Word: koon
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...kept their eyes away from the four defendants. An anxious city and nation listened as court clerk Jim Holmes began to read, in a practiced drone, the verdict the jurors had just handed Judge John Davies. How did the panel find on the charge that police sergeant Stacey Koon "did willfully permit" the savage beating of Rodney King by three other cops under his command, thus depriving King of his constitutional rights? Said Holmes: "Guilty...
...everyone agreed. Some blacks saw only partial justice. And some white policemen took the convictions of Koon and Powell as a slap in the face. But even among white cops, that feeling mingled with an almost giddy relief at the prospect of not having to cope with a riot on the scale of the one last year that left 53 people dead. "Everybody in Los Angeles is just happy that this cloud has finally been dispelled," said police captain Patrick Froehle. Many % blacks agreed. Said one woman, buying bacon at Sun's Market on Avalon Street, which was burned...
...said the juror, the tape was "basically what convicted them." Some other evidence that legal experts -- including a defense attorney -- thought weighed heavily: Koon's assertion that he wanted to "break bones" to get King to submit, Powell's laughter when he called an ambulance and "war stories" told to fellow officers, and King's appearance on the stand. King did not appear to be the PCP-crazed monster that Koon had described...
...Angeles is not necessarily safe yet. Koon and Powell come up for sentencing Aug. 4, and by then the trial of three blacks for the beating of truck driver Reginald Denny will be under way. The policemen could be imprisoned for 10 years. But if they get off with light sentences, and the Denny trial results in convictions and severe punishment for the blacks, the city -- and others -- could blow again. The Koon-Powell verdict has not so much purchased racial peace as averted -- for how long no one can tell -- more bloodshed, violence and animosity. But that...
...police chief Daryl Gates said it made him "sad." Stacey Koon's lawyer said his client had been made a "sacrificial animal." Some community leaders felt that only four-out-of-four convictions could right the imbalance created when Rodney King was beaten bloody, and Jesse Jackson noted, "We have been given a pause, not a plan." But after the verdict in the second King trial was read early Saturday morning, most voices raised were ones of relief and approval. President Clinton stated that the King panel had "really tried to do justice." His Attorney General, Janet Reno, simplified: "Justice...