King Jury’s Voice of Reason Carried a Private Burden : Trial: Forewoman juggled her courtroom duties with beliefs formed during marriage to an ex-Black Panther.

Her fellow jurors saw her as the voice of reason, a 48-year-old widow and skilled mediator who steered them toward consensus. Ester Soriano-Hewitt knew she had a more complex role: juggling her responsibilities as forewoman with strongly held personal beliefs forged by her late husband’s anguished past.

That conflict remained a private burden as she guided the thorny deliberations that decided Rodney G. King’s civil lawsuit.

What neither the jurors nor attorneys knew--and what surely would have kept Soriano-Hewitt from serving on the panel had she been asked about it--was that she had been married to a former Black Panther Party leader who was harassed by law enforcement officials.

In interviews with six of the nine panelists Thursday, Soriano-Hewitt’s calm and conciliatory manner was repeatedly credited with defusing tension that mounted over nearly two weeks of grinding debate. That debate ended Wednesday with a decision not to award King punitive damages.

When the jurors lost several days waiting for a video recorder that was capable of playing the tape of the beating in slow motion, when they broke down in tears, when they seemed hopelessly divided over questions of police abuse, Soriano-Hewitt maintained the peace.

“She’s the one who kept the jury together,” said juror Gail Sanders, a psychiatric technician at Camarillo State Hospital. “We were very lucky to have her.”

Other panelists seemed surprised at Soriano-Hewitt’s revelation, saying her style in the jury room gave no hint that she had once shared her life with a famed onetime revolutionary.

Raymond (Masai) Hewitt, who died of a heart attack in 1988, had been singled out by the FBI in its secret campaign to discredit an organization that the late FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover once called “the most dangerous and violence-prone of all extremist groups.” According to files later made public, FBI agents conspired in 1970 to spread a false rumor that Hewitt had impregnated actress Jean Seberg--the star of “St. Joan”--who miscarried and later committed suicide.

Soriano-Hewitt, who met her husband while working in a gang-prevention program several years after the Panthers disbanded, said she chose not to disclose his background because she did not want it to become an issue in the deliberations. Although she was in the faction that favored awarding King punitive damages, she felt she had a greater responsibility to help the jury reach a compromise and close one of the most painful chapters in Los Angeles history.

“Being a foreperson was very difficult for me,” said Soriano-Hewitt, who handles planning and funding for the county’s dispute-resolution program. “It was difficult for me to not be an advocate, not wanting to be in the position of railroading or pushing my point.”

Even one of King’s lawyers--bitter about gaining no punitive damages--conceded that the jury had exercised “Solomon-like” wisdom by granting King $3.8 million from the city of Los Angeles but nothing from the police officers, who jurors decided had already been punished enough.

“To come to agreement, everybody had to give and take,” Soriano-Hewitt said, “every last juror.”

Not that there was any shortage of testiness during the two-month trial.

Sanders, known to the public only as Juror No. 3, said that she broke down in tears on several occasions and became sick to her stomach from watching the taped beating over and over. She said she could not understand why some of the other jurors did not sympathize more with King, whose screams haunted her. “I said, ‘You’re just not seeing it,’ ” Sanders said.

Another juror, who asked not to be identified, said that some nights he tossed and turned in a fitful slumber with the day’s debate playing over and over in his head. When he learned of courthouse gossip that suggested the jury was dawdling in its deliberations, it touched a nerve.

“There was a rumor going around that we didn’t want to go back to work, that we were just sitting there in the jury room and not doing much,” he said. “I can tell you we worked very hard at it. I felt we did a good job.”

Frustrations also mounted over technological limitations. One juror, from the Eastside, said the panel would have returned its verdict three or four days earlier, but were delayed because the VCR in the jury room did not have the capacity to show the beating tape in slow motion.

Also, the TV screen that showed the beating in the courtroom was about 35 inches wide, she said, while the screen in the jury room was only 13 inches.

“We remembered seeing things in the courtroom and when we got to the jury room and played the tape it was like: ‘What happened?’ ” said the woman, who works for the city of Los Angeles. “It was very frustrating.”

But unlike previous juries that seemed on the verge of self-destruction as they debated some of Los Angeles’ most high-profile cases, this group managed to remain remarkably congenial for the most part.

Since the beginning of jury selection March 22, three jurors had birthdays, celebrating with small parties during breaks in the trial. When things got really slow, they played board games and put together jigsaw puzzles.

Despite opposing positions, five of them, including Soriano-Hewitt, discovered a common bond in their addiction to nicotine. At every opportunity, they scurried off to the balcony for a quick smoke. Three of them, whose shared habit sparked a friendship while they were still in the jury pool, attended a Memorial Day barbecue hosted by a fellow smoker--a juror from another trial.

King’s attorneys expressed outrage, and said the outing might provide grounds for an appeal if the jurors discussed the case during the party.

Judge John G. Davies quizzed the jurors but took no action. “We all had smoking in common, I’m ashamed to say,” said Soriano-Hewitt, who attended the party.

Sitting in a small room on the eighth floor of the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building, crowded among boxes of evidence and three police batons, the jurors set ground rules from the beginning, vowing to be respectful of one another’s opinions.

That was easiest in the first phase of their deliberations, they said, when there were medical bills and employment projections from both sides to weigh. But deciding on punitive damages was more of a struggle.

A male juror, who asked not to be identified, said four other jurors--including the forewoman--wanted to send a strong message to the police that they could not beat a suspect and get away with it.

“There were some jurors who felt that there should be some kind of statement made that the police would realize that they had stepped out of bounds and the force was excessive,” the juror said.

He and the other jurors said they thought that the police had acted as they had been instructed. “I felt that the police had done the best they could with the training they had,” the juror said. “I didn’t feel any message had to be sent.

One of his allies added: “There was no doubt in my mind that Mr. King was at fault for a good deal of what happened. The police officers were using the tools that they have been given.”

The sole African American on the racially mixed jury, Cynthia Kelly, a self-employed seamstress from South Pasadena, reacted bitterly to the outcome, which meant that King, who is black, would receive no additional money beyond the $3.8 million in compensatory damages awarded earlier. She told reporters Wednesday: “There was no justice here . . . no justice at all. It’s purely black and white.” But she refused to explain why she ultimately voted to award no punitive damages.

“I was a millisecond away from saying no,” said Kelly, who on Thursday called Milton Grimes, King’s lead attorney, and urged him to appeal the verdict. “You don’t beat someone into submission like that.”

Soriano-Hewitt said she believes part of the problem was the limited exposure some of the jurors had to African Americans. “The jurors had a hard time dealing with King,” she said. “They had a difficult time just seeing him as a person. If Rodney King was Denzel Washington, everyone would have awarded him millions of dollars. But he’s not. He is who he is.”

Although Soriano-Hewitt, a Filipino American, did tell the other jurors that she had been married to an African American, and was the mother of their three sons, no one learned the full story of her late husband’s background until they read Thursday’s newspaper.

“He was quite a notorious guy,” said Deputy City Atty. Don Vincent, who headed the defense team. “We probably would have kicked her off with that kind of connection, but it probably turned out for the best in the end.”

Times staff writers Jesse Katz, John Hurst and Miles Corwin contributed to this story.