REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK / JIM NEWTON : Scenes Laced With Dark Humor Play to Crowd Outside Courtroom

Although the main stage for the evidence and argument in the Rodney G. King civil rights trial was the courtroom of U.S. District Judge John G. Davies, an enormous and unruly cast gathered outside that dignified chamber, overrunning the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles.

For months, observers lined up 40- and 50-deep in the building’s lobby for a two-hour glimpse into the trial, while protesters of all stripes regularly assembled outside. Scores of reporters have virtually taken up residence at the spanking new courthouse, lighting up a bank of cameras every time one of the four defendants--whose moods range from frayed to contemptuous to cocksure--passed by.

The trial is, of course, a profoundly serious business, and as it draws to a close, a nervous city and nation anxiously await word of verdicts.

But a case of such magnitude could not be contained by the courtroom. It played out as theater, unfolding in a series of scenes--some tragic, others bitterly comic, all laced with the dark humor and wrenching reflection that touch every one of the trial’s many participants.

Every day of the trial was punctuated by at least two informal gatherings: The breakfast club between a handful of defense lawyers, their clients and early rising reporters, and the lunch seminars in which the same lawyers spun the day’s proceedings over cheeseburgers and fries.

In the morning, Sgt. Stacey C. Koon was often seen drinking a Coca-Cola for breakfast, glancing at the day’s newspapers--often to disparage the trial coverage--and sifting through a briefcase chock-full of documents. Koon, who boasts of having read every document related to the case, willingly fielded almost any question from almost any reporter.

Most days, he was joined by his attorney, Ira Salzman, as well as Officer Theodore J. Briseno and his lawyer, Harland W. Braun. While Koon took questions, Salzman and Braun started their day with what became a familiar mutual assault: Braun mocked Salzman’s trial tactics; Salzman disparaged Braun’s latest published comments.

Salzman brought plenty of ammunition to these face-offs, because Braun has grabbed the mantle of Peck’s Bad Boy in this trial, gleefully spewing venom at prosecutors given the slightest provocation. But Braun got in his licks at Salzman, too.

One day, Salzman arrived with a note pad bearing a “Defenders of Wildlife” sticker. Braun rolled his eyes at his colleague’s liberal sympathies--ironic, given Braun’s well-known political activism.

But it was Koon who took particular notice of the sticker.

“Defender of wildlife, huh?” he asked. “What does that make me?”

Starting with their first witnesses, lawyers for the officers launched a full-scale attack on the training and procedures of the Los Angeles Police Department, a trial tactic that emphasized the limited options available to the police when they confronted King in Lake View Terrace.

One consequence of the strategy was that it allowed lawyers to conduct a host of demonstrations about the so-called chokehold, a now outlawed technique for subduing suspects.

Near the end of the case, Michael P. Stone, a former police officer who represents Officer Laurence M. Powell, demonstrated a chokehold outside the courtroom for the benefit of journalists, trying it first on a reporter from Reuters. Finding him too tall, Stone asked for another journalist and got one from the L.A. Weekly.

Stone enthusiastically grabbed that reporter with his left arm and pulled him tight. The reporter was released unharmed.

Inside the courtroom, however, Assistant U.S. Atty. Steven D. Clymer raised an objection to a chokehold demonstration in which a police officer said he would show the technique by using it on Salzman.

“I have an objection unless Mr. Salzman is going to be rendered unconscious,” said Clymer, barely concealing a grin. Judge Davies chuckled appreciatively but let the demonstration proceed.

Salzman emerged red-faced and slightly flustered, but apparently fully conscious.

While lawyers wrestled--literally and figuratively--inside the building, outside the tension of the city gradually pushed toward the courthouse.

Early in the trial, a labor group known as the Justice for Janitors Organizing Committee set up a picket line outside the building, thrusting its literature onto the few passersby who showed any interest.

The janitors received scant attention from the media at the courthouse, but as the end of the trial neared, more protesters began to make their way to the building, drawn inexorably by the sight of dozens of television cameras and the promise of a national stage.

Many of those protesters arrived mad, and uniformed officers of the Federal Protection Service warily cordoned off the plaza where lawyers for the defendants regularly briefed the media on their version of the day’s events. One day, backers of a year-old record company called the New African Movement arrived to dole out videotapes, cassettes, baseball caps and their views of the history of police abuse and the King incident.

They called for the officers to be convicted, but they did so politely and went away disappointed that none of the television networks paid much attention.

The next day, however, Braun was giving his explanation of a trial development when a protester cast a chill over the gathering.

As the lawyer started to speak, the demonstrator--who had worked his way near the front of the media area--shouted at Braun, demanding to know if he had ever been hit in the head with a police baton. Braun, rarely known to skip an argument, turned on his heel and headed inside without another word.

Back inside the building, Braun paused for a deep breath. “It’s just not worth it,” he said, looking back outside at the crowd.

Despite all the expert testimony from a slew of medical and police experts, one group of professionals never quite fulfilled its promise--sound engineers. While technicians produced an enhanced version of the famous videotape of the King beating, sound experts also worked for months to filter the scratchy audio portion.

Stone insisted that the audio contained distinct clicks of a police Taser going off just when Koon said he used it--although Judge Davies and most courtroom spectators said they could not hear it.

Prosecutors said that was because no Taser was ever activated at that point in the incident, but Stone was not easily dissuaded. In a battle of labs, his worked up to the last minute to come up with a soundtrack that he said would show conclusively what was said early that March morning.

“They’re using the FBI lab,” Stone said of his government counterparts. “And you know how everyone always says how great the FBI lab is. But you know where you go to really get sound work done?”

He gazed around conspiratorially, then whispered: “Hollywood.”

For the defendants, the trial brought a jarring combination of high tension and extreme boredom. Days went by with barely a reference to Briseno or Timothy E. Wind, and all the defendants were consigned to spending most of their time passing notes back and forth with their lawyers.

Outside the courtroom, Koon and Powell seemed the steadiest. Koon is thoroughly unflappable--as convinced today as he was the day of the incident not only that the beating was justified but that the arrest was a clean, even commendable one.

Unlike his sergeant, Powell conceded to moments of doubt about how the case is proceeding, but he too was usually chipper.

“It’s just another wonderful day,” he said one day, shuffling back into court during the trial’s fifth week. “I can’t think of any place I’d rather be.”

Briseno was moodier. But after breaking ranks with his colleagues during the state trial, he was part of the common defense this time. Briseno warmed to his new relationship with his co-defendants, enjoying the fact that they were speaking to one another this time.

That left Wind. He was the trial’s most elusive figure, except for King. Wind rarely made an appearance in the cafeteria, and even his pleasantries in the hallways seemed strained.

One day, however, he plopped down next to a reporter at lunch and quietly mulled over the events of the last two years.

Wind, who grew up in Kansas, looks every bit the farm boy. He has no close relatives in Southern California, and he, more than any of his co-defendants, showed the strain.

Because he was a rookie at the time of the King incident, Wind is the only one of the four officers who has been fired by the Police Department. His wife subsequently had to leave her job because of a stress disability, and Wind said his family is surviving on depleted savings and his wife’s disability checks.

If he is convicted, Wind, like the other defendants, could face up to 10 years in a federal penitentiary--a possibility that he shrugged off without comment. But Wind seemed baffled by the idea of how to move on even if he is acquitted.

“I can’t think more than a day ahead,” he said. “I’ve been living too long a day at a time to think ahead.”

And the problems, he said, run far deeper than money. His son is 3, and Wind looked especially pained when he tried to imagine what effect, if any, this event will have on his son’s life.

“He looked up at me one day and said: ‘Daddy, why do juries hate you?’ ” said Wind, who won complete exoneration from the only other jury he has ever faced, the state panel that acquitted him last year. “How am I supposed to explain this to him?”

Times staff writer Paul Lieberman contributed to this story.