Young Judges : Pasadena Teen-Agers Speak Out on Verdicts in Denny Beating Trial, and Reviews Are Not Good

A sense of injustice among young people over the outcome of the Reginald O. Denny beating trial spilled out Tuesday during a spirited videotaped town hall meeting of more than 200 Pasadena high school students.

“The only difference between the Reginald Denny and Rodney King (police beating) trial is the police had a badge,” said 17-year-old Shannon Evans of John Muir High School as she stood nervously under bright lights and cameras.

“The whole trial was done all wrong. The charges were wrong. . . . Justice was not, not, not . . .” Evans continued, fumbling for words.

“Served!” shouted the audience of fellow students.

Sponsored by the Court TV cable channel, Crown Cable and the Constitutional Rights Foundation, the forum was taped in a Pasadena church assembly room for broadcast today.

The forum featured prominent panelists, including community leader Danny Bakewell, USC legal scholar Susan Estrich, former Dist. Atty. Robert Philibosian and Pasadena Police Chief Jerry Oliver. But they were merely a backdrop for the passionate opinions of the young people.

The racially diverse audience of students, mainly high school seniors, applauded their peers with gusto, challenged the police chief and strained their arms upward for a chance to take the microphone. They threatened to overwhelm, with their enthusiasm, the constraints of the 48-minute hour allotted them.

Marshall High School senior Canndice Green, 17, said of the chance for kids to express an opinion:

“It’s long overdue.”

The students had paid close attention to the trials of the four Los Angeles Police Department officers accused of beating Rodney G. King. They also had monitored the trial of Damian Monroe Williams and Henry Keith Watson, the men accused of premeditated attempted murder in the beating of trucker Reginald O. Denny.

Although adults queried in a recent Times poll believed that the assault and simple mayhem convictions returned last week in the trial of Williams and Watson were too lenient, the high school students instead focused on the question of equality in the treatment of defendants in the two cases.

Muir senior Latrice Washington, 17, argued that it was unfair for Williams and Watson to have spent 17 months in jail, unable to meet bail after their arrests while the police officers were free on bail.

“Fair is fair,” she said.

Other students pointed to the disparity in jail conditions: Williams and Watson serving time in a Los Angeles County jail cell as they awaited trial, compared to former LAPD Officers Laurence M. Powell and Stacey C. Koon now serving sentences for federal civil rights convictions in a Northern California minimum security facility labeled by some as Club Fed.

Still, some students were undecided.

Alfredo Resendiz, 17, a Muir student, said he was upset by the unequal treatment, but he wondered about the implications of his position.

“First, I thought if the cops got off, why shouldn’t (Williams and Watson) get off,” Resendiz said. “But then I thought, what if I were driving my truck?” like Denny when he was beaten during the first hours of the Los Angeles riots. “Would I want to get whopped?”

The issue that generated the most heat arose not from the trials, but from Oliver’s attempt to fend off claims that officers single out teen-agers for police stops based on style of clothing and race, rather than bad behavior.

“You don’t understand teen-agers,” Deanna Grapp, 17, a Muir senior, told the police chief.

Even when the session ended and the cameras and lights were off, the passion continued, with students eager to talk to anyone willing to listen.

“What they didn’t talk about was responsibility,” Shannon Evans told a knot of friends surrounding her. “I was angry too. But I didn’t go out and beat somebody half to death.”