Judge Defends Powell, Koon Sentences as Fair : Courts: Davies, in justifying 2 1/2-year terms, says many misunderstood role of victim’s conduct.

U.S. District Judge John G. Davies, whose 2 1/2-year prison sentences for Officer Laurence M. Powell and Sgt. Stacey C. Koon have been sharply criticized in some quarters, defended his sentences in a rare interview Wednesday.

“The application of the guidelines is a very complicated process, and the search for a just result was my entire mission,” Davies said in an interview with The Times. “I did my best to be fair.”

Davies generally shuns publicity and has turned down dozens of requests for interviews about the case. But he said he agreed to discuss the matter because he believes that many people have misunderstood his rationale for the sentences he imposed. He also spoke to the Sentinel, a Los Angeles publication distributed primarily in the African-American community.

Much of the Sentinel interview was devoted to issues related to federal sentencing guidelines, but Davies briefly addressed the subject of police brutality. “I think it needs to be abhorred,” Davies told the Sentinel in an interview to be published today. “It needs to be eliminated, and the system has to do everything possible to eliminate it.”

In both interviews, Davies declined to discuss specifics of the sentences he handed down against the two Los Angeles police officers, referring instead to the 54-page written memorandum that explained his reasoning. But he said one issue has been widely misunderstood: how the actions of the victim, Rodney G. King, affected the sentence.

It was Davies’ criticisms of King’s behavior on the night of the incident--King had been drinking and had resisted arrest--that sparked much of the heated reaction to his sentences. But Davies noted that federal sentencing guidelines specifically allow for reducing sentences in cases where “the victim’s wrongful conduct contributed significantly to provoking the offense behavior.”

That language, Davies said, does not mean that the victim’s conduct needs to be solely responsible for provoking the incident, only that it played a role in provoking it. Legal scholars agree, and many had predicted before the sentencing that Davies would reduce the officers’ prison terms because of King’s conduct.

What surprised some observers was how much Davies chose to reduce those sentences.

They also say that Davies’ findings in the case seem inconsistent. Davies’ central conclusion was that the officers’ conduct was legal until King stopped resisting, at 55 seconds into the videotape of the incident. Because only the blows after that were deemed unlawful, these observers said, a case could be made that King provoked the legal part of the beating but not the illegal part.

In the memorandum, Davies wrote several lengthy passages about King’s behavior, citing among other things his alcohol consumption, his flight from the officers and his slowness to obey verbal commands. Davies also noted King’s size (6 feet, 3 inches and 225 pounds at the time of the incident).

“While Mr. King’s wrongdoing precipitated the initial, lawful use of force, and thereby substantially contributed to the offense conduct, Mr. King’s provocative behavior eventually subsided,” Davies wrote in his memorandum. “The court recognizes that by the time the defendants’ conduct crossed the line into unlawfulness, Mr. King was no longer resisting arrest. He posed no objective threat, and the defendants had no reasonable perception of danger. Nevertheless, the incident would not have escalated to this point, indeed it would not have occurred at all, but for Mr. King’s initial misconduct.”

Laurie Levenson, a Loyola law professor and former federal prosecutor who followed the civil rights trial, questioned Davies’ reasoning on that point.

“If King is compliant, then he is no longer provocative,” Levenson said. “I think he’s being inconsistent there.”

Since imposing the sentences, Davies has been deluged with mail, sources close to the judge said, adding that most of it has been supportive but some of it has been critical and some even threatening.

“It’s always a pleasure to read correspondence that affirms what you did,” Davies said of the supportive mail. As to threatening letters, Davies said he took them in stride.

“Federal judges get those kinds of letters all the time,” he said. “It’s not frightening, not alarming. It’s something less than that. People give vent to all kinds of feelings by writing to a judge.”

In addition to the hundreds of letters his office has received, Davies has been the brunt of substantial criticism from lawyers and politicians.

Some legal analysts have suggested that aspects of his sentencing may be vulnerable on appeal. Defense attorneys already have appealed the convictions and prosecutors are weighing their options for appealing the sentences. They say they will have a decision sometime in the coming few weeks.

One lawyer, H. Peter Young, wrote a column in the Los Angeles Daily Journal in which he called Davies’ reasoning nonsensical and said the judge had done more “to undermine respect for the law than did the beating of Rodney King.”

On Aug. 6, members of the Congressional Black Caucus wrote to Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, urging her to appeal the sentences. In their letter, the caucus members said Davies did not adequately consider the message the sentence would send concerning proper conduct for law enforcement officers.

“Are police officers going to be held responsible for excessive use of force or not?” they asked. “We think what has been lost, in all this, is that police officers have an enhanced responsibility to uphold the law.”

In Wednesday’s interview, Davies shrugged off the criticism, saying he recognized the right of outsiders to question his decisions. But he added that believes he was right.

He feels “no distress, no concern,” Davies said. “I take it as part of the job, and I’m happy being a district judge.”