Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 9, 1993 TAG: 9309100412
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEROME H. SKOLNICK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In a state courtroom, a 45-page questionnaire was released on Monday to prospective jurors in the trial of Damian Williams and Keith Watson. They are accused of bludgeoning trucker Reginald Denny in the riots sparked by the Simi Valley, Calif., jury's acquittal of four Los Angeles Police Department officers accused of bludgeoning motorist Rodney King.
On Wednesday, in a federal courtroom, Judge John G. Davies surprised most observers by imposing sentences of 21/2 years on two of those officers, Stacey Koon and Laurence M. Powell, who were convicted of depriving King of his civil rights.
The cases are, of course, very different from a legal perspective. Police are authorized to use force, even deadly force, in the performance of their duties. Nobody is allowed to express rage by pounding and nearly killing an innocent truck driver whose skin color symbolizes an enemy.
Yet, as the reasons given by Judge Davies show, legal logic and socio-logic are not so distant. In explaining the relatively light sentences, which must have astounded the defendants, Davies said that most of the beating they gave King was lawful, with only the last 19 seconds being unlawful. The judge added that inflicting the worst injuries, those to the face and head, did not become a crime until King had stopped moving.
Because the videotape of the beating is available for all to see, any of us can interpret it. Those who speak for the African-American community saw a black man being beaten unmercifully by four white cops, with a dozen or so white cops looking on. From this perspective, the police were not only administering a beating; worse, they were abusing their authority, using it as a cover to act out the sentiments often expressed in racial slurs over LAPD communications channels, as documented later by the Christopher Commission.
I have reviewed the tape any number of times, and I didn't see what the judge saw. From my perspective, the first 10 blows might be justified, but not the remaining 46. Davies sees the last 19 seconds as unjustifiable. I see maybe the first 19 as justifiable. And he doesn't mention the racist remarks that were made that night over the LAPD radio.
Moreover, the injuries to King's face and head were never justifiable; even the defendants did not try to justify them. They said that the injuries were caused by his fall to the ground, not by baton blows. Why? Because LAPD policy forbade blows to the head with a metal baton, a deadly weapon.
Yet, on balance, I don't disagree with the sentence. In part, that is because I think that the federal sentencing guidelines are entirely too severe, imposed as part of a war-on-crime-and-drugs mentality that has distorted legislation and our communal understandings of crime and punishment. A year in prison is one helluva long time.
I also think that, while the two officers deserve punishment, seven or eight years of imprisonment would have a severe and unwarranted impact on their wives and children. Koon and Powell are, after all, first offenders. As convicted felons, they will never be able to resume their former occupations. And judging by the lawyers' fees they must have paid, they're probably broke.
Still, I can understand the frustration of the African-American community. Rep. Maxine Waters, D.-Calif., called the verdict ``a kiss on the wrist.'' To many of those watching the videotape of King's beating, the LAPD was an army of oppressors.
The report of former FBI Director William Webster, commissioned to recommend reforms in the LAPD, criticized the organization for its practice of routinely ``proning out'' and handcuffing detainees in minority neighborhoods. (The ``prone out'' position requires the arrestee to lie face-down on the ground, hands behind the back.) Imagine what suburban whites would think if they saw a videotape showing a large white man on the ground being pounded 56 times by four black cops as a platoon of black cops watched impassively, and then to hear the cops claim that the white man was drunk and unmanageable. Would the whites viewing 90 seconds of the beating agree that 71 seconds of it were justifiable?
Ultimately, what is seen on the videotaped beating of Rodney King derives from social, not legal, logic. Judge Davies used his considerable legal skills to minimize a sentence within guidelines that are intended to thwart judicial discretion and sentencing disparity.
Although the penalty itself can be justified on humanitarian grounds, its interpretation of reasonable force cannot. Tragically, its reasoning will widen racial divisions in Los Angeles and the nation.
\ Jerome H. Skolnick is a law professor in the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program at the University of California, Berkeley and the co-author of ``Above the Law: Police and the Excessive Use of Force.''
The Los Angeles Times
by CNB