Race is a word that probably will never come up in the Rodney King trial, which resumes in federal court Monday.
It was absent in the opening arguments last Thursday. And it cannot be found in the prosecution’s trial memo submitted Jan. 28.
But it hovers about the case like the specter of an uninvited guest.
It’s fair to argue that if Rodney King had been white, drunk and speeding, there may have been outrage at his beating by police officers. But there almost certainly would have been no riots after their acquittal in a state court.
There are white men who can relate to the experience of having been abused in their youth by police officers. But it does not carry the same 400-year history, social context and perceptions of justice as it does for African-Americans.
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Race briefly became a formal legal issue months ago. In September, U.S. District Judge John G. Davies ruled that the government must prove that officers Laurence Powell, Stacey Koon, Theodore Briseno and Timothy Wind deprived King of his civil rights “on account of (his) color or race.”
Prosecutors protested, but defense lawyers were overjoyed. The race requirement would make an already difficult case for the prosecution even harder to win.
“This is the quintessential racial case of the decade,” defense lawyer Harland Braun told reporters at the time. “It was brought as a racial case, and it is universally perceived as a racial case. It’s even in Spike Lee’s movie (`Malcolm X’) because it’s a racial case. Now the government is trying to say it’s not.”
But Davies-wisely, in the opinion of legal scholars-rethought his decision. It was impressed upon him that civil rights cases often involve white citizens, with race not a factor. So he dropped the requirement.
But racial issues continued to surround the case. For example, the three African-Americans charged with beating white trucker Reginald Denny during the riots last spring were jailed in lieu of six-figure bail bonds. The four officers in the King case were free at the time on $5,000 bonds.
Rightly or wrongly, the perception of many African-Americans was of two standards of justice for two groups of men-one white, one black, both charged with beating a member of another race.
Race again became a question earlier this month when the jury was selected for the federal trial. The perception is widely held among both blacks and many whites that the lack of urban minorities on the Simi Valley state jury last year was a factor in the acquittal of the officers. The panel, these people said, had a white suburban, pro-police tilt.
In the federal case, defense lawyers questioned prospective black jurors for any sign of a sense of mission or anti-police bias in wanting to serve on the jury.
Prosecutors complained that white jurors were not exposed to such probing questioning, although it could be argued that prosecutors probed reasonably hard for any pro-police bias.
Thursday, race again emerged when prosecutor Steven Clymer told jurors that in transporting King from one hospital to another for treatment and jailing the night of the beating, two of the officers made an unlogged stop for two hours at their station house. While there, according to Clymer, two other officers came out to view the handcuffed and beaten King.
Prosecutors implied it was the showing off of a trophy. But lawyers for officers Powell and Wind, who made the stop, have said it was both curiosity about what someone on the drug PCP acted like and also a “remote booking” and notification of King’s parole officer, before taking him to the county hospital.
Mentioned or not, race is an inevitable subtext of the trial for minorities, said Joseph Hicks, director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference office in Los Angeles.
“I don’t know whether that was the guiding motive the night of the beating,” he said.
“But what is clear from the tapes produced at the first trial is the haunting specter of officers who do have racial attitudes that are part of how they approach their jobs . . . part of what they carry with them, like their badge,” he said.