Thirty years ago this week, a federal jury convicted two Los Angeles police officers of violating Rodney King’s civil rights when arresting him after a high-speed chase early March 3, 1991. Two other officers were acquitted. The verdict came nearly a year after Los Angeles erupted after a Superior Court jury in Simi Valley cleared the four White police officers accused of beating the Black motorist of all but one charge.
An amateur videotape that showed officers beating King was broadcast around the world and became a central piece of evidence in two separate trials of the four officers involved.
From The San Diego Union-Tribune, Sunday, April 18, 1993:
Videotape of beating called key to verdicts
By Gale Holland, Copley News Service
In the end, it all may have come back to the videotape — 81 seconds of sometimes-blurred images of police officers clubbing a man to the ground.
“The videotape spoke for itself,” said one of the jurors who convicted two officers of violating Rodney King’s civil rights. Two other officers were acquitted.
Legal analysts said prosecutors succeeded in riveting the jury’s attention on the video that shocked the world by attacking defense theories that had distracted from the powerful footage during the officers’ state trial in Simi Valley.
The four officers were acquitted of all but one state charge a year ago, but later were indicted under federal civil-rights statutes.
State prosecutors were second-guessed for relying too heavily on the videotape, and for playing it so often that the jury became numbed to it.
Federal prosecutors minimized replays of the tapes, observers said. They also scored coups with the unexpectedly emotional testimony of a California Highway Patrol officer.
CHP Officer Melanie Singer testified tearfully that she would never forget Officer Laurence Powell slamming King in the head with his baton.
The government, in an 11th-hour tactic, also punctured the defense’s unified front by showing the jury a tape of defendant Theodore Briseno’s state trial testimony. Briseno broke ranks in Simi Valley and described his fellow officers’ conduct as wrong.
Together, testimony from the two officers shattered the “code of silence” that had shielded the police from abuse charges, attorneys said.
“It demonstrated for the jurors that the parade of police officers the defense put on the stand, all of whom denied that anything improper happened, were just other witnesses, subject to the same biases, imperfections and misperceptions that all witnesses have,” said Kevin Reed, an NAA Legal Defense and Educational Fund attorney and civil-rights litigator.
Singer had testified for the prosecution in the state trial, but this time was called by the defense — a major blunder, several attorneys said.
Experts also cited the testimony of King, who belied the defense description of him as a drug-crazed monster.
“That was exaggeration to cover up their behavior,” said Laurie Levenson, a Loyola Law School professor and former prosecutor who watched most of the trial.
Powell, who struck most of the baton blows against King, and Sgt. Stacey Koon, the ranking officer at the beating scene, were convicted by the federal jury. Theodore Briseno and Timothy Wind were acquitted.
