Spotlight Stolen in Denny Drama : Court: Sideshows have at times eclipsed the legal proceedings for the suspects in the beating and could be setting the stage for an even more controversial trial.

It was not yet dawn on May 12 when then-Police Chief Daryl F. Gates donned a bulletproof vest and led more than 100 FBI agents and Los Angeles police officers in a headline-grabbing raid.

Suspects Damian Monroe (Football) Williams, Henry Keith (Kiki) Watson and Antoine Eugene Miller were arrested that morning in connection with one of the most brutal attacks ever carried out on live television. Gates led the charge, and later told reporters that he hoped the arrests would help make amends to truck driver Reginald O. Denny, who had nearly been beaten to death during the April 29 assault.

“The Los Angeles Police Department was very, very concerned about our inability to reach Mr. Denny,” said Gates, who personally collared Williams. “We are hopeful that at least this will atone for some of that.”

Since that morning, police and prosecutors have worked vigorously to uphold Gates’ promise. But in the last four months, and particularly during the last two weeks, the case has degenerated into a babble of conflicting views and a series of sideshows that have at times eclipsed the court proceedings and could set the stage for an even more controversial trial.

Various defense lawyers have attacked the high bail set for the suspects, filed a $10-million lawsuit charging government officials with leaking evidence to the media and bitterly contested the admissibility of a tape-recorded interview between Williams and police.

That was just the beginning. A few months after the May arrests, some groups raising funds for the suspects were accused of pocketing the money. Williams’ mother on Tuesday established a 900-number where callers can listen to her views of the case for $2 per minute. The proceeds will go to her son’s defense fund.

During the preliminary hearing, defense lawyer Dennis Palmieri was fired in the midst of his closing argument. A review of his resume uncovered passages in which he claimed that his ideas helped lead to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the lifting of the Iron Curtain. Later, he struck back, accusing his former colleagues of subverting his defense efforts and firing him because he was doing “too good a job.”

Then, late last month, the biggest side issue to date unfolded around the selection of a judge to preside over the case. The ensuing controversy badly singed the political fortunes of Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, who is in the midst of a heated reelection contest.

And all of that is merely prelude: The case is not expected to go to trial until early next year.

“All these little political side vignettes are going to have to play themselves out,” Superior Court Judge Cecil J. Mills said last week in the midst of the judge-selection controversy. “They go with the territory on a case of this type when you get people who feel strongly about their respective positions.”

In this case, the vignettes are being acted out with particular intensity, in part because the attack on Denny emerged as a searing, indelible image of the riots. Millions watched the beating as it happened, and the videotape struck many as a mirror-image of the one depicting the four police officers beating Rodney G. King.

In King’s case, it was a group of white officers hitting a black man; in the Denny attack, it was a group of blacks setting upon a white man. Four suspects at first were charged in each attack. Even though one defendant in the Denny beating has been severed from the main case, supporters still refer to the men as the “LA 4.” Both King and Denny were left badly injured, and both beatings were captured on tape and repeated endlessly in the months after each incident.

With that comparison firmly embedded in many people’s minds, some are quick to cry injustice when they believe the Denny defendants are being treated more harshly than the officers. That has been particularly true in the debate about bail.

“We say that if the four officers who beat Rodney King can be released on their own recognizance, then these four brothers ought to be released on their own recognizance,” Kamal Hassan, an organizer of the “Free the LA 4 Defense Committee,” said at a rally for the men Monday. “We oppose the railroad going on for these brothers.”

Bail for the three principal defendants in the attack on Denny ranges from $500,000 to $580,000, and all three remain in custody in lieu of posting that bond. The LAPD officers are free on $5,000 bond each while awaiting federal trial.

That rankles many of the protesters, but the surface similarities obscure significant differences between the two cases. The officers all had steady jobs, clean arrest records and a history of making their court dates when bail was set for them. That is not the case of the other defendants.

In addition, each of the three men charged with attacking Denny also is accused of attacking other victims that same evening at the intersection of Florence and Normandie. The officers were charged only with beating King.

Nevertheless, for some of the supporters of the Denny defendants, the King case offers one last troubling and controversial question: If four white officers can be acquitted for beating a black man despite the videotape, why should three black men be convicted for attacking a white man?

“Part of the reason such intensity has been attached to this case is that it has become a symbol, and different people attach different symbolism to it,” said Peter Aranella, a professor of law at UCLA. “Those symbols have very little to do with the facts of the case, but they have become in some sense more important than the facts or the legal issues.”

Like many of the other issues that have sparked controversy in the case, the most recent one started with a routine administrative issue.

On Aug. 25, prosecutors exercised their right to peremptorily challenge the assignment of the case to Superior Court Judge Roosevelt F. Dorn, an African-American jurist who had been picked to hear the case by Mills, the supervising criminal court judge.

Deputies to Reiner removed Dorn, and the case was assigned to a white judge. Supporters of the defendants were outraged, and the controversy was stoked by the district attorney’s stumbling efforts to explain the move.

Reiner’s spokeswoman at first claimed that prosecutors had removed Dorn because he had a full calendar and did not have a secure courtroom. After Dorn called a press conference to rebut those allegations, Reiner was forced to admit that the judge had been challenged because prosecutors questioned the judge’s temperament.

The episode was widely reported, and some analysts believe it has seriously jeopardized Reiner’s political future. That is particularly true, they say, because Reiner has aggressively courted support from the African-American community, and his decision to remove Dorn is likely to undo whatever gains he has made among those voters.

“I’m not sure how much currency Reiner had to spend” in the black community, said Steve Afriat, who has managed a political consulting firm in Los Angeles for seven years. “But whatever he had is gone now. He’s back in a deficit.”

Georgiana Williams, the mother of defendant Damian Williams, said Reiner’s actions have convinced her that the judicial system is hell-bent on convicting her son and his co-defendants.

“My heart hurts every time I see those boys in chains,” Williams said. “After all these months, I can’t believe anyone thinks they’re being treated fairly.”

There are, however, many who believe the treatment has been more than fair. The three men are accused of attempted murder, torture, mayhem and robbery in the attack on Denny, as well as an array of other charges related to attacks on other victims that same evening.

Prosecutors have produced videotapes of the attacks, and one witness who identified all three defendants during the preliminary hearing. In addition, Williams has admitted to hitting Denny with a brick--the blow that a doctor said probably did the most damage. Miller, who is not accused of hitting Denny or anyone else, has confessed to opening the door of Denny’s truck, and Miller’s lawyers have indicated that their client is prepared to testify that the other defendants attacked the truck driver.

After completing the preliminary hearing, an obviously angry Municipal Judge Larry P. Fidler described the “braining” of Denny as the most shockingly memorable crime he had ever seen as a lawyer or judge.

But the charges and the facts of the case often seem lost in the turbulence that surrounds it.

Nearly every hearing for the defendants brings new cries of protest from their supporters. Handfuls of demonstrators routinely attend the sessions, many wearing pins or T-shirts urging “Amnesty for All.” One protester accused a reporter of racism for asking whether that amnesty should include the four police officers charged in the King beating.

In fact, the emotions run so high in the case that some observers are reluctant to discuss it at all. When one local attorney commented on a legal strategy in the case, he received a death threat. Another was peppered with anonymous hate mail.

Ironically, the defendants themselves often seem to fade into the background as the sideshows overwhelm the main event. Williams, Watson and Miller seem somber in most of their court appearances, and only rare moments have given the public glimpses into their moods.

Occasionally, Williams or Watson winks or waves to a family member in the audience. They usually go to court empty-handed, but in the most recent hearing Williams toted a copy of “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.”

Miller is the most quiet of the three. He spends most of his time with his eyes down, talking only to his lawyers.

In fact, four months of hearings have given the suspects precious little chance to speak. About the closest that any of the three has come to expressing his views of the case was when Williams was asked to enter a plea during his Superior Court arraignment: “I plead absolutely not guilty,” he said forcefully.

As the case winds its bumpy way toward trial, a few participants are working to insulate the judicial system from the surrounding controversies, but so far they have met with only limited success.

Judge Mills--who has tried to keep the discussion of this case in the legal system despite its tendency to jump the rails into politics--last week urged all sides to refocus on facts and laws instead of rhetoric and elections.

“I know what my mission is in this case, and that’s . . . to insure a fair trial for these men, to allow the witnesses, the defendants, their families, the alleged victims, the lawyers and any other people involved in this case to get this trial under way and get it concluded,” Mills said.

Only then, he added, can the residents of this city “get about the business of making Los Angeles a place we’re all proud to call home.”