A City Bound : The Denny Verdicts: A Temporary Safety Valve

The long-term significance of the verdicts in the Reginald O. Denny beating trial for the administration of justice in Los Angeles County is none. The verdicts were an aberration. The judicial course will not change.

The most likely near-term prospect is that a white backlash among juries will send more blacks to prison.

The hundreds of angry people calling talk-radio shows, the District Attorney’s office and City Hall can relax. If anything, the streets should be quieter. I was in the Criminal Courts Building when the Denny verdicts were announced. After a brief pause to receive the news, our court resumed its daily grind of handing out hundreds of years of prison time to those who had crossed the law.

The Denny jury reacted to a unique set of facts, internally and externally. Internally, the jury was far more integrated than the average L.A. criminal jury. It also was more carefully chosen--the defense used the services of jury consultant Jo Ellen Demetrius--than a typical jury. Also, the lawyers themselves were able to question the jurors about their qualifications, a process known as voir dire . Proposition 115, it should be recalled, made attorney voir dire discretionary in criminal cases. Most judges now refuse to let the lawyers question potential jurors.

Externally, there was not only a large amount of ambiguous evidence--yes, there is a vast difference between live and Memorex--but also a loud siren of mounting hysteria in the community spurred on by breathless minute-by-minute reports from news commentators on the trial and deliberations.

Just how immune the system is to change is demonstrated by recent history. The riots sparked by the not-guilty verdicts in the first Rodney G. King beating trial had no impact on “judicial attitude.” It would have seemed reasonable to hope that the judges of Los Angeles County, having inadvertently contributed to the greatest outbreak of urban violence in the 20th Century, would sit down together and review the fairness of the court process they administer. No such meeting took place.

Instead, examples of judicial dissonance abound. At one point during a bench conference two months after the ’92 riots, a judge told me she wanted my client, a black mother of four with no criminal record, to do six months in jail for standing outside a store that was being looted. The woman had not taken anything, but was among the alleged looters swept up in a police raid. She had already done 40 days in jail, charged with burglary--a crime for which the supporting evidence was virtually nonexistent.

I pointed out that, at worst, the case was a trespass and probably that wouldn’t stick. The judge solemnly said to me, “Counsel, this occurred during the riots. That’s the reason for the six-month indicated sentence.”

In psychological terms, the L.A. court system continues to function in such deep denial. The Superior Court Executive Committee, for example, recently authorized programs to ensure that minorities receive unequal justice and no due process.

Simply put, the L.A. Superior Court has, in effect, overturned the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Gideon vs. Wainwright by so poorly paying attorneys appointed to represent the indigent that defending them will drive their lawyers into bankruptcy. Gideon mandates that a poor person charged with a crime have a lawyer. It does not mandate how much the lawyer should be paid.

Since 1974, L.A. courts consistently paid $50 an hour to lawyers appointed to represent the poor in criminal cases, By contrast, big law firms bill out their first-year associates’ time at a minimum of $100 an hour. While the two-decade-old $50 hour struck many lawyers as archaic, little did they know that such amounts were perceived by most judges as a waste of public money. Why spend money on people who should simply admit their guilt and go off to prison without raising a fuss, even if they’re innocent?

Take the recent case of Charlie Windon, a black lawyer in the South Bay. Windon accepted an appointment to represent a young man charged with robbery. Under the Superior Court’s newly inaugurated flat-fee contract with South Bay lawyers, Windon received $400. Whether he pled the defendant guilty at the first court appearance or tried the case before a jury, his pay was the same--$400.

For $400, Windon could make money only if he immediately pled his client guilty. Unfortunately for Windon’s bottom line, his client, a young male black, was innocent. And so, at the end of an eight-day jury trial in Torrance, the jury refused to convict.

Windon’s pay for the two-week trial averaged $3.90 an hour. One suspects he will flinch before exercising his client’s right to trial the next time. But that, of course, is exactly what the court apparently wants.

Indeed, judges have developed a fondness for saying, “Your client isn’t entitled to a Cadillac defense. . . He’s only entitled to a Chevy defense.” It is uncertain what to make of this pronouncement. Should only half the witnesses be subpoenaed? Only half the questions asked?

Perhaps, we should refuse to visit our clients in jail. Actually, that, too, was recently forbidden.

It is now a Superior Court rule that appointed counsel must obtain prior permission from a judge before visiting their clients at the sheriff’s Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho near Magic Mountain. An attorney who travels to the facility without prior court approval will not be paid for the time spent interviewing clients.

How many lawyers are going to make a 90-minute trip to the jail, visit their clients, drive 90 minutes back to the office and agree not to be paid because some judge refuses to give prior permission? Most of the county’s male prisoners are housed there.

A large group of former career prosecutors now run the largest court system in the country. They do not--or refuse to--understand the defense function, do not seem to appreciate the constitutional role of defense counsel and frequently wonder why so much good county money is being spent on “those people.”

The Denny verdicts acted as a safety valve to allow some steam to escape from the criminal-justice pressure cooker and prevent another social explosion. But recent history indicates that screwing the lid down tighter on minority criminals will only increase pressure and blow the lid off again. We can avoid another mess if our courts simply adopt a standard of fairness in administering the law.