Jury Gets Denny Case After Lengthy Final Arguments : Trial: Prosecutor rebuts charge that defendants are scapegoats. Deliberations may not begin until Monday.

The Reginald O. Denny beating case was sent to the jury Thursday, with a defense attorney saying the defendants are scapegoats for the Los Angeles riots and prosecutors portraying them as violent criminals who committed unconscionable acts.

Superior Court Judge John W. Ouderkirk excused the panel for the day at 3:45 p.m. and ordered them back to court this morning.

The racially mixed jury is expected to select a foreman today, but it is unclear how much deliberating the panel will be able to do before Monday, when one juror will be trained to operate a videotape player.

Videotape of assaults at Florence and Normandie avenues as rioting erupted last year played a critical role in the prosecution’s case. A Los Angeles Police Department detective played the tape in court on sophisticated equipment, but Ouderkirk said he wants a clearly neutral technician to train a juror.

The panel of four African-Americans, four Latinos, three Anglos and an Asian-American will decide the guilt or innocence of Damian Monroe Williams, 20, and Henry Keith Watson, 29. They are charged with attempting to murder Denny and with assaulting or robbing seven other people at Florence and Normandie avenues, where Denny was beaten.

Williams also is charged with aggravated mayhem--intentionally causing permanent disability or disfigurement--for allegedly hitting Denny in the head with a brick. Attempted murder and aggravated mayhem carry maximum penalties of life in prison.

Wrapping up his six-hour final argument--given over two days--Williams’ attorney, Edi M.O. Faal, asked the jury to use the law to evaluate the facts in the case, as the judge had instructed, and “your own sense of fairness and sense of what is right.”

“Justice does not mean that because Reginald Denny was injured, someone in this courtroom must pay for it,” Faal said. “Justice means asking: ‘Did the (prosecution) prove their case?’ ”

As far as Williams is concerned, Faal said, there is no middle ground on the charge of attempted murder. “Either there is attempted murder or there is not,” he said. “The stakes are high.”

Prosecutors presented no evidence showing an intent to kill, he said, or that a murder was attempted.

“If there is no evidence,” he said, “you are not to ask: ‘But who is going to pay for it?’ ”

On the aggravated mayhem charge faced by Williams, Faal said prosecutors failed to prove that the object Williams allegedly threw at Denny’s head caused the massive injuries the trucker suffered.

Noting that the panel can find Williams guilty of a lesser charge of simple mayhem, Faal said the district attorney’s office is not entitled to a compromise.

“Don’t give them a compromise,” he said. “They’re not entitled to it. Find him not guilty on all charges.”

He appealed to any jurors who believe that the prosecution failed to prove any of its case “to stick to your guns no matter what anyone else thinks. Don’t yield.”

Faal ended his summation at the noon recess, and Williams’ supporters stood and applauded in the courtroom. Several of them wept and waited their turn to embrace him.

After lunch, Deputy Dist. Atty. Janet Moore delivered her rebuttal, telling jurors that their only allegiance--their only loyalty--is to the truth.

She asked the panel to consider what a defense attorney can do if he knows the truth will convict his client. The attorney has to confuse, obscure the truth, “manufacture doubt even where none exists,” she said, answering her own question.

Moore said Faal never discussed aiding and abetting when he accused prosecutors of bringing excessive charges against Williams and Watson. The defendants instigated or participated in several assaults that resulted in great bodily injuries or in robberies, making them just as guilty as those who aided and abetted, she said.

She said Faal held up a photo that looked like a mirror-image of Williams and asked if it was the same man. She added that Faal described the wrong eye when he said Williams could not have caused the injury to Denny.

“Is that the pursuit of truth?” she said. “Or is that an approach intended to deceive, distract and confuse? There have been many instances of clever lawyering and twists of the tongue. Do not decide this case on trickery. Decide it on the truth.”

Moore said Faal first took the position that the man shown on videotape attacking Denny is not Williams. But he then argued that if Williams did do it, he didn’t intend to do it, she said.

“Mr. Faal said it is not Damian Williams,” she said. “But he couldn’t stick to that because he knows it is.”

She reminded the jury that Faal had said prosecutors savaged Phillip Davis, a defense witness who contradicted testimony from gas station cashier Gabriel Quintana, who said he saw Williams hit Denny with three bricks.

Davis was not savaged, she said. “Phillip Davis was tested and he failed.”

Those who were savaged, she said, were Alicia Maldonado, Larry Tarvin, Denny, Takao Hirata, Jorge Gonzalez and Fidel Lopez--all victims at Florence and Normandie.

She conceded that she is a “little confused” by Quintana’s account of three bricks. “He said it,” she said. “He didn’t retract it.”

There could have been a problem with translation from Spanish to English, or Quintana could have meant that Denny was hit three times, she said.

“Maybe he is saying, as Mr. Faal said, that there are some things that were not captured on the videotape,” Moore said. Perhaps Denny was hit three times with a brick, but it wasn’t captured on videotape.

Faal ridiculed every factor that identified Williams, Moore said. But when you put all of those factors together, “there is no other reasonable conclusion” than that Williams was correctly identified as an assailant, she said.

The prosecutor argued that Faal never produced an alibi witness who said Williams was not at Florence and Normandie. “You never heard from such a person because it is Damian Williams,” she said.

She said she had “never heard anything so creative and so fanciful” as Faal’s argument that Denny’s injuries were caused by a brick that struck him while he was still in the cab of the truck he was driving.

“There’s only one injury that takes Denny down,” she said. “That’s when Williams throws that brick.” Pointing to a CAT scan photo of Denny’s cracked skull, she said: “And that is what that brick did.”

Faal had argued, she said, that Williams and Watson should be held responsible for absolutely nothing. Earl C. Broady Jr., Watson’s lawyer, said the defendants were in court because four Los Angeles police officers were found not guilty of beating Rodney G. King, she noted.

“I say Mr. Faal and Mr. Broady are dead wrong,” she said. “We are in court because of what these two men chose to do on April 29, 1992. They have no one else to blame but themselves.

“They are here because they acted in a violent and unconscionable way,” Moore said. “They are not here because we are holding them responsible for the entire Los Angeles riot.”

They are not charged with arson, looting or murder that occurred elsewhere, she said.

“I’m asking you to hold these two men accountable and liable for what they did,” she said. “If you abide by the law, you will find them guilty.”