COLUMN RIGHT/ DANIEL M. KOLKEY : Justice Is in the Process, Not Outcome : The racially mixed jury in the King civil-rights trial is one sign that the system works.

Ironically, Los Angeles need not wait until the verdict is rendered in the Rodney King civil-rights trial to determine whether justice has been done. This may come as a surprise to the commentators and community leaders who are arguing that justice will be done only if guilty verdicts are rendered. But such comments miscontrue the meaning of justice and ill serve a public looking for leadership during this trial so critical of Los Angeles’ soul.

Yes, the televised videotape of the police beating of Rodney King was shocking, and after hearing all the evidence, the jury may very well determine that one or more of the four LAPD officers violated King’s civil rights.

But justice is not an outcome; it is a process. Justice will be done as long as the defendants are judged pursuant to a fair process that applies accepted principles in a reasoned and politically neutral way. It’s what happens before the verdict, not the verdict, that counts. After all, the principles associated with our criminal justice system are not principles of substance but of procedure: the right against self-incrimination, the government’s obligation to prove guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt” and the right to a fair and impartial jury are all procedural rights. As Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has said, “The process validates the result.” The result does not validate the process (although a series of verdicts contrary to the evidence over a lengthy period of time could evidence a flaw in the process).

Accordingly, those who would charge that justice is not being done have a responsibility to point out what part of the process is unfair, not wait for a verdict and then claim that the system is unjust. An unfair process that renders a “popular” verdict is not justice. And a fair process that renders an unpopular result is not unjust.

Thus, instead of holding their breath, community leaders should be educating the public that justice is being done right now--beginning with the painstaking jury selection process that resulted in a racially mixed jury, including two African-Americans and one Latino. But again, the process, not its result, determines its fairness.

Many commentators have unfortunately focused on the composition of the jury as determinant of the fairness of the trial. The consequence of this logic is that if acquittals result, some may claim that the jury’s racial mix was nonetheless insufficient. However, it is the jury selection process, not its ultimate composition that is paramount to fairness. Our system seeks a fair and impartial jury. The jury is to be randomly selected from a fair cross-section of the community, and the U.S Supreme Court has in recent years bolstered the century-old law prohibiting race discrimination in the selection of a jury. In 1991, for instance, in ruling that a criminal defendant could object to the exclusion of a juror of another race if the exclusion was based on race, Justice Anthony Kennedy observed that “race cannot be a proxy for determining juror bias or competence.”

Yet those who argue that a particular racial mix is necessary for a fair jury take a dangerous step: They utilize race to determine juror bias or competence. Fairness requires that in the selection of an impartial jury no one be excluded from a jury because of his or her race. It does not require that a jury be selected on the basis of race. Indeed, it is contradictory to argue against racial quotas while claiming that fairness requires them. And it is wholly inconsistent with Martin Luther King’s eloquent call that people “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

As the Rodney King civil-rights trial proceeds to a conclusion, let us not evaluate justice on the basis of a verdict, but on the basis of the process that led to the verdict. Calls for unity in the city of Los Angeles are surely needed, but unity without understanding--indeed, unity premised on misunderstanding--is too fragile an exhortation to be effective.