(4 of 5)
According to the defense, that meant it was all right to keep beating King until he assumed a "compliance posture" by lying still and putting his hands on his head. The lawyers pressed the point that police work -- and police -- can sometimes be brutal, within the allowed limits. Expert witnesses stood before jurors to demonstrate the "power swings" and "chops" with heavy batons that are taught to police cadets. "What are you trained to do with your batons?" a defense lawyer asked his client on the stand. "To break bones" was the answer.
Attorney Paul DePasquale, who represented defendant Officer Wind, summed up the general defense line when he told the court that his client "dealt with the situation as it unfolded in accordance with his experience and training. His situation was one of fear and frustration, and not pleasure in inflicting injuries."
All of this ate away at the strength of the prosecution's strongest card, the videotape. Though it may seem incontrovertible, video evidence has been discounted by juries in other trials. A South Carolina jury last month acquitted a man accused of raping his wife, even though he taped the assault. Videos in less widely publicized police-brutality cases have also failed to persuade juries.
In the King beating case, continual repetition of the video may have dulled its initial horror for the jury. And by presenting the tape in slow motion, separated into split-second frames, the defense fractured a seamless sequence of apparent brutality into a hundred moments of uncertain meaning. Attorney Stone contended that King can be seen attempting to rise at several points. "In the hundredths of a second between this photograph and this one," Stone said of one display, "Mr. King is again coming up off the ground, and he charges Officer Powell."
The defense attorneys also got jurors to believe that the prostrate King, not the skull-drumming officers, was "controlling the incident." He could have ended the beating, they contended, by simply adopting a compliant posture. Insisting on the stand that King repeatedly refused to lie facedown on the ground, Sergeant Stacey Koon contended that King was attempting to "either escape or attack my officers." Koon defended his part of the assault on King -- which included more than half a dozen blows to the head from Koon alone -- as "managed and controlled use of force."
By the time the trial was over, the jurors would have the defense line all but committed to memory. "King just continued to fight," one later told the Los Angeles Times. "So the police department had no alternative. He was obviously a dangerous person, massive size and threatening actions . . . Mr. King was controlling the whole show with his actions." Completing her recital of defense positions, she added, "They're policemen, they're not angels. They're out there to do a low-down, dirty job."
Another juror said she had her doubts about the officers' innocence but was stymied by the precise terms of the instructions to the jury. "I believe there was excessive use of force, but under the law as it was explained to us we had to identify specific 'hits' that would show specific use of force. It had to be beyond a reasonable doubt, and I just couldn't do that."