Judge Refuses to Dismiss Attorney in King Case : Trial: Ruling on counsel for Officer Powell clears the way for jury selection to start in early February.

A federal judge on Wednesday refused to dismiss one of the defense lawyers in the case of four officers charged with violating Rodney G. King’s civil rights, a move that clears the way for jury selection to begin in less than three weeks.

“This case will go forward in early February,” U.S. District Judge John G. Davies said during a status conference on the case.

That announcement came after Davies ruled that attorney Michael P. Stone, who represents Officer Laurence M. Powell, does not have a conflict of interest that would prevent him from continuing with the case.

Ira Salzman, the lawyer for Sgt. Stacey C. Koon, had argued that Stone should not be allowed to remain on the case, largely because Stone’s law partner represents Koon in a related civil matter.

The result, Salzman said, was that Stone potentially has divided loyalties.

In raising the conflict issue, Salzman also voiced concerns about Stone’s actions so far in the case, particularly regarding his reported handling of a confidential prosecution document mailed to him in August. Sources said that Stone received a copy of a memorandum outlining the prosecution’s case, and that Stone returned the memorandum without first sharing it with the other defendants.

According to Davies’ order, Salzman had argued that Stone had an obligation to share the memorandum with Koon, since Stone’s law firm, Stone and Feeley, was employed by Koon in the civil case.

In his order, Davies for the first time publicly acknowledged that Stone received and returned the memorandum, but he defended Stone’s actions.

“By returning to the government a memorandum that he was never meant to have received, Mr. Stone acted properly and in accordance with his ethical obligations,” Davies wrote. “Mr. Stone had no duty to exploit the confidential government memorandum for the benefit of his own client, or to provide the memorandum to Mr. Koon.”

In addition, Davies said in his order that Stone has testified that he stopped reading the memorandum as soon as he realized what it was and therefore was not in a position to use the information.

Davies did agree that a potential conflict was created by Stone’s partner, Thomas Feeley, representing Koon in the civil case. But the judge said the risk that Stone would have divided loyalties as a result would be “substantially reduced” if Feeley were dismissed from the civil case. Davies, who also is the judge in that matter, ordered Feeley to withdraw.

Powell, who has objected to the effort to strip him of his attorney, said after the hearing that he was relieved.

“I’m glad,” he said. “Now we can just concentrate on the case.”

Stone agreed: “There were no grounds to take me out.”

The conflict issue has illustrated and deepened the rift between defense lawyers as they prepare for trial, but Stone said he would put the matter behind him.

“A lawyer in any trial, but particularly this trial, can’t afford to have his feelings hurt,” he said. “Sometimes that’s hard to do. But I have tried, and I have succeeded.”

With the conflict-of-interest issue resolved, only one major point of contention remains to be disposed of before the case goes to trial. That is the question of whether the prosecution must prove that the March 3, 1991, beating of King was racially motivated.

The officers are charged with violating King’s civil rights, specifically his right to be protected from intentional use of unreasonable force. Prosecutors and many legal scholars say that because those rights are guaranteed to all citizens, the government is not obliged to prove that the officers beat King because he is black.

They argue that the government is only required to show that the beating was willful and unreasonable and therefore was an intentional violation of King’s rights. That would be enough to convict the officers, they say, regardless of their motive.

In his pretrial orders, however, Davies has suggested that he believes the law may require the prosecution to show that King was beaten “on account of (his) color or race.”

If Davies cannot be persuaded to change his mind on that point, it would be a major victory for the defendants. As a result, Braun filed a motion Wednesday supporting Davies’ preliminary view of the law’s requirements. In his motion, Braun said that while racism does not always have to be proved to sustain a civil rights charge, the particulars of this case require it.

“The prosecutors brought the indictment under political pressure and mob hysteria because the public has been sold the story that the Rodney King arrest was racial,” Braun wrote. “Incredibly, the government now attempts to tell the court that racism, the very basis for the public controversy surrounding the Rodney King arrest, is not relevant to this prosecution for a civil rights violation.”

Davies declined to rule on the matter until after other defense lawyers can file their views of the issue. He gave them until the end of next week to do so.

In addition to that issue, a number of smaller, less controversial matters remain to be decided, but even those can be surprisingly contentious. Lawyers spent most of Wednesday’s hearing, for instance, arguing about whether to show videotapes in the case on several small monitors or one large one.

They also disagreed about contacts with the media, with government lawyers expressing concern that the defense attorneys are trying to taint potential jurors by publicly expressing their views on the case. Davies asked the lawyers for “discretion and circumspection” but did not impose a gag order.