L.A. Site for Retrial Welcomed : Courts: Simi Valley Mayor Greg Stratton calls it a ‘no-win situation’ had the King case returned to Ventura County.

A judge’s decision Friday to retry Los Angeles Police Officer Laurence Powell in Los Angeles County in the Rodney G. King beating case brought relief to Ventura County officials who feared that the second trial would return to their courts.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Stanley M. Weisberg ordered that Powell be retried in Los Angeles County because potential jurors anywhere else in California are just as aware of the beating and rioting that followed the verdicts in the first trial.

A mostly white jury found Powell and three other white LAPD officers not guilty of beating King, who is black. It also deadlocked 8 to 4 in favor of acquitting Powell, 29, of committing assault under color of authority--the charge for which he is to be retried Oct. 19.

The verdicts touched off riots in Los Angeles that killed 52 people, caused $785 million in damage and branded Simi Valley a racist city in some people’s eyes around the world.

“Great!” Simi Valley Mayor Greg Stratton said of Weisberg’s decision to turn down attempts by Powell’s attorney to locate the new trial in Ventura County.

Retrying the case anywhere in Ventura County would draw criticism no matter what the verdict, said Stratton, calling it “a no-win situation.”

“If he was not convicted, they were going to be angry again and if he was convicted, there would be a whole bunch of accusations that somehow it’s trying to make up for” the first verdict, he said.

Ventura County Assistant Public Defender Duane Dammeyer agreed.

“If it came back to Ventura County and (Powell) were acquitted, everybody’d say, ‘I told you so,’ ” said Dammeyer, who oversees felony defense for his office. “And if he was convicted, they’d say, ‘Well, they’re just reacting to what happened before.’ I think it’s just as well it’s going to L. A. County.”

None of the officials interviewed Friday said they believed that the retrial would be any more fair in Los Angeles County than Ventura County, despite widespread criticism that the verdict in the first trial was unfair.

They also agreed with Weisberg’s ruling that moving the new trial out of Los Angeles County would not guarantee that jurors would be any less influenced by the first verdict and the riots than Los Angeles jurors.

“Probably they could have gotten as fair a trial in L. A. the first go-round,” said J. Roger Myers, president of the Ventura County Bar Assn. “You had to be living in a cave if you hadn’t watched the (beating) tape on television and read all the articles beforehand.”

Defense attorney George Eskin, who has also worked as a prosecutor, questioned whether anyone in California remains untouched by the King beating video shown repeatedly on television.

“It’s really hard for me to believe that prospective jurors have not been influenced greatly by what transpired at the first trial and what happened afterward,” he said.

Powell’s lawyer, Michael Stone, had sought to have the retrial set in Ventura County. But Weisberg said Ventura County officials told him that there was no room for the trial in any Ventura County courtroom.

Vincent Ordonez, the county’s assistant court executive officer, confirmed that the courts are too clogged to handle the case again.

The first trial displaced dozens of civil cases scheduled for the East County Courthouse in Simi Valley, Ordonez said. The cases have begun moving again through the courtrooms there after the King verdict.

Only one of the five courtrooms in Simi Valley has a jury box, required for any criminal trial, Ordonez said. And as for the main courthouse in Ventura, “there is no space,” he said.

“We use all the courtrooms on a daily basis . . . and we even have been using jury deliberation rooms and lunchrooms” for court proceedings, Ordonez said. “We use every available square inch of space in Ventura.”

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