A Jarring Verdict, An Angry Spasm

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RATTLED BY TWO SUBSTANTIAL EARTHQUAKES AND their rumbling aftershocks the previous weekend, Californians had reason to relax a little by last Wednesday. The ground had stopped shaking. And then, at midafternoon, came the seismic news: a Superior Court jury in Simi Valley, a bedroom community northwest of Los Angeles, had acquitted on all but one count -- and deadlocked on that -- the four white L.A. policemen on trial for beating and otherwise mistreating black motorist Rodney King.

The verdict prompted amazement and disbelief. The King case was not another garden-variety allegation of police brutality. Everyone in the world within eyeshot of a television set had seen the amateur videotape made by a witness on the night of March 3, 1991, when, after a high-speed chase, King was forced out of his car and encircled by police. The 81-second video recorded what happened next: a danse macabre of casual, almost studied, violence. King, writhing on the pavement, was kicked by his uniformed assailants, jolted with a stun gun and hit with nightsticks 56 times.

Yet seeing, for the jurors in the King trial, was not believing. Legal experts scrambled to explain the unexpected outcome. Some cited a lackluster prosecution, which did not call King to testify, did not raise the issue of racism until late in the 29 days of testimony and may have assumed that the stark video alone guaranteed convictions. Others pointed to a crucial decision last Nov. 26, when the judge granted a defense motion for a change of venue, on the grounds of harmful pretrial publicity, from Los Angeles County to neighboring and overwhelmingly white Ventura County. Before a jury of 10 whites, one Asian and one Hispanic, defense lawyers portrayed the accused policemen as the "thin blue line" between law-abiding citizens and the rebellious, intransigent forces embodied, so the argument implied, in Rodney King.

If the jury's decision was influenced, however subconsciously, by stereotypical fears of black crime, events quickly conspired to intensify that dread. A crowd of protesters, mainly black, outraged by the acquittals, gathered before dusk at L.A. police headquarters. Some tried to storm the doors; others sheared off toward nearby city hall, where Mayor Tom Bradley had taken up a command post in the basement. A flag was set on fire; a booth in a parking lot sprouted flames. Under the night sky, patches of Los Angeles began to burn.