Youth Says Officers Beat Him

Speaking publicly for the first time since he was punched and slammed by an Inglewood police officer, 17-year-old Donovan Jackson took the witness stand Thursday, telling a jury that he was dazed and frightened, but not resisting, during the videotaped confrontation at a gas station.

Talking haltingly and often giving one-word answers, Jackson sometimes seemed confused. When the court clerk asked him to raise his right hand to take the oath, the witness lifted his left.

But on key elements of the day’s events, Jackson stuck to his account.

“They came fast,” he said, referring to law enforcement officers. “All of them started rushing me and started hitting me.”

The youth, now 17, has bulked up from the 136-pound frame that an officer threw against a police cruiser last summer.

Wearing a dark blue long-sleeve sweater and shiny black shoes, Jackson appeared nervous as he walked into the courtroom. His eyes darting, he swallowed several times as he approached the stand.

After watching -- along with others in the jammed courtroom -- the now-famous videotape of the car-slam and the punch to the face, Jackson said he had not felt the blows from former Officer Jeremy Morse, who is charged with assault.

Jackson said he was “not awake” at the time.

But when he regained consciousness, Jackson said, Morse threatened to break his nose.

“Did he say anything else?” asked Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Pettersen.

“He said it’s his world,” replied the youth.

Jackson’s comments opened testimony in the closely watched police abuse trial at the Airport Courthouse near LAX. Morse is charged with assault under color of authority. His former partner, Bijan Darvish, is charged with filing a false police report. Defense lawyers have argued that Jackson resisted Morse, justifying the officer’s use of force.

With the teenager’s testimony crucial to the case, his sometimes obvious confusion and difficulty recollecting key events quickly became a matter of debate between lawyers for the accused officers and Jackson’s allies.

“He can add nothing to the prosecution,” said John Barnett, Morse’s lawyer. “The best you can say is that his testimony is unreliable.”

In opening statements Wednesday, defense attorneys said they will present evidence, including police accounts and videotape from a surveillance camera, showing that Jackson physically attacked officers.

On the other side, the youth’s civil lawyer and family supporters said his confusion stemmed from developmental problems. His family says Jackson, who graduated from high school this year, suffers from an auditory processing disorder that affects his reading skills. In the past, family members have also suggested that the disorder may have made Jackson misunderstand the police orders.

But, they said, Jackson was being honest about the police confrontation.

“His reading ability and comprehension is not the same for you or I or someone else his age,” said Jackson’s attorney, Cameron Stewart. “Still, Donovan has always been very consistent with what happened on that day.”

“Even though he was confused, we believe he was truthful,” said Najee Ali, national director of the nonprofit civil rights organization Project Islamic Hope.

During cross-examination, defense attorneys tried unsuccessfully to get Jackson to admit that he had provoked the officers.

But the teenager did contradict some of the statements he had made earlier to authorities. He said, for instance, that he wasn’t angry at the officers. In a closed-door grand jury proceeding last year, he had said the opposite.

During questioning by prosecutors, Jackson stayed largely composed. The testimony began with his version of what happened at the Century Boulevard gas station July 6, 2002.

Jackson said he and his father, Coby Chavis, had just visited his sister’s house in Hawthorne. He was wearing a Fat Albert shirt and was hungry. After paying $20 for some gas and potato chips, he returned to the car to find his father being questioned by two sheriff’s deputies about his expired license plate.

Jackson, who was 16 at the time, said he had never had contact with police officers. Though the deputies did not threaten or hurt him initially, their mere presence scared him, he testified.

He said he followed orders by getting into the back seat of the police car. But when he saw other officers showing up, he said, he stood up in fear.

According to Jackson, the officers then rushed him and threw him to the ground. He was punched several times, he said, and hit with a large black object that he thought was a baton or a flashlight.

But the youth said he did not remember the crucial seconds that followed, when Morse picked him up, threw him atop the patrol car and then punched him. He had passed out by then, Jackson said.

Defense attorneys, who are trying to prove that the youth was coherent and attacked Morse by grabbing his crotch, pressed Jackson on the issue.

When Barnett tried to pin him down on whether he was conscious when Morse manhandled him, Jackson gave contradictory responses, finally saying that he didn’t know the definition of the word.

Then he said he thought conscious means to be “not awake.”

Barnett tried repeatedly to get Jackson to admit that he had been punching, kicking and grabbing officers while he was surrounded by them during the confrontation.

“You were just laying there?” Barnett asked.

“Yes,” Jackson replied.

“And they were beating you?”

“Yes.”

Later, Barnett held up a photograph showing blood above Morse’s ear.

“Did you do that,” he asked.

“No.”

“Did you do that?” Barnett asked, holding another photograph showing Morse’s scratched and bloody neck.

“No,” replied Jackson.

Later, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Carlos Lopez, who was one of the first officers on the scene, gave the jury a different account of the first moments of the altercation. Jackson, he said, had attacked him and started flailing about. When Morse and other Inglewood officers came to assist, Jackson continued fighting, the deputy said.

Lopez said, however, that Jackson stopped resisting after being handcuffed by Morse.

Times staff writer Akilah Johnson contributed to this report.