Riot-Related Sentencings Bring Back the ‘What Ifs’ : Trial: Turmoil remains in the victims’ family as court case comes to a close for men convicted in mob attack that left a brother dead and son injured.

Chris Baldwin had the radio cranked up in her Belmont Shore office to hear the sentencing of two officers convicted in the Rodney G. King beating. On a shelf nearby lay a brown leather Aussie hat, a favorite possession of her brother who died during last year’s riots.

As she listened to the news reports, it occurred to Baldwin how much her life had been affected by these officers. When the police officers were found innocent in their first trial, it sparked rioting that killed her brother Matthew Haines and injured her son, Scott Coleman.

“If they had gotten a sentence a year ago, perhaps I would still have a brother,” Baldwin said.

Haines was shot to death while driving a motorcycle through a riot-torn Long Beach neighborhood April 30, 1992. Coleman, who was riding with Haines, also was shot several times.

Last week, the case of the officers who beat King and the case of the men accused of killing Haines and injuring Coleman came to a close.

On Monday, the last of the men convicted in the Long Beach shooting was sentenced. And on Wednesday, a federal judge ordered two Los Angeles police officers to prison for violating King’s civil rights in the beating.

But the sentencings did not end the turmoil for Baldwin and her family.

“I think we see too much TV and too many movies, and we think everything has to have a conclusion that’s fair,” Baldwin said. “There is no end to it. Nothing can bring Matt back. Nothing can make Scott better.”

Coleman, 26, has not been the same since a mob pulled him and Haines off their motorcycle as they were riding through central Long Beach, going to the aid of friends, Baldwin said. The rioters beat, robbed and shot the two men. Haines, a 32-year-old mechanic who was Coleman’s uncle and best friend, died at the scene.

“We’ve all had a very tough year, and Scott didn’t handle the situation well,” Baldwin said. Her son, Baldwin explained, turned to drugs to ease the pain of constant flashbacks of the beatings and his uncle’s death.

“He’s in a residential drug treatment program now . . . (and) his game plan is to get grief counseling,” Baldwin said. “He has to go through the grief. And he has to figure out what he wants to do all over again with his life.”

Coleman used to work as a data-entry operator in Baldwin’s accounting office, she said. “But he was shot in the right arm and he was beat up badly in the left arm. He can’t really work with computers anymore.”

Baldwin, 47, also has seen a counselor and tried to deal with the loss of her youngest brother, one who--because of their age difference--felt like a son. “Matt and I were very close. He was my baby,” she said. “When I got married, he wanted to know where his room was in my apartment.”

Despite the counseling, Baldwin said she still has nightmares. It has been difficult for the family to put the past behind them, partly because no one has been convicted of murdering Haines.

Last February, a Superior Court jury acquitted three defendants of murder. Instead they were found guilty of assault with a deadly weapon and conspiring to assault, loot and rob. The jury found Larry Williams, 24, Fabian Nixon, 19, and Brent Lamar Jones, 18, not guilty of murder because “there wasn’t evidence proving that three defendants actually did shoot the victim,” jury forewoman Althelia Billingsley said at the time.

On Monday, Jones was the last to be sentenced. Like his co-defendants, he was handed the stiffest penalty allowed for assault and conspiracy charges: a five-year, eight-month prison term. Unlike his co-defendants, however, Jones was ordered to the California Youth Authority because he was 17 at the time of the crime. He also was ordered to pay $5,000 to a crime victims’ restitution fund.

To the defense attorneys, the case was an example that sometimes police make mistakes. “They got the wrong people,” said attorney Donald Herzstein, who represented Nixon.

But to Deputy Dist. Atty. Joseph A. Markus, the case was a frustrating example of how the justice system fails when witnesses refuse to testify.

“There must have been 100 witnesses to this crime. Do you know how many witnesses would come forward? Two,” Markus said. “Those individuals in that neighborhood condoned murder. They allowed it to happen.”

To Baldwin, the sentence the defendants got no longer matters. “God knows who did this. If the civil justice system didn’t do what it was supposed to do, God will take care of it,” she said.

But, listening to news reports Wednesday, Baldwin could not help but ponder the “what ifs.”

In April of last year, a state court jury found four Los Angeles police officers not guilty of beating King. In a federal trial earlier this year, however, a jury found two of the four--Officer Laurence M. Powell and Sgt. Stacey C. Koon--guilty of violating King’s civil rights.

While listening to reports of Wednesday’s sentencing, Baldwin wondered aloud what would have happened if the first jury had found the officers guilty.

“There were many people who are culpable for my brother’s death, not just those who beat him,” she said.