Location of Trial Played Major Role, Legal Experts Say : Court: ‘This was a jury of people who ran away from Los Angeles to get away from Rodney King,’ one said.

The acquittal of four police officers accused of beating Rodney G. King was determined not so much by intricate courtroom strategy or any piece of evidence, but by geography and preconceived notions, legal experts said Wednesday.

The case may have been decided the day Superior Court Judge Stanley M. Weisberg ordered the trial moved from Los Angeles to Simi Valley, an overwhelmingly white, conservative community long known as a popular home for law enforcement officers.

In another locale, jurors might have understood “the implications of being a black man in a car being chased by police,” former Manhattan prosecutor Ruth Jones said. In a black community, she said, “the thought that police officers would use excessive force is not a leap of faith.”

But in Simi Valley, “the thought that these guys were just doing their job was not a leap of faith for them,” said Jones, who monitored the trial for the Courtroom Television Network.

Several experts similarly said the verdicts clearly reflected pre-existing attitudes--support of police, fear of street crime, perhaps racism--held by the jury rather than their reaction to evidence presented in the courtroom.

Most of those interviewed were stunned by the outcome. They had expected convictions of at least three officers because of the graphic videotape of King’s beating and the fact that one of the defendants, Theodore J. Briseno broke ranks by saying that his colleagues’ actions were “out of control.”

“I’m shocked because in this case you had the most compelling form of evidence in support of the charges--a videotape of the beating,” said Loyola University law professor Laurie Levenson.

But the verdicts also were “a very strong statement by the jury” in support of street police officers, said Ed Hayes, a former Bronx prosecutor.

Indeed, the only juror who discussed the verdict issued a ringing defense of the officers, saying, “They’re policemen, they’re not angels. They’re out there to do a low-down dirty job.”

She saw King, on the other hand, as “obviously a dangerous person.”

Some questioned two prosecution decisions: the choice not to call King as a witness and the prosecution’s failure to vigorously oppose the introduction of “expert testimony” on whether the use of force was excessive.

“When you have experts testifying on both sides of a case, you create reasonable doubt,” said New York attorney Harvey Weitz, who also monitored the case for the Courtroom Television Network. “The jurors say, ‘Who am I to second guess?’ ”

However, many legal observers said Wednesday, that those decisions didn’t really matter in the end.

“Given this jury, they might have still acquitted the defendants and ordered King to jail,” said New York University law professor Burt Neuborne. “This was a jury of people who ran away from Los Angeles to get away from Rodney King. And they are the ones who sit in judgment.”

Neuborne, former national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said it was startling to him that eight of the jury members had served in the military. “The jury certainly was not a cross-section of Los Angeles.”

“To this jury . . . these defendants didn’t look like what defendants are supposed to look like,” agreed Jones, who currently works for the NOW Legal Defense Fund.

Last year, a state appeals court ordered the trial out of Los Angeles County because of “extensive and pervasive” media coverage and “intense” political fallout that showed no sign of abating. In the past, attempts to move numerous sensational cases--including those of Charles Manson and the Hillside Strangler--failed.

Weisberg chose Simi Valley over Alameda County or Orange County as the site for the trial.

Neuborne deplored the transfer of the King case, noting that it failed to find a jury out of the reach of the publicity--all the members of the panel had seen the infamous videotape. And the result was a jury with no blacks, a factor that will have lingering negative effects, he said.

“The integrity of the verdict will simply not be accepted because of the absence of blacks on the jury,” Neuborne said. “If the same verdicts had been returned with a fair representation of blacks, it would have been accepted as the way the (criminal justice) system works.”

The legal experts groped for explanations of why the jury did not find the videotape the conclusive evidence that the prosecution--and much of the world--had thought it was.

“In this case, seeing was not believing,” Southwestern University law professor Myrna Raeder said.

Throughout the case, lawyers for the four officers had urged jurors to consider what had happened before the videotape--King’s speeding, his aberrant behavior, his refusal to obey police commands after he was stopped following a high-speed chase.

In addition, Hayes said, the defense was wise to assert that there was more than one way to look at the tape and that King was shown trying to rise and charge the officers.

“The tape in slow motion told them something different than what they were told by the prosecution,” he said.

Los Angeles criminal defense attorney Howard Weitzman stressed that the videotape did not explain the officers’ intentions--a critical element of proving the crime. “The key to this case is their state of mind,” said Weitzman, who successfully defended auto executive John DeLorean on narcotics charges in another trial in which it appeared that an incriminating videotape made for an open-and-shut case.

Most of the experts said they thought the prosecution’s striking decision not to call King as a witness had been wise despite the outcome. Whatever might have been gained by King’s description of his suffering, they said, could have been outweighed by the opportunity it would have given the defense to highlight King’s criminal record, in effect putting him on trial.

But Weitzman and Raeder said the prosecution might have benefited by having King tell the jury what he had experienced.

“The videotape is incredibly strong stuff but when you see that videotape over and over and over and you don’t have any feeling for the individual, I have to surmise that the jurors got desensitized to the video,” Raeder said.

Weitzman said that if he had been a juror, “I would have liked to have heard from Rodney King, what he felt, why he continued to move and what was going through his mind.”

The decision not to call King was made by Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner after lengthy discussions with the two prosecutors and other members of his staff.

While prosecutors drew some second guessing, experts praised defense attorneys for their seemingly risky “all or nothing at all strategy”--their decision not to offer the jury an alternative of lesser misdemeanor charges such as battery.

“That was saying to the jury: ‘Who is the criminal--Rodney King or the police officers?’ ” Levenson said.

To many of the observers, it was clear that these jurors had little trouble answering that question.

“The decision . . . reminds me of the classic case in Texas where (noted attorney) Racehorse Haynes got an acquittal for three police officers accused of beating a Latino man,” said Los Angeles lawyer Barry Tarlow. “The case was moved from Houston to a rural county. After the verdict, Haynes was asked when he thought he had won the case. He replied: ‘When I got the last redneck seated on the jury.’ ”

Neuborne, too, said he feared a “worst side” to the verdict: “that it simply means white suburban America is so frightened of black people that they’ll tolerate any behavior by police.”

But, he cautioned that there could be another interpretation: “That it was just 12 people who had a reasonable doubt.”