First Rampart Trial Will Take Center Stage This Fall

Today, Friday, the day of the week that new movies open, the biggest show in town is supposed to start filling the seats--the Rampart trial.

Technically, it shouldn’t be called the Rampart trial. The first, yes--the first criminal trial to emerge from the sump of the police misconduct scandal--four cops on trial, accused of framing gang members by planting evidence and lying on police reports or in court.

But there are likely to be more trials, as there have already been many Rampart courtroom hours. There’s a groove in the courthouse linoleum from the lawyers for the men and women--How many is it so far, 100? And counting?--whose convictions based on problematic police work have been dumped. And when they’re done in criminal court, the lawyers are taking numbers outside City Hall, lining up for some conscience bucks to try to make good conviction.

Even so, like the movies, the first trial is likely to get a bigger audience than any sequels.

Its antihero star is Rafael Perez, “rogue cop” in casting shorthand. The “hero” part applies only because Perez came clean about bad things in Rampart, and he did so for the same reason bad guys always do--to save his own hide.

You won’t be seeing Bernard C. Parks, the chief of police, raise his right hand and solemnly swear on the witness stand, nor Gil Garcetti, the district attorney.

Yet judging from questions that lawyers put to the pool of jurors, you’d almost expect them to be there, along with the mayor, and Rodney King and Daryl Gates and Reginald Denny, and why not dig up Sam Yorty and Tom Bradley and put them in the dock, too.

Whatever it says on the cover sheet to Case BA204531, this trial is not about just four cops; did anyone really ever think it was? It’s about the way things work and the way things go awry in this immense urban plain.

More than the parks and beaches, more than the movie houses, in this most private of cities, the courtroom has become the neighborhood, the backyard fence for all 9,885,000 of us.

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The big trials have become freighted with their own shorthand for Big Issues:

Menendez Brothers: spoiled rich kids; the abuse excuse--life made me do it.

McMartin Preschool: predators in sheep’s clothing; children as reliable witnesses; headhunting prosecutors; bad, bad mothers who leave their kids in the care of strangers.

Rodney King: police procedure and pack behavior; the videocam as reliable witness; race race race.

O.J. Simpson: skin color as destiny; the rich and famous are different from you and me; science isn’t gospel; some women have it coming; some men can’t let go.

And now Rampart: abuse of authority; official conspiracy; the underpinnings of the justice system.

One gauge of this is the questionnaire for prospective jurors. The questions themselves often cannily frame the cosmology of the case. In the first Rodney King trial, the one whose not-guilty verdicts triggered the 1992 riots, lawyers battled over the weight of words: Should it be called a “beating” or being “struck with batons”? In the second Rodney King trial, jurors were asked about affirmative action and whether they were afraid a second acquittal would mean a second riot.

San Francisco’s Trial Behavior Consulting Inc. just opened a Los Angeles office last December. The company--which sometimes runs Oscar-like ads in the legal papers congratulating its clients who win cases--was a pioneer in the field. Senior consultant Mike Tiktinsky says questionnaires are especially useful “in cases that have a lot of sensitive issues.” Even in civil cases, questionnaires explore social philosophies with queries about litigiousness and big damage awards. “We look at attitudes,” says Tiktinsky, “because attitudes are good predictors.”

The Simpson questionnaire ran to 79 pages. In the Reginald Denny case it was 45 pages, and in the second Rodney King trial, 53 pages.

The Rampart questionnaire is a modest 13 pages, with some blunt questions about police mistreatment, whether suspected gangbangers are targeted unfairly, even whether jurors know anything about police procedures.

Hard to say--does watching “Dragnet” count?

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One question was not asked and should have been: “As important as this trial is, should the public be able to see it?”

But the only people who are asked that question wear black robes. Both the trial judge and the state Court of Appeal have said no to live cameras in the courtroom.

In this town, where the pinnacle of TV coverage of law enforcement seems to be pole-to-flag coverage of car chases, this of all cases should be televised. Justice seen is justice served.

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Patt Morrison’s column appears Fridays. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com