King Juror Selection Slows; 6 Are Dismissed

Six prospective jurors in the Rodney G. King civil rights trial, including three of the four minority members of the initial panel of jury candidates, were dismissed Thursday after U.S. District Judge John G. Davies ruled that they could not be impartial.

They were replaced by six new potential jurors as the search continues to find 12 citizens deemed capable of weighing evidence fairly. Questioning of the six replacements continued through the rest of the day, and it proceeded more slowly than the judge and lawyers had anticipated, virtually assuring that a jury will not be impaneled this week.

“It’s necessary to take this care,” Davies apologetically told the prospective jurors, who have grown increasingly restless as the process has dragged on. “The lawyers are doing their jobs well.”

With much attention focused on the racial composition of the jury, defense lawyers faced a barrage of questions about whether they are seeking to remove jurors who are not white. But defense attorneys Michael P. Stone and Ira Salzman vigorously denied that race entered into their decisions.

“This is a colorblind selection process,” Stone said. “There is not any kind of orchestrated effort to remove African-Americans from the jury.”

Four of the prospective jurors were excused after defense lawyers raised objections to them. The other two were recommended for dismissal by prosecutors. Davies made the final judgment in each case.

During two days of questioning, one Asian-American woman had said that she believed three of the four defendants should have been convicted in state court last year. She also said she thought that two of the defendants, Sgt. Stacey C. Koon and Officer Laurence M. Powell, lied during their testimony in that case.

Another of the jurors who was dismissed, a young Latino man, was removed at the request of prosecutors. They did not announce their reasons for asking that he be removed, but the man had said during questioning that he felt friendly toward police and that he had been treated well during an arrest for driving under the influence of alcohol.

A black woman who had insisted that she could be fair gave answers in court that were different from the ones she provided in a written questionnaire, defense lawyers said, adding that the discrepancies caused them to doubt her truthfulness. The judge ordered her excused as well.

All six of the excused jurors were replaced by other members of a 73-person panel. They joined the six prospective jurors who survived the first round of questioning, and the new additions to that group underwent a barrage of questions Thursday afternoon.

Those new jury candidates included a black man and a Latino woman, so the 12-person panel now being examined includes two black prospective jurors and one Latino; the rest are Anglo. The group is split evenly between men and women, and most of the prospective jurors are middle-aged or older.

Like those who have answered questions previously, most of the latest batch of prospective jurors said they were surprised that the defendants were found not guilty in state court, but they pledged to keep an open mind when considering the evidence in the federal trial.

Also Thursday, prosecutors for the first time produced a tentative witness list, which Davies read aloud. As expected, it includes a number of civilian witnesses to the March 3, 1991, incident, as well as several new medical experts.

None of those witnesses were called during last year’s state trial. The civilian witnesses are expected to supplement the videotape of the King beating with their impressions of the incident. The medical experts, who include a Navy doctor, probably will be asked about evidence that could show King was struck in the head and that he suffered bodily harm as a result of the beating.

The government’s list also tellingly omits three of the most prominent prosecution witnesses from the state trial: CHP Officers Melanie Singer and Timothy J. Singer, and Bryant Allen, who was one of the passengers in King’s car the night of the incident.

All three were problematic witnesses in the state case, and legal experts said their omission reflects the prosecution’s doubts about them.

“They were not effective witnesses during the state trial,” Laurie Levenson, a Loyola law professor who is monitoring the federal case, said of the Singers. “They presented some conflicting stories, and that hurt them.”

Harland W. Braun, who represents Officer Theodore J. Briseno, agreed, adding that the Singers’ accounts of the arrest are undermined by the videotape and by their own contradictory statements. Melanie Singer, for instance, testified during the state trial that King did nothing to provoke his beating, but she also wrote a memo the day after the incident in which she said King had “kicked and punched” the police.

Her statements about blows to King’s head--which are crucial, since those blows, if they occurred, probably would constitute the most serious violations of police policy and King’s rights--also were challenged by defense lawyers during the state trial.

“Their testimony is so inconsistent with the videotape,” Braun said. “It just demonstrates their fallibility.”

Allen testified during the state trial that he was frightened by King’s decision to flee police rather than pull over when ordered. Stone said that testimony damaged the prosecution badly in the state case, and defense lawyers said they expect to call Allen to testify on their behalf in the federal trial.

The defense attorneys also have issued subpoenas to several prosecutors in the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. They could be asked to testify about their interviews with King, Salzman said, but a final decision on whether to call them is yet to be made.