Diverse Jury Chosen for Denny Trial : Courts: Five whites, three blacks, three Latinos and an Asian-American are selected. Defense lawyers express satisfaction with the ethnic mix.

An ethnically diverse jury of five Anglos, three African-Americans, three Latinos and an Asian-American was sworn in Thursday to decide the case of two men accused of assaulting trucker Reginald O. Denny and others on the first day of rioting in Los Angeles last year.

Opening arguments in the trial will begin Thursday after six alternate jurors are selected.

Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, who came to the courtroom about an hour before both sides agreed on a panel after five days of selection, said he was pleased by the jury’s ethnic makeup.

“We said we’d have a racially mixed jury, and we have that jury,” he said. “I insisted on that.” Such a jury is important if there is to be community confidence in their decision, he said.

Attorney Edi M. O. Faal, who represents Damian Monroe Williams, 21, charged with multiple felonies including attempted murder, noted that the defendants are young black men and that he “would have preferred a jury of their peers that would have included at least one young black man.” The black jurors appear to be in their 40s and 50s.

He quickly added that the jury is a cross-section of the community, and he said he believes the defense will get a fair trial.

Attorney Earl C. Broady Jr., who represents Henry Keith Watson, 28, also charged with multiple felonies including attempted murder, said the panel “is a good jury.”

Asked if it is the ideal jury, Broady smiled and said: “We’ll know in a few weeks.”

Broady said he did not know why there are no young black males on the panel. “We tried to keep them on,” he said, “but they weren’t.”

The defense agreed to the panel Thursday rather than continue challenging prospective jurors, Faal said, out of fear that prosecutors would remove “the few blacks we already had.”

Williams and Watson are accused of assaults on Denny, who is Anglo, and seven others at Florence and Normandie avenues last year. They could be sentenced to life in prison if they are convicted.

The nine women on the panel include four whites, two blacks, two Latinas and a Filipina. The men are white, black and Latino.

The black man on the jury is a middle-aged veteran of 10 years in the military, 14 on active duty. Identified only as Juror 347, he has worked as a security guard and now works at an undisclosed county hospital.

One of the black women, who is also middle-aged, has studied business law, probate law and psychology, apparently in graduate school. She said she has a friend who works for the Sheriff’s Department and that her former pastor works for the Los Angeles Police Department.

The other black woman, who appears to be in her 40s, was once married to a police officer. She said her niece was murdered last year, and no one has been apprehended. Having been married to a policeman will not affect her judgment, she said.

The whites on the jury include a woman who was initially afraid that she could not make “such an important decision.” But Judge John W. Ouderkirk’s instructions “made it seem a little more easy to sift out the facts,” she said.

Another Anglo juror said she feels sorry for the rioters. “I feel as though they have a lot of unresolved anger,” she said. “Maybe they haven’t been taught to express it in nonviolent ways.”

The woman, who appears to be in her late 20s or early 30s, is in the Army Reserves and said she has friends in the Sheriff’s Department and Glendale Police Department.

A Latina, who appears to be in her 20s, said a number of rioters “had no real idea what they were doing. People reacted to the riots because everybody was involved in it.”