Faal Emerging From Denny Case as Rising Legal Star

Just when all seemed lost--when one attorney was fired and his boss was sent to prison--a newcomer took over the defense case in the Reginald O. Denny beating trial. That man was an unknown: attorney Edi M.O. Faal, an intellectual, a defender of underdogs and an immigrant from the West African nation of Gambia.

With a custom-tailored elegance and a flair for combining humor with shrewd legal tenacity, Faal, 39, took on a case few thought he could win when he agreed to defend Damian Monroe Williams against charges of beating Denny in the opening moments of the Los Angeles riots. By turning around what he described as “an air of doom” in court, Faal was able, in the view of many observers, to win surprising acquittals on most of the felony counts against Williams, and to gain lesser misdemeanor convictions on others.

Even with the jury still weighing a felony count of attempted murder against Williams, Faal was drawing praise even from his courtroom adversaries.

“He absolutely is an emerging star in the legal arena--certainly in the criminal defense arena,” said attorney Johnnie Cochran, who is representing Denny in his civil lawsuit against the city. “He’s relentless. He’s prepared--thoroughly prepared. He’s extremely articulate. He knows the law. . . . This man, he is formidable.”

He also is intensely private, keeping his family life a closely guarded secret for reasons that he will not discuss. When asked for his birth date, he declines to respond. When it comes to his personal affairs, he will only say that his father is an accountant, his mother is a housewife, and he has four brothers and five sisters.

Faal does open up, however, when the conversation turns to his professional world. He describes himself as a man who feels compelled to represent the less fortunate. In his distinctive Gambian accent--a voice that “holds the attention of jurors,” in the words of one former opponent--Faal recalls how colleagues had warned him against accepting the defense case for Williams nearly a year ago.

“People close to me told me that I was ruining my credibility--that I was going to lose and I was going to lose in public,” he said. But those fears were never a serious concern, he added.

“I have always been motivated by the desire to represent those who are less able to represent themselves. . . . I was not looking at what I was going to get from it or lose from it. If we were going to represent Williams, we have to represent him aggressively and zealously to match the zealous prosecution he was facing.”

Faal, whose prior cases include a string of uphill battles--many involving complex civil cases pitting aggrieved individuals against large companies--said he recognized early that he would have to combat the negative image of Williams conveyed in the media. Williams was “demonized” as a violent gang member who seemed to the public to be something less than human, Faal said.

To counter that impression, the defense attorney made deliberate efforts to make Williams seem more human. On one occasion, Faal said, prosecutors asked Williams to approach the jury and show off a rose tattooed on his forearm. Williams not only showed off the tattoo, but he allowed jurors to touch his arm--a carefully calculated move to create human contact.

“Damian was portrayed as a monster,” the defense attorney said, noting that some legal experts thought he should have objected to the prosecution’s tattoo request. But he said: “It was part of my game plan. I had, from the beginning, intended to have Damian go talk to the jurors, have them touch him, feel him or be up close.

“When the prosecution said that, I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I sent him (over there) a second time for the same tattoo.” The jurors were holding his hand, turning it around, Faal said. “You had that human touch. It would be hard for them to see him as a monster.”

Then there was the alleged gap between Williams’ front teeth. In pictures taken at Florence and Normandie avenues, where Denny was beaten, a man alleged to be Williams was shown, open-mouthed, with what appeared to be a gap between his front teeth.

But in a light-hearted moment of testimony, Faal directed Williams to approach the jurors and smile, showing no such gap.

Jurors laughed.

Throughout the two-month trial, Faal took a two-pronged approach that drew second-guessing from many legal scholars. On one hand, he argued that prosecutors failed to prove that Williams was at the scene of the Denny beating. And that even if he was there he did not make a premeditated attack on Denny.

“He fought two fronts equally successfully,” said Leo Terrell of the Los Angeles branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. “If you look at the overwhelming evidence . . . in the possession of the prosecution, it was very difficult.”

That was not Faal’s only gamble. Borrowing a page from the police officers’ defense in the first Rodney G. King beating trial in Simi Valley, he made extensive use of the crucial videotape. Jurors were shown the Denny beating over and over again, a tactic that served to numb them to the violence, Faal said.

“It was very powerful evidence that will not go away,” Faal said of the tape, which showed Denny being dragged from his truck, kicked and beaten by objects that included a brick and a hammer. “You don’t confront it halfway. You confront it all the way and use it so much that you desensitize the jurors. (If) you look at the videotape 10 or 15 times, you become used to it.”

As the case went to the jury--and an anxious city braced itself for the outcome--Faal took yet one more gamble. This one concerned the most serious charge facing Williams--the felony count of attempted murder.

Legally, jurors could have weighed that charge alongside a lesser related charge carrying less jail time. But Faal decided to reject that option, asking jurors to make an “all or nothing” decision on the more severe charge.

As of Tuesday, jurors were still divided over that count, but the verdicts returned in the other charges made it appear that they may be leaning toward acquittal rather than conviction.

Cochran, who called Faal’s six-hour summary argument a masterpiece, described the defense strategy in rejecting the lesser attempted-murder charge as “a brilliant stroke.”

“He must have a lot of confidence in his abilities and the jury and everything else,” Cochran said. “He apparently possesses some vision--he can see things that others can’t see.”

Faal conceded: “When we made that gamble, we were not doing it with our eyes closed. We had evaluated the evidence and we felt that some jurors may feel that something wrong was committed, but not to the point of intent to kill.” The defense chose to let jurors express a “yes” or “no” to that question without giving them a middle ground that would have allowed an unwanted compromise, he said.

At moments throughout the trial, the British-educated Faal referred to the individual prosecutors as “my learned friend,” lending a touch of formality to the proceedings. During Denny’s testimony, Faal treated him with tact and respect, keenly aware of the jury’s empathy for the beating victim.

At one point, Faal’s cross-examination of a prosecution witness was so detailed that the witness, a sociology professor, shook Faal’s hand and thanked him. But at other times, Faal challenged witnesses and even argued with them, noted Loyola University law professor Laurie L. Levenson, who followed the trial closely. Faal hit over and over on the theme that the prosecution of Williams and other defendants was racially motivated, she said.

“He had his own style and was not afraid to have his own style in that courtroom,” Levenson said. “He acted with a great deal of confidence. It’s almost like he welcomed the challenge--that he was going to be the zealous advocate for his clients when nobody else would.”

Faal, who worked the case with his law partner Wilma Rouchelle Shanks, came in at the request of Williams’ mother, Georgiana, after turmoil tore apart an earlier defense team. Initially, Williams was represented by a group called the Center for Constitutional Law and Justice, but his lawyer there, Dennis Palmieri, was fired because of apparent inconsistencies on his resume. The head of the center, Frederick George Celani--a.k.a. Fred Sebastian--was arrested about the same time on wire fraud charges.

Faal, a voracious reader and Muslim who came to the United States in the early 1970s, took over the case from Palmieri. The 6-foot, 205-pound attorney--named Edirissa Mohammad Omar Faal after a Muslim prophet--brought a diverse range of experience. Faal attended Florida International University in Miami and later studied law in London at Middle Temple, Inns of Court.

After becoming a lawyer in 1979, he returned to the United States and attended Western State College of Law in Fullerton, completing a two-year program to prepare for the California Bar exam in little more than a year. His firm includes legal associates in the United Kingdom and Gambia.

Beyond his law practice, Faal also teaches a popular course at USC on civil law conflicts involving nations with differing legal systems. He took the year off to represent Williams.

“He’s one of those guys who will take almost anything that comes in the door, and he can handle almost anything,” said veteran Pasadena attorney Brand Cooper, who has battled Faal in civil court. “He’s smart enough that he could do civil work and also criminal work at the same time.”

Cooper said Faal is adept at taking unusual tacks with a jury, recalling a case in which Faal represented a client who sued Bank of America. Near the end of the trial, which Faal lost, Faal reminded the jurors that the damages he sought were a minuscule fraction of the bank’s net worth.

“He put something on the board . . . (such as) 0.05 of 1%,” Cooper said. “(But) it translated to some ridiculous figure . . . millions of dollars.”

Another former opponent, attorney Walter Lack, remembered a case in which Faal represented a man whose hands were blown off in an explosion. Lack, who represented a Navy laboratory in the case, said Faal justified the filing of his lawsuit by saying his client was in the laboratory to work off a previous debt to the government--and, thus, was not an employee but an indentured servant entitled to damages.

“We all got a chuckle out of it, including the judge,” Lack said, but the tactic got Faal’s client an arbitration award of $750,000. “He used it as a lever,” Lack said of the unusual premise. Without it, “his client would have been out of court and wouldn’t have got any money at all.”

Times staff writer Edward J. Boyer contributed to this report.