.”

He urged the jury to decide the fate of each officer separately. “Please,” he said. “No guilt by association.”

And then with pointer in hand and running the film at slow speed, the lawyer highlighted Wind’s actions that night. He pointed out that his client delivered only 15 of the 56 baton swings at King. He said Wind kicked King only because it was “surely less painful than getting whacked with these batons, which are the violent tools of this trade.”

In summary, DePasquale said: “All Tim Wind did that night was his job. He didn’t make jokes and he didn’t have fun and he didn’t take any cheap shots.”

Powell’s attorney, Michael Stone, gave an almost six-hour closing argument on Tuesday, in which he reminded the jury of the dangers of police work and how officers often are required to use “necessary and reasonable” force in apprehending dangerous suspects.

He recalled defense experts who testified that all of Powell’s baton blows and kicks were justified because King refused to remain still on the ground. He said that Powell was merely acting according to this training as a Los Angeles police officer.

But the last words in closing summations were saved for White. His voice cracking with a persistent cough, his words rising and falling across the courtroom, he individually attacked each of the officers.

He said Powell acted like a “thug.” He said Koon should have ordered his officers to use a “swarm technique” to arrest King. He said Wind could not excuse away his conduct on the videotape. And he said Briseno, while he may not have “an evil heart or an evil mind,” nonetheless used “unreasonable force” in that solitary kick.

And he challenged the jury not to be persuaded by the officers’ claims that they defend society along an imaginary “thin blue line.”

“What kind of world would you have without cops?” White asked the jury. “Well, I ask what kind of world would we have when cops do not follow the law?”

All four defendants are charged with assault and using excessive force under the color of authority. Koon and Powell face additional charges of filing false police reports, and Koon has been indicted on a third charge of aiding and abetting the other officers in his role as the supervisor.

If convicted, Koon, 41, and Powell, 29, could receive maximum prison terms of seven years and eight months. Wind, 31, could get seven years, and Briseno, 39, up to four years.