Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 11, 1993 TAG: 9303110258
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
RODNEY KING TIRED, CONFUSED IN CROSS-EXAMINATION
A weary and confused Rodney King finished testifying Wednesday about his videotaped beating, repeatedly saying "I'm not sure" about his earlier claim that police used racial slurs as they pummeled him."I forget a lot of things that happened that night," King said as defense attorneys barraged him with a full day of accusatory cross-examination in the federal civil rights trial of four white police officers.
King, who is black, said he didn't mention racial epithets earlier because shortly after the beating, his mother told him, "We all know what went on. You don't need to make it a racial issue."
King, in his first detailed public description of the March 3, 1991, beating, said Tuesday that officers taunted him with the word "nigger" as they struck him with batons. But as cross-examination began late Tuesday, King said he wasn't sure whether they said "nigger" or "killer."
Asked repeatedly Wednesday whether he was sure that officers used the racial slur, King said again and again: "I'm not sure."
"It's not me putting the word `nigger' in there," he added. "I'm not sure. I heard either `nigger' or `killer.' "
The four officers sat across the courtroom facing King as he testified.
Prosecutors hadn't pressed the racial issue in the trial; U.S. District Judge John G. Davies had ruled that they don't need to prove that race was a motive for the beating.
Attorney Harland Braun, the last defense attorney to question King, accused him of injecting a racial issue to gain an advantage in his $50 million civil lawsuit against the city. King denied that.
Braun then noted that in a July 1991 interview, King told Deputy District Attorney Terry White about the racial slurs but didn't qualify his remarks by saying he wasn't sure.'
"You realized by then there might be more at stake than the lawsuit in terms of the rest of society and the implications if that word were used during the arrest, isn't that right?" asked Braun.
"I was only trying to keep this situation as low-key as possible," King said.
Last April, three days of deadly rioting wracked Los Angeles after the four officers were acquitted of most assault charges in a state trial. King didn't testify at that trial.
Braun angrily elicited concessions from King that he was a drunken driver the night of the beating and probably endangered others while evading police, then noted that King wasn't prosecuted nor found in violation of parole.
"So in a sense, it worked what you did that night," Braun said.
King appeared puzzled by the remark and said, "It just worked out that way."
Earlier, Michael Stone, attorney for one of the four officers, noted that investigators asked King right after the beating if he heard derogatory racial names, and he said he didn't.
"Was that because you didn't remember it?" Stone asked.
"No," King said. "In the hospital, my mom came to visit me and said, `We all know what went on. You don't need to make it a racial issue. You don't need to make it a bigger issue than it already is. So I decided to keep my mouth hush.' "
Stone established that King's accounts varied about where he put his hands when he was stopped - on the steering wheel or dashboard - as did his account of when he was first struck. Some of his recollections conflict with the famed videotape of the incident.
Stone also elicited King's concession that he lied when he told investigators the day after the beating: "I don't do dope." He admitted he had used marijuana some time before the beating.