Denny Defendants Denied Data to Support Bias Claim

Defense attorneys will not be given 14 years of documents to support their contention that defendants in the Reginald O. Denny beating case are victims of discriminatory prosecution, but the defense team will still seek to have the case dismissed on those grounds.

Superior Court Judge John Ouderkirk on Friday rejected a defense request that the prosecution be ordered to surrender the documents, saying a months-long search for the records would “create an unreasonable delay in the case.”

Attorney Edi M.O. Faal, who represents Damian Monroe Williams, had asked for records from the district attorney’s office as part of an effort to show that black male defendants are charged with more serious crimes than whites who commit similar offenses.

Williams, 20, Henry Keith Watson, 28, and Antoine Miller, 20, could draw life sentences if they are convicted of attempted murder and other felonies in the beating of the trucker and others at Florence and Normandie avenues as Los Angeles erupted in riots April 29.

Faal argued that the four white Los Angeles police officers accused of beating Rodney G. King did not face state charges carrying life sentences, although King was beaten as severely as Denny.

He also said that members of Alpha Tau Omega fraternity at USC attacked two students in November, 1991, crushing bones in their faces. But the assailants, who are white, were not prosecuted for offenses that carry life sentences, Faal said.

The defendants in the Denny case are black. Laws are not enforced against “police officers and Caucasians in the same manner as it is enforced against non-police officers, African-Americans and Hispanics,” Faal wrote in papers submitted to the court.

Ouderkirk set a hearing for April 8 and 9, when the defense plans to call witnesses to support its claim of discriminatory prosecution. The trial of the three defendants is scheduled to begin April 12.

In a separate case, Gary Williams, 34, who had pleaded guilty to trying to pick Denny’s pockets and beating and robbing another motorist, was sentenced Friday to three years in prison.