Military Doctors Say King Took Multiple Head Blows

A team of military doctors, after reviewing an array of reports and analyses of the police beating of Rodney G. King, has concluded that King was struck at least five times in the head and face with “a baton or similar instrument,” according to government documents obtained by The Times.

In addition, another medical expert who examined the case for prosecutors concluded that King was subjected to “multiple blunt but focal impacts to the head and face,” according to a copy of his preliminary report obtained by The Times. Dr. James V. Benedict of San Antonio is expected to testify during the trial of four Los Angeles Police Department officers charged with violating King’s civil rights.

Those findings--disputed by the officers’ lawyers--will figure prominently in the trial, in which opening statements are expected to begin this week. During last year’s state trial of the same defendants, there was no conclusive medical testimony to support the notion that King had been struck time after time in the face or other parts of the head.

Although California Highway Patrol Officer Melanie Singer said she witnessed several blows to King’s head, her testimony was challenged as being inconsistent with the videotape of the beating and with her written accounts of the incident.

The new medical evidence, which goes well beyond that offered in the state trial, could be a crucial building block in the federal government’s effort to prove that the officers set out to deprive King of his civil rights. Blows to the head or face generally are violations of police policy and form the strongest basis for arguing that the officers violated King’s right to be safe from the intentional use of unreasonable force. Moreover, evidence that King was hit repeatedly in the head could help prosecutors prove that the officers acted willfully, which the government must prove to win convictions.

“The more blows that you have that hit the head, the less chance that it’s just an accident,” said Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School and a former federal prosecutor. “The prosecution is hoping to use lots of different kinds of evidence to show intent, and this is definitely one way to do that.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. Steven D. Clymer would not comment on the prosecution’s medical evidence or say why military doctors were asked to evaluate King’s injuries. Prosecutors stated in a recent court filing that one way they would try to prove the officers’ intent was through evidence regarding the “character and duration of the beating of Rodney King.”

Defense lawyers dispute the findings of the government experts. They say they will call medical experts who will testify that the injuries to King’s head are not consistent with baton blows. The defendants say King suffered those injuries in one of a number of falls to the pavement in which he struck his head.

“When you strike the human head with a metal pipe, you’re going to have evidence of bursting lacerations,” said Michael P. Stone, who represents Officer Laurence M. Powell. “There’s no evidence of those types of injuries to King.”

The Defense Department study, dated Nov. 23, represents the work of a variety of experts. Two pathologists, a neuroradiologist and a consulting forensic anthropologist were called upon to assist. Photographs and computer-imaging studies were employed to investigate the beating in detail.

“There was a good correlation between the medical records, photographs and imaging studies,” Capt. Glenn N. Wagner, deputy director of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, wrote in his consultation report.

Wagner said doctors found a number of fractures to the right side of King’s head, including a broken eye socket and cheekbone. Defense lawyers have not disputed that King suffered those injuries, but have maintained that he was injured when he fell face-first to the pavement, not when he was hit with the metal police batons used by Powell and Officer Timothy E. Wind.

“We’ve got at least three falls,” Stone said. “The big one is at the beginning of the incident, when King goes from his feet face down into the pavement.”

In the opening seconds of the videotape of the beating, King is seen dropping face-first to the pavement immediately after Powell hits him with his baton. Stone said he has prepared a computer-enhanced graphic display of that blow, suggesting that Powell’s strike hit King in the arm or chest, not the head. Stone was not allowed to introduce that evidence during the state trial, but he said he hopes that it will be admitted this time.

The two studies commissioned by the government apparently rule out the possibility that King could have suffered his most serious wounds as a result of falls.

“The displaced and often depressed character of these fractures as well as the extent of the surrounding soft tissue injuries are not consistent with a simple fall,” Wagner said in his report, summarizing the military team’s findings. “They are consistent with blunt force injuries from a baton or similar instrument.”

The military team concluded that scrapes and other superficial injuries on the left side of King’s head were the result of his fall or falls. But the most serious wounds, the doctors said, were inflicted by repeated blows to the head.

“Based on these blunt force injuries, their location, severity and relative relationships to each other, we believe that at least five separate blows were delivered to the head and face,” Wagner stated in his report.

In his preliminary report, dated Jan. 28, Benedict was less specific about the number of blows to King’s head, but he echoed the conclusions of the military team. After describing King’s injuries, Benedict, who is chief executive officer of Biodynamic Research Corp. in San Antonio, wrote: “The injury mechanism for the above injuries to the head and face is believed to be multiple blunt but focal impacts to the head and face.”

“Focal impacts,” medical experts said, are those inflicted on a specific area as opposed to more general impacts, such as those that would be suffered by falling.

Asked about the prosecution’s new medical evidence, Sgt. Stacey C. Koon, one of the defendants and the senior officer at the scene, said it was not consistent with what he witnessed. Koon is not charged with hitting King, but is accused of allowing officers under his supervision to administer an unreasonable beating.

“I didn’t even see any indirect head blows,” Koon said during a break in the court proceedings. “How can these doctors suggest otherwise all these months later?”

KING MISTRIAL SOUGHT: Defense says juror’s comments show she is biased. A14.