The Underlying Tensions in the Denny Case

While the Rodney G. King civil rights trial is getting most of the attention, let’s not forget the potentially explosive court hearing a few blocks away.

There, on the ninth floor of the Criminal Courts Building, Superior Court Judge John W. Ouderkirk is presiding over a series of procedural hearings for the upcoming trial of three black men charged with assaulting Reginald O. Denny, the white truck driver whose beating in South-Central Los Angeles on the first day of the riots was broadcast on national television.

The other day in court, Edi O. M. Faal, one of the defense attorneys, raised a point that illustrated why this trial may touch even deeper emotions in the African-American community than the Rodney G. King civil rights trial.

Faal’s client, Damian M. (Football) Williams, is charged with attempted murder, aggravated mayhem, second-degree robbery and other crimes in the Denny attack. He and the others were arrested in a series of well-publicized raids personally led by then-Police Chief Daryl F. Gates. Williams’ bail is $580,000.

Faal has asked that charges be dismissed against Williams because he “is a victim of discriminatory prosecution.”

Faal made his point in a declaration that I imagine will rankle many people in racially divided Los Angeles.

He recalled two other savage beatings. Like Denny’s, these also occurred in South-Central Los Angeles, although several miles north of where the truck driver was beaten.

They occurred near the USC campus in 1990. The victims, Michael Lee and Pat Tooley, white USC college students, were beaten and kicked with such force that bones were shattered around their eyes. In each case, it took hours of surgery to save their eyes and reconstruct their facial bones.

But in these cases, the alleged assailants were white. They were also USC students, members of a prominent fraternity, Alpha Tau Omega.

One of them was Vincent Terrasi, then manager of the USC football team and ATO pledge chairman. “The Los Angeles Police Department and the district attorney’s office refused to file charges of aggravated mayhem or attempted murder against Mr. Terrasi,” Faal said. “Mr. Terrasi is a Caucasian and he was never prosecuted for crimes that would have subjected him to life imprisonment.”

A jury acquitted Terrasi of less serious charges of assault than those filed against Football Williams.

In the other USC beating, two Alpha Tau Omega members were arrested, one the son of a police officer and the other the son of a former USC professor. They were later released without criminal charges being filed.

Again, said attorney Faal, “the Los Angeles Police Department and the district attorney’s office refused to file charges of attempted murder or aggravated mayhem against the Caucasian attackers.”

Faal said the only difference between the beatings was that in the USC cases, the attackers were white and in the Denny assault, they were black.

There’s another difference.

The assault on Denny was carried live on television and had much the same impact as the videotaped King beating. That resulted in intense pressure on Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner and Gates, under fire for his performance during the riot, to take quick and spectacular action. They buried the accused in an avalanche of charges and high bail that, in turn, touched off a political backlash among African-Americans.

It’s intriguing to think what would have happened if someone had a video camera running when ‘SC students Lee and Tooley were beaten and then turned the tapes over to a television station.

I bet the investigation would have been more intense. Maybe Chief Gates himself would have led a raid on the ATO house. In fact, it might have shaken the ‘SC fraternity system to its foundations.

Edi Faal, Football Williams’ attorney, doesn’t think so. In his declaration to the court, Faal said something more fundamental is involved. “Unequal enforcement practices are intentional and purposeful,” he said.

This is legal language for what is frequently heard in all walks of life in the African-American community: Blacks don’t get a fair shake in a criminal justice system run by whites.

It is this belief that is giving an underlying feeling of tension to the usually dry procedural hearings in Judge Ouderkirk’s courtroom.