Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 20, 1994 TAG: 9404200104
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
The award was significantly below the $15 million sought by King's lawyers but well above the $800,000 the city said was a fair sum.
King was not present in the courtroom for the reading of the jury's verdict, which came on the fourth day of deliberations.
Compensatory damages are intended to pay for King's losses, including income and medical expenses. Only the city was liable for compensatory damages.
A second phase of the trial, to begin immediately, will determine punitive damages. There will be 14 defendants in the second phase. They include the officers who beat King, as well as officers who stood by at the scene.
The civil trial was the third courtroom action following the March 3, 1991, beating, which focused national attention on police brutality.
Last April, a federal civil rights trial resulted in convictions of two officers now serving 30-month sentences for violating King's rights.
In 1992, four officers, including the two later convicted, were found innocent in a state criminal trial - a verdict which sparked three days of rioting.
In the most recent trial, a new set of jurors was asked to decide how much money should be awarded to King to compensate for his medical bills, pain, suffering and loss of employment potential.
At one point, King offered to settle with the city for $9.6 million; he rejected a $1.25 million counter-offer.
Though the city admitted liability as the trial began, its lawyers sought to minimize King's injuries. Much of the three-week compensatory damage trial was a battle of medical experts, who disagreed on questions of permanent disability and brain damage.
In the years since he was first glimpsed by TV viewers on a grainy videotape, King, 29, had told the story of his beating only in bits and pieces. At the civil trial, he gave his most graphic account.
``I felt like I had been raped,'' he told jurors. ``I felt like I had lost half of my face. . . . I could hear my bones crunching every time the baton hit me. It sounded like throwing an egg and hearing the shell crack.''
When officers hogtied and dragged him to the side of the road, he said, ``I felt like a cow that was waiting to be slaughtered, like a piece of meat . . . . I was just so scared. I felt like I was going to die.''
He also recalled his assailants yelling racial epithets - a point disputed in all the trials.
The city focused on King's character before the beating, eliciting testimony about his use of alcohol and drugs, his time behind bars for robbery and his involvement with a transvestite prostitute. They suggested his current troubles were his own fault.
King's lawyers portrayed him as a victim of racism, a man who was ``beaten like a dog'' because he is black.
Their experts said he has permanent brain damage causing mental confusion, blurry vision, headaches and an inability to concentrate. With his notoriety, they said, has come paranoia, transforming King into a fearful man who wears a bulletproof vest, hides behind shuttered windows and hesitates to go out in public.
In closing arguments, King's lawyers elevated him to the stature of black heroes, comparing him to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers and Malcolm X as a symbol of civil rights.
by CNB