Witness Again Cries in Telling of King Beating : Trial: CHP officer describes blows to motorist’s face and says she feared being heckled if she aided him. Though she testifies for the defense, her emotional account bolsters the prosecution.

Breaking into tears for the second time in as many days on the witness stand, a California Highway Patrol officer testified Monday that she will never forget watching Officer Laurence M. Powell repeatedly strike Rodney G. King on the head.

CHP Officer Melanie Singer also said she considered giving King medical treatment at the scene, but stopped herself out of fear that she would be heckled by the Los Angeles police officers who had beaten him.

Though called as a witness by Powell’s lawyer as part of the defense case, Singer provided emotional ammunition for the prosecution in the federal court trial of the four officers charged with violating King’s civil rights.

Singer--who chased King’s car through the San Fernando Valley early in the morning of March 3, 1991--also cried Friday when she described the beating that followed the pursuit. Concluding her testimony Monday, she grew emotional again when asked by federal prosecutor Alan Tieger whether she had any doubt that Powell struck King on the head with his baton.

“There is no doubt in my mind that he hit Mr. King repeatedly in the face,” Singer said, her voice cracking. “I will never forget it to the day I die.”

Singer’s testimony did include points important to the defendants. She recounted, for instance, King’s high-speed driving and erratic behavior at the scene of the arrest. In addition, her description of the head blows was challenged by Michael P. Stone, Powell’s lawyer, who confronted her with the videotape of the beating to show that it did not always match her recollections.

But prosecutors, who had appeared dejected after Sgt. Stacey C. Koon concluded three days of powerful defense testimony last week--in which he repeatedly accepted responsibility for his officers’ actions--could barely conceal their glee after Singer’s appearance.

“One of the worst things about Singer’s testimony is the morale boost it has given the government lawyers,” said Harland W. Braun, who represents Officer Theodore J. Briseno. “You can see how they’ve gotten their momentum back.”

Powell, Briseno and Timothy E. Wind are charged with willfully using unreasonable force against King. Koon is accused of allowing officers under his supervision to carry out an unreasonable beating.

Although Tieger’s cross-examination of Singer was brief, it sought to undermine not only the defense’s denial of head blows, but also its argument that it took numerous baton blows to subdue King, in part because he gained superhuman strength from the drug PCP. Singer said she did not smell a chemical odor on King’s breath and that she received cogent responses from him after the beating.

Although King acted like a “wiseacre,” she said, “He just appeared to be a very drunk man.”

Singer recalled how she saw blood coming from King’s mouth after he had been subdued and was lying hogtied by the side of the road. Tieger asked why she did not administer first aid.

“I started to do that,” Singer said, adding that she then thought: “I better not. I don’t want these guys to start heckling me.”

“It appeared to me that they were joking around,” she said. “I couldn’t understand why they were just standing around, while this guy’s laying there.”

After Singer concluded her testimony, however, a Los Angeles City Fire Department paramedic, Kathleen Bozak, took the stand and said it looked as if King was suffering only from a few cuts on his cheek and from minor bleeding.

Although X-rays later found that King had facial fractures, Bozak’s testimony was sought by Stone to bolster the officers’ contention that they had no reason to believe his injuries were serious.

Stone also called a series of law enforcement witnesses to support other parts of the defense case.

One, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy who retired last week, said King acknowledged to him during a drive to the county jail the morning after the incident that, “I was really resisting arrest.”

Another witness, an LAPD lieutenant, commended Powell and Wind for detouring by the Foothill police station with King on their way from one hospital to another.

Prosecutors have suggested that the detour was unwarranted and that the officers covered it up by falsifying a police report. But Lt. Lindsay Brummel said the stop speeded King’s booking into the jail ward at County-USC Medical Center and was “absolutely the best way of doing business.”

Stone also produced an expert on police use-of-force incidents who testified that officers’ perceptions frequently are distorted by fear and trauma.

Former Lt. Charles A. Higbie, who led LAPD investigations of officer-involved shootings for 14 years before retiring in 1987, said a “perceived life-threatening situation” often causes participants to misjudge basic facts, such as the number of blows.

The testimony was sought to rebut allegations that omissions in police reports on the King beating were part of a cover-up and to raise doubts about Singer’s description of head blows.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Barry Kowalski used his cross-examination to suggest that the LAPD often was lax in investigating force by its members. Higbie said that of the more than 1,600 use-of-force incidents he has investigated, only nine resulted in criminal prosecutions of officers.