King Video Enhancement Blurs Reality, Experts Say : Trial: Jurors who view tape will think they witnessed beating, but courtroom replay may alter perceptions.

Thanks to what may be the world’s most-viewed videotape, jurors in the Rodney G. King civil rights trial will do more than weigh the evidence. They also will serve as witnesses to the incident.

They will see for themselves as King jumps up from the pavement and runs in the direction of Officer Laurence M. Powell, who knocks him to the ground. They will see Sgt. Stacey C. Koon holding the wires of the electric Taser that failed to disable King. They will watch as Powell and Officer Timothy E. Wind strike King repeatedly with their batons. And they will see Officer Theodore J. Briseno blocking Powell at one point and later stomping hard on King’s upper body, pushing him face-down on the pavement.

George Holliday’s renowned tape captures the beating in gritty, arresting detail, and it stands at the center of the federal case, just as it did in the state trial of these same four officers. But as prosecutors build another case around Holliday’s videotape, some experts are questioning the way that evidence will be presented and warning that it could alter jurors’ perceptions in significant ways.

In preparation for the trial, FBI video experts have slowed down the tape, enhanced the sound, stabilized the picture and experimented with a variety of digitally enhanced exposures. Thus, jurors will see an altered version of the event that unfolded in Lakeview Terrace on March 3, 1991, when King was arrested after leading officers on a high-speed chase.

“What’s happening here is that jurors are relying on a tape that distorts the event,” said Brian Stonehill, coordinator of media studies at Pomona College. “What they’re seeing is not what happened.”

Stonehill’s concerns are echoed by a variety of media experts, psychologists and lawyers, and they grow out of a body of evidence that suggests that video enhancements, particularly slow motion, fundamentally change the way people perceive an event. Slow motion helps highlight movements and specific actions, experts say, but it also may twist the way jurors in this case perceive intentions--in particular by overstating the deliberateness of King’s actions as well as those of the officers.

“Slow motion can make an event look quite different,” said Patricia Greenfield, a psychology professor at UCLA. “I’d be very suspicious about making a judgment of anyone’s intention based on something I saw in slow motion.”

Joe Saltzman, formerly with CBS television and now a USC professor of journalism, agreed. “All videotape is inaccurate,” he said. Lighting, camera angle and video speed all affect the way viewers perceive actions on videotape, he said, and all contribute to the potential for distortion.

Lawyers generally echo those observations, recognizing that videotape has its weaknesses but adding that it can be powerful evidence nonetheless. Norman Garland, a law professor at Southwestern University School of Law, said videotape helps counteract the failings of memory that witnesses have. But he said watching the tape in slow motion can change the way anyone reacts to it.

“Until I saw the tape played in slow motion, I couldn’t see how there was any defense,” Garland said. “It definitely affects the way you judge (the officers’) actions.”

One way it does that is by shifting the perception of King’s behavior. The full-speed version shows him as a writhing, blurry figure, sometimes standing or trying to run, other times kneeling or lying on his stomach or back while officers Wind and Powell rain blows on him.

At full speed, King appears helpless through much of the incident. But in slow motion, small movements of a leg or arm make it appear to some viewers that he is trying to stand up. That perception helps the officers’ case, which is based in part on the argument that King was resisting arrest throughout the beating and that as soon as he complied with their orders, the officers stopped hitting him.

Jurors in the state trial, which ended with not guilty verdicts on all but one count, saw the slow-motion tape repeatedly. They said later it helped them conclude that the officers were telling the truth about King’s failures to comply.

That is enormously important to Powell, Wind and Briseno, each of whom is charged with intentionally using unreasonable force against King. If King was attacking them or resisting arrest, that could make their use of force “reasonable,” a finding that would clear them of the charges.

Koon’s position is slightly different, and the tape is not as important to his case, according to his lawyer, Ira Salzman. Whether at full speed or in slow motion, the video does not show any blows by Koon, nor is he charged with any.

Still, Koon is accused of allowing an unreasonable beating to be administered by officers under his supervision. Therefore, his fate is linked to that of the other officers, since he can be convicted only if at least one of his co-defendants is found to have acted unreasonably. And the jurors’ judgments about Koon’s fellow officers may hinge on what they see on the video.

The slow-motion version of the tape may be most important to Briseno, who is charged primarily because he stomped on King while the motorist was lying face-down on the pavement. Even Briseno’s lawyer concedes that the full-speed tape, at first glance, is damaging to his client.

“The initial impression is that while King’s down, this vicious guy rushes in and stomps him,” said Harland W. Braun. “That’s not helpful.”

In slow motion, however, ambiguities arise. Just before Briseno steps forward, King’s left arm can be seen stretched out away from his body. King is motionless. Officers Wind and Powell have stopped hitting him.

Then King draws his arm down toward his body and begins to move his right leg. The movements are subtle and, since they last only a second or so, easily missed in the real-time version of the tape. But Briseno says it was those movements that caused him to stomp on King because he thought King was trying to get up. Briseno, who testified against the other officers during last year’s state trial, said he was worried that any attempt by King to stand would touch off another volley of blows.

The slow motion also reveals that the right-footed Briseno used his left foot to stomp King. If Briseno had wanted to hurt King, his lawyer reasons, wouldn’t he have used his stronger foot?

Prosecutors, also relying on the slow-motion tape, present a different version of the sequence, suggesting that King was trying to comply.

“King began to move his arms toward his back, in response to commands that he put his hands behind his back,” the government says in its trial memorandum, which lays out its case. “As he did so, defendant Briseno stomped on his head, neck or back, causing King’s body to convulse.”

The slow motion reveals that Powell was reaching for his handcuffs as Briseno administered the stomp, a point that jibes with the prosecution account. In their trial memorandum, prosecutors do not explain the movement of King’s leg, which is almost undetectable at normal tape speed because it is so quick. But Briseno and his lawyer say that movement, visible when the tape is slowed down, is a key element of their defense.

That contention causes some psychologists to wonder: If the movement is so small and so quick that it can be seen only in slow motion, then how did Briseno know to react to it?

“What’s relevant is how Briseno saw it, not how the video portrays it,” Greenfield said. “He made his judgment in real time, and jurors need to remember that as they consider the (officers’) actions.”

That same observation underscores a different aspect of the slow motion--one that could damage the officers in a crucial regard.

In slow motion, it is not only King’s actions that seem more deliberate, but the defendants’ as well. That was not much of an issue during the state trial, but in the federal case the officers are charged with acting “willfully,” so slow-motion videotape that makes their acts appear to be premeditated could bolster the prosecution’s contention that the blows were intentionally unreasonable.

That potential effect is illustrated by the interpretations of the tape’s jerky, blurred opening sequence.

At the beginning of the tape, King jumps from the pavement and lunges toward the right side of the screen, in the general direction of Powell. Powell swings his baton at King, who drops instantly.

In real time, the lunge and the swing happen in the flash of an eye, but in slow motion, Powell appears to back up and brace for the charge. Prosecutors say Powell let King rise so that he could pummel him back to the ground.

Powell kept hitting King after knocking him down, and prosecutors say that “at least some of these initial blows hit King in the face, causing multiple facial fractures, lacerations and bruising.”

Defense lawyers, who welcome the use of slow motion in assessing King’s behavior, balk at that interpretation and warn against overreliance on the slow motion to judge their clients.

“It appears that their blows were more unnecessary in slow motion,” said Michael P. Stone, who is Powell’s lawyer. “What the defense will have to do is teach this jury not to rely solely on the videotape. . . . This thing didn’t go down in slow motion. It went down in real time, and the officers’ decisions were made in real time.”

For both sides, then, the challenge of the videotape, particularly the use of slow motion, is to use it to illustrate certain points without letting it influence jurors’ overall perceptions of the arrest.

If the state case is any guide, that task will be most important for prosecutors. In that trial, prosecutors relied heavily on the videotape, but they came to regret it, as the lawyers for the defendants slowed the tape down and played it repeatedly, emphasizing King’s actions throughout.

Psychologists say that by slowing the tape down, the defense lawyers were able to introduce doubts about King’s behavior and his willingness to comply. And by showing the tape over and over, they were able to reduce the shock of seeing King beaten.

“It loses its horror,” said Saltzman of USC.

With that experience to guide them, federal prosecutors appear to be developing a different approach to the tape than their state counterparts. Rather than rely on it exclusively to tell the story of that night’s events, grand jury transcripts suggest prosecutors will also call civilian witnesses.

That has risks because some of the witnesses’ statements have not squared precisely with the videotape, and defense lawyers will be able to exploit any inconsistencies. But it also could help neutralize the effects of slow motion because the witnesses saw the event as it occurred, and they can give their impressions of how King appeared in real time, not in slow motion.

Some psychologists wonder how effective that will be, however, because the videotape is so searing and immediate that it may be hard for witnesses’ accounts to compete. Few who have seen Holliday’s videotape have been able to resist drawing their own conclusions, regardless of what other evidence emerges about the arrest.

Partly, that is because video images are so influential, psychologists say. In fact, Stonehill and others say the video’s grainy texture and bouncing image make it more compelling by forcing viewers to concentrate intensely on it. Those techniques, inadvertently used by Holliday, are staples of music videos and advertising precisely because they grab viewers.

“There’s no question that the videotape holds your attention. Why do you think we had a riot?” Greenfield said. “Everybody who saw that videotape feels like they were there that night and they know exactly what happened.”