Defense Rests in King Trial; Jury Could Get Case Next Week : Courts: Stunned federal prosecutors now plan to present rebuttal witnesses Monday. With potential violence closer at hand, city leaders look into delaying April 20 election.

Lawyers for four police officers charged with violating Rodney G. King’s civil rights brought their case to an abrupt conclusion Thursday, resting a defense that depends largely on whether jurors believe the testimony of Sgt. Stacey C. Koon, the only officer to take the witness stand.

The move by the defense lawyers took federal prosecutors by surprise and forced the judge to dismiss the jury for the week because no rebuttal witnesses were ready to testify. Assistant U.S. Atty. Steven D. Clymer, one of two lead prosecutors in the case, said he expected to present the government’s rebuttal case Monday--which could clear the way for the jury to begin deliberating by Thursday or Friday, after closing arguments by both sides.

With the trial drawing to an unexpectedly quick close, political leaders and business executives turned with new urgency to the potentially violent fallout from the case. Among other things, debate heightened over whether the judge should delay disclosing the verdicts so that law enforcement can mobilize. City officials also revealed that they are exploring the legality of postponing the April 20 municipal election if there is a recurrence of the unrest that followed the verdicts in last year’s state trial.

A last-minute debate over prosecution evidence on Thursday could delay the start of jury deliberations. Over furious defense objections, U.S. District Judge John G. Davies ruled that an edited tape of Officer Theodore J. Briseno’s testimony during last year’s state trial may be played for the jury.

Briseno testified against his co-defendants in that case, and defense attorneys have fought vigorously to keep the state testimony from being played in the federal trial. They told Davies that they will ask the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to intervene today and overrule the decision to allow the tape into evidence.

Meanwhile, the defendants concluded their case Thursday without calling another witness. Harland W. Braun, the lawyer for Briseno, had presented prosecutors with a list of 10 possible witnesses, but did not summon any. He said later that the list had merely been a bluff to keep prosecutors off balance.

“I just wanted to keep Clymer up to 3 in the morning,” Braun said. Braun, who has delighted in tweaking the government lawyers, made no apologies for misleading them with his witness list. Outside court, Braun called the federal prosecutors “evil people” and “scum,” and he accused them of waging a political prosecution against the four officers.

Braun’s decision to rest his case capped 13 days of defense testimony during which lawyers for the officers called two dozen witnesses to the stand, with mixed results. Most were Los Angeles police officers, but the defense witnesses also included a City Council member, a member of the Police Commission and a California Highway Patrol officer who cried on the stand as she recounted the beating of King.

Of those witnesses, however, none was as important as Koon, who supervised the March 3, 1991, arrest of King after the motorist led authorities on a high-speed chase. King was legally drunk at the time.

Because Koon was the only one of the officers to take the witness stand, his testimony effectively spoke for all four defendants. Thus, their fate rests largely on how jurors respond to the sergeant’s version of the incident.

Unflappable as always, Koon said he was not troubled by bearing the burden for his co-defendants’ case. “I’ve been comfortable with that from Day 1,” he said as he left the courtroom.

During his three days on the witness stand, Koon testified that he took full responsibility for every baton blow and kick during the arrest. He said he gave the orders to strike King in the hopes that his officers could “cripple” him and prevent him from standing.

Had King been allowed to rise to his feet, Koon said, officers might have been forced to kill him.

“Stacey Koon makes or breaks this case,” said Michael P. Stone, the lawyer for Officer Laurence M. Powell. “If the jury believes Stacey Koon, we all walk. If the jury doesn’t believe Stacey Koon, we’re all in trouble.”

If convicted, the defendants could face up to 10 years in prison and could be fined up to $250,000 each. Powell, Briseno and Timothy E. Wind are charged with kicking, stomping or hitting King with batons, depriving him of his right to be safe from the intentional use of unreasonable force. Koon is accused of allowing officers under his supervision to carry out an unreasonable beating.

In the early stages of their case, the defense lawyers presented an elaborate, point-by-point rebuttal of many of the prosecution arguments. Many early witnesses testified about Los Angeles Police Department policy--part of the defense strategy to shift blame for the incident from the officers to the training and policy that guided their actions.

Stone and Ira Salzman, the lawyer for Koon, scored several points on that theme. They presented witnesses, for instance, who said that a 1982 change in LAPD policy stripped officers of the right to use the chokehold, which had led to serious injury or death of some suspects. Defense experts said the technique could have been used to subdue King without baton blows.

Because of that ban, the defendants had little choice but to strike King when he resisted arrest, defense witnesses said.

Defense medical experts also challenged the testimony of prosecution witnesses on the question of whether King was struck in the head with a baton. Direct baton blows to the head usually violate Police Department policy, but the defense experts said King’s facial fractures were caused by a fall to the ground, not by baton blows.

But defense attorneys struggled with a number of witnesses whose testimony undercut the officers’ cases. During a meeting Tuesday night they decided that they were better off concluding their case quickly. Davies had shown impatience with the pace of the proceedings, and the defense lawyers said they were worried that they might weaken their case if they called more witnesses.

The meeting--a half-hour session in the Spartan office space that the lawyers share in the federal courthouse--produced a dramatic turn in the defense strategy. They emerged determined to shift from the detailed approach of their case’s early days to the minimalist strategy that marked its conclusion.

“We got together and decided that less is better,” Braun said. “Every time we called a witness, there was the potential for trouble.”

Stone agreed.

“We agreed that the best thing we could do was to wind it up as fast as we could,” he said. “Why take the risk?”

Peter Arenella, a UCLA law professor, said the defense strategy makes sense. He credited lawyers for the officers with presenting a case that raised doubts about the prosecution’s account. But he and other analysts say the defense may have blundered when Stone called California Highway Patrol Officer Melanie Singer to the stand.

During two days of testimony, Singer twice burst into tears when asked to describe the beating. She told jurors that she had seen Powell strike King six times in the head with his baton, a sight so shocking that she said she will remember it “until the day I die.”

Stone said he believed that Singer had testified truthfully, but that her recollection was incorrect. He acknowledged, however, that he was surprised by Singer’s display of emotion and suggested that it might have been faked.

“I think her theatrics were calculated,” Stone said Thursday.

Although Stone said he does not think that jurors will consider Singer’s testimony credible, Arenella and other analysts said the lasting emotional impression may work against the defense.

“The defense did an excellent job of presenting a reasonable doubt up until Melanie Singer,” Arenella said. “The difficulty now is weighing the emotional impact that she had.”

Before resting their case, defense lawyers introduced two last pieces of evidence: transcripts of interviews that King gave to authorities while in custody and the shiny black boot that Briseno wore on the night of the incident.

Paul R. DePasquale, the lawyer for Wind, read the transcripts in court, delivering them with theatrical aplomb.

In those interviews, King gave accounts of the incident that differed in some respects from the testimony he delivered during the federal trial. In particular, King insisted many times that he was handcuffed and hogtied when police beat him.

That contention is not borne out by the videotape.

Braun presented the boot in order to show that it is lightweight with a rubber sole, not a heavy jackboot.

In presenting their cases, the lawyers for the officers avoided the rift that split their efforts during last year’s state trial. Briseno testified in that case that his fellow officers, particularly Powell, were “out of control” and that the beating was wrong.

Briseno also told jurors in that case that Powell hit King in the head with his baton, and that King did not appear to be resisting during many of the blows.

This time Briseno did not take the stand, and his lawyer avoided tangling with the other defense attorneys throughout their cases.

But the ruling by Davies after the defense rested on Thursday could still expose jurors in the federal trial to some of Briseno’s testimony from the state case. Davies had ruled earlier that federal prosecutors could play an excerpted tape of that testimony for the jury, but prosecutors elected not to present it during their case.

Instead they asked to play it for the jury now that the defense has rested, a tactic that they had previously outlined but which sparked a pitched debate when they attempted to proceed. Stone argued, for instance, that it was unfair to play the tape because Briseno’s testimony in Simi Valley was not aided by newly enhanced versions of the videotape of the beating.

Had Briseno been able to see those enhanced tapes, defense lawyers said, it would have changed his testimony about Powell’s conduct. Because of that, Stone argued, playing the tape will allow jurors to hear Briseno’s account from that trial without giving Stone the opportunity to question him about whether his views have changed.

Davies disagreed, allowing prosecutors to introduce an edited version of the tape that omits Briseno’s opinions about the beating but includes his observations and explanations of his own actions. When defense lawyers continued to protest, Davies invited them to test his ruling with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“If you think I’m wrong, the 9th Circuit is across the street,” Davies said. “File a writ and get it off my shoulders.”

Braun later said the judge did not “have the guts” to rule against the prosecution in the emotional case and announced he would take Davies up on his suggestion that the matter be appealed. The other defense lawyers said they would join in that appeal, which they expect to file today.

They will seek emergency consideration from the appellate court.