Final Defendant in Denny Case Convicted on 2 of 5 Charges

The last criminal defendant in the Reginald O. Denny beating case was acquitted Monday of two of the five charges against him, and a jury deadlocked on a third.

But jurors convicted Lance Parker, 28, of one felony and one misdemeanor vandalism charge after hearing two weeks of testimony and deliberating for three days.

Parker, a dispatcher for a messenger service, faces a maximum three-year, six-month term when he is sentenced May 12. He could have been sentenced to almost 10 years in prison if he had been convicted of all five charges.

When the verdicts were read, Parker bowed his head and wept.

He had been accused of two counts of shooting at a vehicle, one count of assault with a deadly weapon and two counts of discharging a firearm with gross negligence.

The prosecution had contended that he fired a shotgun at Denny’s truck, endangering Denny and others; fired the weapon at a passing car, assaulting the never-identified driver, and fired at gas pumps at a nearby gas station, endangering people nearby.

In interviews outside the courtroom, jurors said they agreed with the prosecution that Parker was the man who rode a motorcycle at the intersection of Florence and Normandie avenues in the first hours of the Los Angeles riots on April 29, 1992. They also said they believed he was the person who fired at Denny’s truck and at the gas pumps.

They said they did not believe, however, that Parker fired his gun at the passing car or that he had put anybody but himself in danger with his actions.

The jurors said they discounted the testimony of Bob Tur, a television helicopter pilot who said he was in his aircraft 150 feet above the intersection when he saw Parker firing the shotgun at the car.

The jurors said they also discounted the testimony of Henry Keith Watson, a former defendant in Denny’s beating, who was convicted of two misdemeanors during a highly publicized trial last year and sentenced to five years probation.

Watson denied a contention by the prosecution that he had told authorities a week before Parker’s trial that Parker was the man with the shotgun.

Police investigators had testified that Watson originally put them on Parker’s trail when he told them that the man with the shotgun played on a local semipro football team.

Using the team roster, police were narrowing down the possible suspects when they got an anonymous tip naming Parker, the officers testified. He was arrested in July, 1992.

As it turned out, he owned a motorcycle similar to the one used in the shooting and bore some physical resemblance to fuzzy videotaped pictures of the man wielding the shotgun.

But Parker’s lawyer, Chokwe Lumumba, maintained outside the courtroom Monday that his client is innocent of all the charges.

Lumumba said, however, that he was satisfied that the jury had not bought much of the prosecution’s case.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin McCormick expressed disappointment with the verdicts, but said he was gratified that the jury had not accepted the defense’s contention that Parker had been railroaded.

Parker’s was the last of six criminal cases that grew out of the attacks on Denny and other motorists at Florence and Normandie.

Two other felony charges alleging that Parker was trying to set fire to Denny’s truck when he fired at it were dismissed in earlier court proceedings. Those dismissals are being appealed by the prosecution.