Judge to Delay Announcement of Denny Verdicts

Verdicts in the Reginald O. Denny beating trial will be held overnight before they are announced, Superior Court Judge John W. Ouderkirk announced Friday through his clerk.

Law enforcement officials had asked earlier that they be given at least three hours notice before verdicts were announced to mobilize officers in case they were needed to quell any possible disturbances, a Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman said.

If the verdicts are reached on a Friday, they will be announced on a Saturday, Ouderkirk said. But the jury will not deliberate on weekends, and the panel will not be sequestered, the district attorney’s office said.

Jurors deliberated from 9 a.m. until noon Friday before they were excused for the day. They will put in their first full day of deliberations on Monday, when one of them will be trained to operate sophisticated videotape equipment.

The equipment allows frame-by-frame viewing of videotapes crucial to the prosecution’s case against Damian Monroe Williams and Henry Keith Watson. That footage shows ground-level and aerial views of various assaults at Florence and Normandie avenues--including the Denny beating.

Williams, 20, and Watson, 29, are charged with attempting to kill Denny and with assaulting or robbing seven other people at the intersection as rioting broke out last year. Williams is also 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 convictions carry maximum penalties of life in prison.

The jury includes four African-Americans, four Latinos, three Anglos and an Asian-American. It was given the case Thursday after five weeks of testimony, nearly 50 witnesses and three days of closing arguments.

In a separate development, the Los Angeles city attorney’s office sought to have Denny’s lawsuit for damages for riot injuries dismissed during a hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court on Friday.

Denny and two other riot victims at Florence and Normandie, Fidel Lopez and Takao Hirata, brought their suits last spring. Their attorney, Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr., filed identical lawsuits in federal and state courts, saying that city and police officials were negligent and violated their civil rights. Cochran also represents a fourth victim, Wanda Harris, whose son was killed near the intersection, a flash point of the riots.

At least four other lawsuits for damages resulting from the riots have been dismissed by judges, who agreed with city attorneys that state law provides immunity for failure to either enforce laws or to provide police protection.

Cochran, however, said his suits are different because they allege the injuries resulted from “discriminatory deployment of police resources.”

“At the same time, police pulled out of this area,” Cochran said, “they were walking police patrols in Westwood.”