Rodney King's Conviction

-What this should say: Normally, I don't judge a person by their colour.

Prior to watching the documentary film " ‘Rodney King’ Case: What the Jury Saw in California v. Powell", I had only a few tidbits of information in terms of background knowledge concerning this event. Although the film was, at the very least, dry from time to time, I thoroughly enjoyed bearing witness to what truly happened that night-hearing and seeing both testimonies unmediated by mainstream media...

One of the things that bothered me throughout the duration of the film was the persecuting lawyers approach and strategy towards Rodney King’s case. By my standards, White clearly illustrated his incompetence as a lawyer, was unsuccessful at delivering and coming to a clear point, and played a substantial role in the loss of the case. I am aware that this is a very strong statement to make, but there were too many incidences where White failed to elaborate on crucial points in King’s favor- altogether missing ample opportunities to nail the involved officers for excessive force and racism. For instance, White failed to make an overarching point that connected Powel’s supposed racial slur about the 'Gorilla's in the Mist' to a blatant account of racism. Although White should have had the upper hand in this argument, having a perfect opportunity to pin the defendance as racists, he danced around the question and gave the defendance ample opportunity to discredit the point that White was attempting to make. Instead, White asked tedious and irrelevant questions like: 'where there any gorilla's there that night' etc. allowing Powel to respond to them in a tone that gave all persons present in the courtroom the impression that there was no point to be made, or better yet, that the questions did not have any validity in the first place. This is only one of many examples that illustrates White's incompetence as a lawyer.

I personally believe that it would have been an effective strategy, on behalf of the persecutor, to compare Rodney King's incident and reaction to that of another victim at the mercy of a large group, equipped with weapons. What becomes immediately apparent is that in almost all instances the victim will attempt to get on his/her feet to escape pain or even death- regardless of who is responsible for the beat down. As someone that has already been exposed to video footage capturing extreme gang beats and witnessed a barrage of police beating teenagers (that were arguably innocent) for drinking in a park, I can confidently say that it is a natural instinct for someone who is being beaten to attempt to stand up. I’m not trying to say that this is a perfectly valid argument that could hold up in court, but I believe that if White were not so convinced that it was an open and close case, and had he put more thought and creativity into it, the case may have gone over in Kings’ favor.

Generally speaking, I would have to say that White did not make good use of the footage, presentation, witnesses and the sympathy appeal-altogether delivering a weak persecution. That footage most definitely should have worked in Kings’ favor, but because the defendance where more creative and tactical with their deliverance, reasoning and conclusions-they were the ones who reaped the benefits in the end. It seems to me that White was overly confident, and thus did not spend enough time collecting, building and reinforcing arguments that framed the officers as brutal, racist, unprofessional police officers who took advantage of their supreme power.

-How could the jury look at this man in the eyes, and say that police brutality was not an issue. Had White decided to bring Rodney up to the stand (especially if he still showed visible signs of injury) the people of the court may have seen that Rodney King was a REAL person and did indeed suffer from the extreme force that was so readily inflicted upon him.