Secrecy of King Jury Survey Challenged : Beating trial: News organizations’ motions say sealing the questionnaires will only raise suspicion about the fairness of the panel selection.

Lawyers for the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press asked a federal appeals court Monday to force the judge in the Rodney G. King beating case to release copies of completed juror questionnaires, warning that secrecy in the trial will only fuel suspicion about its fairness.

Motions filed by the news organizations said they are not seeking jurors’ names or other information that is “deeply personal” or would reveal their identities. But both organizations said the public should be allowed to see other information on the lengthy questionnaires.

The federal trial of four police officers charged with violating King’s civil rights in the March 3, 1991, beating “is an event of enormous importance and consequence for the Los Angeles community,” wrote John A. Karaczynski, the lawyer for the Associated Press. “Public confidence in these proceedings . . . will be severely compromised if any aspect of this trial is cloaked in secrecy.”

Rex S. Heinke, who is representing The Times, filed a separate appeal, also with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“This matter is of enormous, if not unprecedented, public interest, and therefore is precisely the type of criminal action that must be open to public scrutiny,” Heinke wrote. “The public interest is particularly acute because of the substantial criticism of the jury that decided the related state court case.”

The four defendants in the federal case--Stacey C. Koon, Laurence M. Powell, Timothy E. Wind and Theodore J. Briseno--were tried last year in Superior Court in Simi Valley and found not guilty on all but one count against Powell, on which the jury was deadlocked. Three days of rioting followed those verdicts.

Jury selection for the federal trial began Wednesday when 333 prospective jurors reported for service at the federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles. At the session that morning, U.S. District Judge John G. Davies urged prospective panelists to be candid in their responses to a 53-page questionnaire and told them that he hoped their answers would never be made public. That same day, he issued an order blocking public access to the completed forms, which are designed to weed out potentially biased jurors.

Lawyers for the two news organizations said Monday that Davies overstepped his authority and should be reversed.

Access to the questionnaires is all the more important, Heinke wrote, because the answers given by potential jurors are likely to result in many of them being excluded from serving. If the completed questionnaires are not released, the public will never know why those jurors were eliminated, he said.

“Since the commencement of this criminal prosecution, much public comment and debate has centered around the likely composition of the jury,” Karaczynski wrote. “The community’s perception of the fairness of these proceedings will depend, in large part, upon whether the jury selection process is conducted openly or secretly.”

During a hearing last week, Davies said that he too recognized the intense public interest in the trial, and that he wanted it to remain as open as possible. But Davies said he was worried about taking steps that could cause jurors to be guarded in their responses to the questions, which probe a variety of sensitive topics, including race relations, law enforcement and the riots.

The Times and the Associated Press asked the 9th Circuit to grant emergency consideration of their request. Alternatively, they asked that the appeals courts order a delay in the jury selection while it considers the request.