Word: simi
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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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...
...most people expected. Most of the jurors appear to have made up their mind quickly that the officers were innocent. That left much of the rest of the country wondering how the evidence of their own eyes could not have been sufficient for the jury in Simi Valley, ! Calif. But this trial hinged on matters both narrower and broader than that shocking bit of videotape. The narrow ones were fine points of law that jurors must decide upon, such as what constitutes reasonable doubt and just how much force is permitted under the procedural guidelines of the Los Angeles police...
...view of many legal experts in California, the outcome may have been decided as soon as the trial venue was moved to the dry hills of Simi Valley, an overwhelmingly white, middle-class community of 100,000, 35 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. In July a state appeals court accepted defense arguments that the barrage of publicity and political fallout surrounding the case would make it impossible for a fair trial to be held in Los Angeles County. The move was surprising, though not without precedent. In a typical year, about 10 felony trials are moved in California...
That left Ventura County, and the town of Simi Valley, which is just 2% black. A large part of the local citizenry moved there to escape Los Angeles and all it represents to them: gangs, crime, high housing prices and minorities. The place is home to a large number of police and fire fighters. The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library is there. Even if Simi Valley could not be counted on to yield an old-fashioned, Alabama-style jury, any panel chosen from there was more likely to identify with the four white officers who had held the nightsticks than with...
...simi valley jury is correct in a legal sense that those police officers did not use excessive force, the laws need to be strengthened so that these beatings do not continue legally...