Word: kooning
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...probably better this time. For one thing, it presented a united front. In the first trial, Officer Theodore Briseno testified that his fellow officers were "out of control." This time he and two other defendants opted military style to leave the talking to the senior officer, ) Sergeant Stacey Koon -- although a tape of Briseno's testimony was shown over vociferous objections from the defense...
...from pleading for understanding, Koon insisted his explicit intention had been to "break bones" to get King to submit: "The intent I had was to cripple him, to make him unable to push off the ground. You can't push off the ground if your elbows are broken. You can't push off the ground if your knees are broken." Any taint of sadism was probably reinforced by testimony that another of the accused, Laurence Powell, left the battered King in the back of a patrol car for nearly an hour while swapping "war stories" with colleagues before taking...
...Koon's roughhewn rhetoric reminded some onlookers of the unyielding officer played by Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men and seemed likely to polarize jurors the way that character polarized moviegoers. But the defense does not need to win acquittal; it is almost as effective to persuade enough to hang a jury. Outside the courtroom, Koon and Powell boasted of having won at least one female admirer on the jury. Many observers predicted a split verdict -- a slap at most for Briseno and Timothy Wind, something sterner for Koon and especially Powell, who struck the most blows. Powell...
Where the suburban Simi Valley jury in the first trial heard prosecutors harp on the videotape, this team meticulously countered defense evidence. On whether King's facial wounds came from police batons, Koon testified, "Mr. King fell like a tree. He made a one-point landing on his face." Dr. Harry Smith of San Antonio, Texas, a leading expert witness, asserted this scenario was impossible. The bones beneath King's right eye were crushed to powder, which required a pressure equivalent to 350 lbs., while his nose, which would have been broken by pressure of about 50 lbs., remained intact...
...force, Sergeant Mark Conta, and a California Highway Patrol member who saw King beaten, Melanie Singer. Conta said, "We never teach to break bones. I see excessive force here. The picture I see is that of a beaten man who is not combative or aggressive." He faulted each defendant: Koon for failing to intervene, Wind for six "brutal kicks," Briseno for stomping on King's neck, and Powell for a fusillade of chest blows that he termed "the most flagrant violation...