At Trial, All Eyes Will Be on Rodney King Again : Courts: He sees testimony as chance to repair his image. But defense lawyers will attack his credibility.

So many times during the past two unforgettable years, we have watched his body writhing under the baton blows of Los Angeles police on a darkened San Fernando Valley street. We have seen the swelling in his face give way to a natural, clean-cut look. We have watched him struggle for words as fires and rage swept Los Angeles.

Although it seems we know this man, Rodney G. King, actually we know little about how he thinks or what he feels. We are, however, about to learn a great deal more as King prepares to take the witness stand for the first time publicly, where he will face gentle probing by prosecutors and relentless interrogation by defense lawyers determined to discredit him.

The pressures on King will be enormous as he enters Courtroom 890 of the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building, perhaps as early as today.

On his shoulders could rest the fate of the four officers accused of violating his civil rights. What’s more, his testimony also could influence the resolution of his multimillion-dollar civil suit against the city and forever alter his public persona. Again and again, he has told relatives, friends and close advisers that the trial gives him the rarest of opportunities to redeem his frayed public image.

King, regarded as a victim of police brutality and racism in the most widely known case of its kind, has contradicted himself about what happened on March 3, 1991, when he led authorities on a drunken high-speed chase that ended in the beating. Since then, he has had several other brushes with law enforcement.

In addition to being seen as a shot at personal redemption, King’s testimony has been cast as the emotional centerpiece of the federal prosecution of the officers. The district attorney’s decision to leave King on the sidelines during the state trial in Simi Valley last year was roundly second-guessed. Many observers believe that King’s testimony would have helped convict the officers and, thus, could have spared Los Angeles the century’s worst urban riots.

“While the average person would be nervous, this is a lot deeper for him,” said Timothy Fowler, who is King’s parole agent and friend. “He’s concerned that everything rides on his testimony.”

Compounding the pressures are the deep dilemmas King faces in his personal life. Among other things, family members have chosen sides over how best to carry on his civil lawsuit against the city, one that promises to make the King family wealthy. At the same time, he has been at the center of a legal tug-of-war between his first and second attorneys--one who kept him away from the media and the public, the other who shows him off at movie previews, high school assemblies and even a banquet for African-American lawyers.

The government’s star witness has never been comfortable with attention. He is soft-spoken. He searches for words he often cannot find. Thoughts vanish. He squirms in his chair. And in tense situations, he reverts to a nervous laugh that takes on the look of someone dodging the truth.

Steve Lerman, King’s first civil rights attorney, said he expects his former client to sail through the government’s questioning and then hang tough during what will certainly be vigorous cross-examination by defense lawyers.

Lerman had expected King to be called as a witness during the first trial. In preparation, he not only coached King but hired other attorneys to throw practice questions at him. “He is naive,” Lerman said of King. “He is unsophisticated. But I don’t believe for a minute that he will be calculating or try to think ahead of the questions. Rodney King is no Oliver North.”

Practice Sessions

Former LAPD Officer Tom Owens, King’s ex-bodyguard and private eye who is writing a book about his life with the King case, observed the practice sessions in which veteran attorneys hurled such rapid-fire questions as: Why didn’t you pull over? Why didn’t you lie down on the ground? Why can’t you stay out of trouble?

“He held up very well,” Owens said, but added: “Those were just familiarization sessions. That wasn’t the real thing.”

Bryant (Pooh) Allen knows from experience how hard it can be. He was in King’s car on the night of the beating and was the first witness called in the state trial. On the stand, he appeared disoriented and uncomfortable as defense attorneys brought up his criminal record and alleged gang affiliations.

“It got me frustrated,” he said in a recent interview. “I was confused. I was very nervous. I was afraid with all the reporters and everybody looking at me. And the attorneys, they were pretty slick.”

So pleased were defense attorneys with their handling of Allen during the first trial that they, rather than prosecutors, expect to call him as a witness in the federal case.

King appeared briefly only once in state court during a preliminary hearing in the summer of 1991. Wearing a gray sweater and black pants, he never looked directly at the accused officers. When the judge asked how he was feeling, King muffled a few sounds but did not answer. He left without testifying, and the district attorney’s office never called him back.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Terry White, the chief prosecutor, had come to believe that King would not make a good witness--based on an unexpected Saturday phone call from him in the middle of the trial. During the conversation, according to White, King was “very angry” and was “spewing profanity” because of testimony from a California Highway Patrol officer who said he ignored police commands.

White decided on the spot not to use King as a witness, fearing his demeanor would turn off the jury.

Lerman, who said he monitored the conference call between King and White, denied that his client used profanity. But he did concede that King was angry over trial testimony that indicated he shared responsibility for what happened that night.

After it became clear that the prosecution was not summoning King as a witness, defense lawyers quickly moved to haul him into court. In the trial’s waning days, they issued a subpoena for him. But by then, King’s advisers were so sure that the officers would be convicted that they hid King, and the subpoena was never served.

This time around, King has been logged as No. 26 on the government’s witness list, sandwiched between doctors who will testify about injuries he suffered, including some allegedly caused by numerous baton blows to the head.

Officer Laurence M. Powell, who is accused of delivering most of the blows, is eager for a reunion with King in federal court. The last time he saw the 27-year-old motorist was in a hospital emergency room.

“Rodney King has got a lot of explaining to do,” said Powell, speaking in a courtroom hallway during a break in the trial the other day. He did not sound angry or vindictive, just ready to have it out with King again. “Rodney King,” Powell said, “needs to be shown for what kind of person he really is.”

“His credibility is on the line,” Powell’s attorney, Michael P. Stone, said of King. “He is a convicted felon and all of his past public statements simply are not true. So we want to bring on as much evidence about him and his other incidents (with the police). We want to aggressively test the veracity of what he’s been saying.”

In the past, King has contradicted himself. For example, he first said he was handcuffed during the beating, a fact disproved by the videotape. He also said he was neither drunk nor speeding, two more inaccuracies. Moreover, he once insisted that the beating was not racially motivated but later told state prosecutors that the officers repeatedly shouted ethnic slurs.

In an interview with The Times during the height of the riots, King said his memory of that night was clouded by his injuries.

Federal prosecutors, anticipating questions about King’s conflicting accounts, carefully probed the topic during his appearance before the federal grand jury last July. That testimony marked his only sworn account of the beating that made him famous.

“I just felt horrible,” King said of the days immediately after the beating, when he made statements he later contradicted. “I felt beat up and like a crushed can. That’s what I felt like, like a crushed can all over, and my spirits were down, real low.”

Barry F. Kowalski, one of two lead prosecutors in the federal case, then asked King: “Do you think your memory is better today, now, than it was back there a few days after you were injured?”

“Yes, sir,” King responded.

The defense lawyers also hope to discredit King by raising questions about his past run-ins with the law--a tactic they tried to employ in Simi Valley, but they were rebuffed by the judge.

Halfway through the state trial, Paul DePasquale, the lawyer for Officer Timothy E. Wind, filed a motion asking to put on evidence about a series of police accounts involving King, dating to 1983. These included an alleged assault in Pasadena, a video store robbery in Sun Valley in which a woman was shot in the back, and the 1989 armed robbery of a Monterey Park market that sent him to prison and is the only time he has been charged with a crime and convicted.

DePasquale told the judge that “the evidence of past conduct is clearly relevant to show that Rodney King acted in character” on the night of the beating by initially trying to avoid arrest and allegedly becoming combative with officers. Although the judge would not allow King’s past to be introduced as evidence, defense attorneys plan to pursue the same tack this time.

Prosecutors in the federal trial have made no effort to hide King’s criminal history or his actions on the night he was arrested. Assistant U.S. Atty. Steven D. Clymer told jurors in his opening statement that King was a felon on parole, that he was driving drunk and that he fled police. But “Rodney King is not on trial,” Clymer said. “The issue of whether he was guilty or innocent that night is not on trial.”

Since the night of the beating, King has continued to come into contact with law enforcement. Among other things, he was investigated for allegedly trying to run down an undercover LAPD officer who spotted him with a transvestite prostitute in the Hollywood area. Soon after, King’s wife reported that he assaulted her, and Orange County authorities took him into custody for alleged drunk driving. He was not charged with a crime in any of those incidents.

Emotional Trauma

Private investigator Owens, the former LAPD officer, said he looked into each case and was able to show King had done no wrong. Although officials strongly deny targeting King for surveillance, Owens believes otherwise. For King, he said, these brushes with police have become a second beating of sorts, causing emotional trauma he cannot shake.

“King as a person is simple,” said the investigator, who spent 18 months shepherding King around town, moving him in and out of secluded apartments and shopping and eating with him. “Look at him on March 3, 1991. He took a licking then, and he’s still taking it. And that’s the Rodney King you’re going to see up there on the witness stand.”

Although King’s parole agent, Fowler, is concerned about King’s repeated run-ins with police, he still has faith in him. In fact, he recently urged his superiors in Sacramento to lift the parole hold on King, arguing that he has suffered enough.

While these very public controversies have swirled around King, he also has found himself caught between the tactics of two attorneys.

King’s current attorney, Milton Grimes, could not be reached to discuss his tactics in connection with the lawsuit, which have included presenting King in a number of public appearances. But his ex-lawyer, Lerman, calls the strategy a tactical mistake because it makes it seem that King is only interested in improving his image as a way to collect a bigger settlement.

“Milton Grimes takes Rodney King around like you’d put a dead deer over the hood of your car,” said Lerman, whom King left in late 1992.

King’s aunt, Angela King, said the recent appearances have hurt her nephew’s psyche, forcing him into a public posture as some kind of “martyr or symbol” when he is merely “the victim of a crime.” She worries that his courtroom testimony could be equally damaging, coming at a time when he is continuing efforts to rehabilitate his life.

“He’s tied up all the time,” she said. “It’s like being in jail again. He can’t go anywhere or do anything. And all the money in the world will not bring his freedom and our family unity back again.”