The Rodney King Beating Verdicts

As a landmark in the recent history of law enforcement and jury trials, the Rodney King beating trials are historically comparable to the 1931 Scottsboro case (Norris v. Alabama, 294 U.S. 587, 1935) or the 1968 Huey Newton case (Newton v. California, 8 Cal App 3d 359, 87 Cal Rptr 394, 1970). The King beating cases are also similar to Florida trials that led to three urban riots and rebellion during 1980s in Miami, Florida in which police officers were acquitted of criminal charges in the death of three blacks: Arthur McDuffie in 1980, NeveU Johnson in 1982, and Clement Anthony Lloyd in 1989. The 1980 McDuffie riots, for instance, resulted in eighteen deaths and eighty million dollars in property damage (Barry v. Garcia, 573 So.2d 932 933, 1991). An all white jury acquitted police officers of all criminal charges in the face of compelling evidence against them, including the testimony of the chief medical officer who said that McDuffie's head injuries were the worst he had seen in 3,600 autopsies (Crewdson, 1980). The verdict triggered violence because it symbolized the continuation of racial inequities in the criminal justice and court system. Similarly, in the King beating trial and jury verdict which was rightly called "sickening" by then-President Bush and condemned by all segments of society, the King embroglio also provides an opportunity for evaluation and reform of police procedures, law enforcement structures, and jury trials. In the first state trial, on April 29, 1992, a predominantly white jury had tried and exonerated four Los Angeles white police officers on assault charges for the beating of a black motorist. This was both despite and due to visual court evidence of the continuous beating of King by police officers, images that had been captured on videotape by a resident of a nearby apartment. The acquittal by the predominantly white jury stunned and angered many people who had regarded the videotape of the incident as incontrovertible evidence of police brutality, racism, and a police force out of control. It also highlighted the racial tensions imploding just below the surface in Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest city. It brought into focus the anger of racial minorities who had long criticized the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) for its use of excessive force against members of racial and ethnic minorities.In the period between January 1986 and December 1990, for instance, there were 8,274 total allegations in complaints by public made against LAPD officers and 24.7% of them were allegations of LAPD officers' excessive force, the largest complaints during that time. As a result, there have been a variety of lawsuits alleging improper use of force by LAPD officers. Many of those complaints came from the neighborhoods with the largest concentration of racial and ethnic minorities (Report of the Independent Commission, 1991, p.55).The 1992 acquittal of four white police officers thus immediately set off angry reactions and protests by racial minorities in Los Angeles. Mayor Tom Bradley dismayed that "today the system failed us. The jury's verdict will never blind us to what we saw on that videotape" (Mydans, 1992a). Los Angeles District Attorney Ira Reiner added: "We disagree with the jury, but are obliged to accept the integrity of that verdict." President Bush reacted to the verdict differently, hedging: "The court system has worked. What's needed now is calm, respect for the law" (Mydans, 1992b). And then-Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton hammered President Bush for not being more "personally involved in healing the racial divisions in this country" (Abramson et al.,1992).The underlying issue of the beating incident and subsequent urban riot in 1992 has addressed the question of whether justice within the criminal court system was served in the state trial of the four white police officers for beating of a black motorist. Yet, though the public and media largely focused on the police brutality and racial conflicts with law enforcement agencies in inner-cities, one area of the criminal court system has gone largely unchallenged: The Jury. Scrutiny of the jury system suggests that the 1992 acquittal of the four white officers was not an anomaly but an inevitable consequence of the jury system in which the position of racial and ethnic minorities in the social system in general and the court system in particular has been molded by socio-historical factors of subordination (Fukurai et al., 1991a, 1991b, 1993).