Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 22, 1993 TAG: 9312030385
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Just as in the original trial of the Los Angeles police officers acquitted in the Rodney King beating case, the evidence was on tape for all to see. Both attacks were horrifying in their brutality, unjustifiable in their savagery.
Yet despite the rare prosecutorial advantage of the videotapes, jurors in both cases were unable to return verdicts that reasonable people could find fair. Rather than blind justice, justice may have been blinded by racial politics.
In the initial case, prosecutors may have erred in not allowing victim King to testify. In the trial of Denny's assailants, they may have erred in filing too many charges - thereby confusing the issue for jurors by raising otherwise unnecessary questions about premeditation and creating unwarranted sympathy for the defense argument that their clients were scapegoats for all the riot.
Both the King and Denny beatings also held an element of mob psychology.
If rioting were not occurring all around them, would defendants Damian Williams and Henry Watson have dragged an innocent motorist from his vehicle, beaten him mercilessly, then smashed a brick into his head? Probably not. If a group of police officers were not gathered, lending an air of legitimacy to the action and creating a conspiracy of consent that no individual dared break, would nearly so many blows have been rained on Rodney King? Probably not.
But should the presence of mob psychology excuse individual misbehavior? No.
In a civilized society, it is to protect the innocent against mob brutality that laws are made, and why they must be enforced without regard to race or any of those other differences that make one group vulnerable to the suspicions and hatred of another.
In the past, letting racial considerations override issues of individual responsibility let hooded white men go free after they lynched blacks.
This week, if Williams and Watson were acquitted on some of the most serious charges against them not on legal grounds, but because of fears of repercussions or riots, that would be another blow to justice in America.
by CNB