After the Riots : NEWS IN BRIEF : LEGISLATION : Measure on Change-of-Venue Rules

Responding to the verdicts in the King case, state legislation was proposed Thursday requiring that similarities in racial and other demographic characteristics be examined before a criminal trial is moved from one county to another.

Assemblyman Lloyd Connelly (D-Sacramento), one of the authors, said the urgency legislation--which would go into effect immediately upon being enacted--would not tilt in favor of either a defendant or a victim but ensure a “fair and impartial trial.”

The legislation, introduced by Connelly and Sen. Milton Marks (D-San Francisco), grew out of the controversy over whether the not guilty verdicts in the trial of four white Los Angeles Police Department officers accused of beating King, a black, would have been different if the trial had occurred in a more ethnically diverse community than Simi Valley.

The King jury was made up of 10 Anglos, one Latina and one Asian. Although the beating of King occurred in the economically and ethnically diverse northeast San Fernando Valley, the high-profile trial was transferred to conservative and mostly white Simi Valley on grounds of excessive pretrial publicity in Los Angeles County. The verdicts touched off demands for reform of the change-of-site process.

Under the pending bill, a Superior Court judge would conduct a hearing in change-of-venue cases and rule on evidence from the prosecution and defense on the similarity of demographic characteristics of the county where the crime occurred compared to the proposed site of the trial. Included would be such matters as race, age, income and other “appropriate characteristics” that the judge chose to evaluate.