With Ailing Juror Recovered, Panel Resumes Deliberations Today

The jury in the Reginald O. Denny beating trial will resume its deliberations today after taking Friday off because a juror was ill, supervising Superior Court Judge Cecil Mills said.

“She is all better, and her doctor said she is ready to come back to work,” Mills said of Juror 307, a Latina in her 20s or early 30s who complained of an upset stomach.

Medication the juror is taking for an injured arm caused the upset stomach, Mills said. He said she has made no request to be pulled off the jury and wants to continue.

Attorney Edi M. O. Faal filed an urgent request with the court Friday, asking whether Juror 307 “is able to meaningfully deliberate, or whether she is unable to do so because of pain, medication or sickness.”

Faal wanted to know if Juror 307 had taken any medication between Monday and Thursday, and what the medication and dosage was. He also asked the extent of her injuries and the nature of any treatment she has received.

The jury was excused early Thursday, and Faal wanted to know if that schedule was because Juror 307 was ill.

He asked for a hearing before jury deliberations begin today, but Superior Court Judge John W. Ouderkirk, who is presiding over the trial, set the hearing for Monday afternoon.

In transcripts of earlier closed hearings, released Thursday, Juror 307 said another woman on the panel “just wants the trial over with. And if it comes to a hung jury, it would be fine with her just as long as she can go home.”

That woman, Juror 104, would start talking during deliberations about reaching “either no verdict or a hung jury so she can go home to her boyfriend,” Juror 307 said.

The jury is weighing the fate of Damian Monroe Williams, 20, and Henry Keith Watson, 29, charged with premeditated attempted murder in the beating of Denny at Florence and Normandie avenues, a flash point for rioting last year.

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

In some segments of Los Angeles’ black community, the trial is seen as a test of the judicial system. Denny is white. The two defendants are African-American.

The two men also are charged with assaulting or robbing seven other people at the intersection as rioting broke out after the not guilty verdicts in the Rodney G. King beating trial in Simi Valley.

Since the trial began, five jurors have been removed from the original panel--two for illness, one for misconduct, another on Monday for failing to deliberate and one on Tuesday for personal hardship. Only one alternate, a white woman in her 40s, remains.

The jury of 10 women and two men now includes four African-Americans, four Latinos, two Anglos and two Asian-Americans.

Mills said jury expenses through Oct. 4, when the panel began deliberations, were $16,108. Since deliberations began and the panel was sequestered at a hotel, the cost has averaged $3,277 a day.