American Travesty : How justice failed the Rodney King cops

Suppose that two defendants were tried on felony-assault charges and acquitted by a jury, then tried for the same acts before another jury and once more acquitted. Suppose that the victim of the purported assault then sued for civil damages and that a third jury found the defendants not liable for his injuries. And suppose that after this legal vindication the defendants were fired from their jobs, denied employment in their profession, and ostracized.

This account describes the fate of Timothy Edward Wind and Theodore Joseph Briseno, two former Los Angeles police officers with small roles in the violent real-life drama that is remembered as the "Rodney King beating." They and two other LAPD defendants were acquitted by a pro- police suburban jury on April 29, 1992, in verdicts that ignited the deadly Los Angeles riots. Wind and Briseno were again acquitted in 1993 by federal jurors who were more sympathetic to King than to the police and who feared another riot unless they returned convictions-one of the factors that led them to find the two other officers guilty of violating King's civil rights. In 1994, the third jury awarded King $3.8 million in damages after the City of Los Angeles conceded liability; but the jury found that none of the officers was liable for King's injuries when he was beaten and subdued after a high-speed pursuit in the early morning hours of March 3, 1991.

Few know these facts. For most Americans the words "Rodney King" evoke a graphic videotape that appears to show a multitude of police officers savagely beating a helpless man. This videotape, shown so often on television that a principled CNN news director complained about its use as "wallpaper," is burned into our collective memory. Because the officers are white and King is black, many who saw the videotape assumed that those doing the beating were racists as well as brutes, an opinion disputed by the state prosecutor, an African American, who said that King was not beaten because of his race. But words cannot match the emotional power of the videotape. President George Bush said he was "sickened" by it and all but promised during the riots that the four LAPD officers would face prosecution on federal charges, as they did. When, on April 17, 1993, Sergeant Stacey Cornell Koon and Officer Laurence Michael Powell were convicted of violating King's civil rights, black teenagers danced in the streets. The next day, a week after Easter, Mayor Tom Bradley hailed as "the first day of a new life for Los Angeles." But even those celebrating the convictions might be surprised to learn that the two defendants who were acquitted the day before have arguably suffered more than the two who were sent to prison.

The incident began near midnight on March 2, 1991, on a Los Angeles freeway when two California Highway Patrol officers clocked a car at speeds up to 115 miles an hour. The driver wouldn't stop. He led police cars on a 7.8-mile pursuit on freeways and city streets before being forced to pull over because another vehicle was blocking his path. The driver was Rodney King, a tall, muscular man weighing 250 pounds who had recently been paroled after serving a state-prison term for robbery. King and two friends spent the evening of March 2 drinking malt liquor before deciding, as one of them later testified, to go "cruising around . . . looking for some girls." King's blood-alcohol level when he was arrested was .19, nearly two and one-half times the legal limit.

After King pulled over, his friends complied with police orders to get out of the car and lie face down on the ground. They were not harmed. King, however, was slow to get out and slow to obey police commands once he did. He danced and wiggled his buttocks at the female CHP officer who had initiated the pursuit. When she advanced upon him with gun drawn, Stacey Koon feared there might be a shooting, took over the arrest, and ordered officers at the scene to holster their guns. He had noticed that King was "buffed out," a term applied to muscular men who have lifted weights in prison, and decided that King was an ex-convict who could be fleeing the scene of a crime. When he shouted at King to lie face down with his arms outstretched, King did not comply and stared back at the sergeant with a glazed look. Koon then ordered four officers to jump on King and subdue him. One of them put a knee in King's back, trying to force his left arm behind him so he could handcuff him, but King was too strong. With a quick motion, King tossed Officers Briseno and Powell off his back, while the other two officers backed away. Koon next tried to immobilize King with an electric stun gun known as a Taser, which fires darts carrying a charge of 50,000 volts. This didn't work either. King writhed when hit by the first two-dart volley but did not go down. Koon fired a second volley. This time King fell, but he was soon back on his feet and charging toward Powell. By now, Koon was convinced that he had more on his hands than a strong, combative drunk-he believed King was under the influence of the drug phencyclidine, or PCP, which can endow its users with extraordinary strength.