Out of the Limelight : Wheels of Justice Turn Quietly at Simi Courthouse, Where King Case Was First Tried

Daniel Freitas, a 41-year-old roofer from Canyon Country, carried his citation into the East County Courthouse in Simi Valley and told a sheriff’s deputy that his cracked windshield had been repaired.

In the courthouse lobby, a bored private security guard had Reader’s Digest flipped open on his desk. Around the corner, the courtroom where the first trial in the Rodney G. King beating case unfolded last year was locked tight.

In downtown Los Angeles this week, prosecutors are calling their first witnesses in the federal civil rights trial in the King case amid tight security and intense news coverage.

But many miles away, the wheels of justice are turning around more mundane matters in the beige two-story building where a jury acquitted four Los Angeles police officers on most charges in the beating of the motorist. The verdict drew worldwide attention and triggered widespread riots.

“I didn’t even realize this was that courthouse,” Freitas said with a shrug, after paying his $10 fine.

Outside, the dirt lot that TV crews had filled with vans and satellite dishes was now a vacant, muddy field. Inside, the lines at the traffic-ticket payment window were short.

In Courtroom 1, the only one in session, Municipal Court Commissioner John V. Paventi was conducting a small-claims hearing, listening to a man and a woman squabble over money in the wake of a broken engagement.

During one midday lull at the courthouse, a cannonball could have hurtled down the hallway without hitting a soul.

“It’s kind of funny,” said Richard Perini, 22, of Palmdale, a security system salesman who was paying a speeding ticket at the courthouse. “You saw on the news shows how every parking space was filled during that trial. It’s kind of like a ghost town now. Look--you can hear my echo.”

Paventi, one of two jurists assigned to the courthouse, said this was an exaggeration.

“We normally average 2,100 cases a month,” he said.

Most of these are brief arraignments in which pleas are entered, non-jury traffic trials and small-claims hearings. A second commissioner hears divorce cases and other civil disputes.

Only two of the building’s five courtrooms are used regularly, and no jury trials or felony cases are conducted. Since the courthouse opened two years ago, the county has been unable to find the money to place more judges and court employees in the building.

The facility was thrust into the limelight last year when Los Angeles County court officials got permission to use it for the trial in the King case. The event attracted so many reporters that one of the vacant courtrooms was turned into a telephone-filled media room.

After the verdict in late April, Simi Valley seemed to have been branded as a racist community, even though, dismayed city officials pointed out, only two of the jurors in the King case lived there.

Since the trial, a white supremacist from Mississippi and a reputed Ku Klux Klansman from Bakersfield have tried to conduct rallies outside the courthouse, bringing the city more unwanted publicity.

Shortly after the trial, Simi Valley school buses were hit by stones when they visited other cities. Some residents removed Simi Valley license-plate holders from their cars, fearing that the vehicles would be vandalized.

“Whenever we traveled right after that, you didn’t tell anyone you were from Simi Valley,” recalled Sandie Goldsworthy, 42, who was at the courthouse last week to cancel a small-claims hearing.

Goldsworthy didn’t need to be reminded that this was the building where the King beating verdict was handed down. “You can’t live in Simi Valley and not be aware of it,” she said.

“Really, this is a good community,” insisted her husband, Wes Goldsworthy, 47. “We donated (the courthouse) for the Rodney King trial, and it kind of backfired on us.”

Ventura County Sheriff’s Sgt. Gary Freeman, who is assigned to the building with two deputies, said that, despite the attention it received, the courthouse has not become a tourist attraction. “Normally, people don’t come around here and say, ‘Oh, this is the place,’ ” he said.

He and his co-workers have been paying little attention to the new trial, in which federal prosecutors allege that the Los Angeles officers violated King’s civil rights. “Once they left, they took the baggage with them,” Freeman said.

Deputy Keith Gilchrist added: “We’re kind of glad it’s over and out of here.”