Law Practice
Aug. 15, 2002
Inglewood Case Moves to Torrance
INGLEWOOD - In what some legal experts viewed as a smart tactical move by the defense, the case against two Inglewood police officers charged in the videotaped beating of a black teen was shifted south Tuesday from this largely minority city to the mostly white city of Torrance.
Civil rights activists, who crowded the Inglewood courthouse, immediately protested.
Some said it smacked of the change of venue in the state case against the four Los Angeles police officers who beat Rodney G. King 11 years ago.
"They just moved this case to the Simi Valley of the South Bay," civil rights lawyer Leo Terrell said, referring to the decision to try the officers who beat King in the predominately white, pro-law enforcement city in south Ventura County. The officers were acquitted, sparking the 1992 riots.
But the decision to move the case from Inglewood to Torrance was not a formal change of venue; both courthouses are in the same court district. The move was the result of a challenge raised by defense lawyer John Barnett, and, many legal observers said, it will give the officers a clear advantage at trial, a date for which has not been set.
Barnett, lawyer for Officer Jeremy Morse, exercised his right to object to the case being assigned to Judge John V. Meigs, the only full-time felony trial judge in the Inglewood courthouse. Court rules allow each side in a case to object to one judge without giving a reason.
Judge Francis J. Hourigan was selected to preside over the case after prosecutors objected earlier in the hearing to the assignment of Judge Andrew C. Kauffman, presiding judge in Torrance, a mostly white city- while Inglewood is half-black and half-Latino.
Morse and his partner, Bijan Darvish, both white, were indicted July 17 by a grand jury. Morse is seen on a amateur videotape slamming 16-year-old Donovan Jackson onto the back of a police cruiser and delivering a blow to Jackson's jaw. Morse, 24, is charged with assault under the color of authority, and Darvish, 25, is charged with filing a false police report. Both men face three years in state prison, if convicted.
The move to Torrance was the second legal victory the officers have had in as many days. On Monday, Superior Court Judge Bob T. Hight temporarily blocked the city from punishing the officers.
Police officials initially placed Morse on administrative leave, while Darvish and another Inglewood officer at the scene, Antoine Crook, were allowed to remain on the force. Chief of Police Ronald Banks announced Aug. 1 that all three officers would be disciplined, but he refused to provide details.
In temporarily blocking implementation of the discipline proceedings, Hight sided with lawyers for the officers who said the city failed to advise them of their rights before questioning them about the beating. Preliminary injunction hearings are set for Aug. 28 and 29.
"These officers should feel like they've died and gone to heaven," civil rights lawyer Howard R. Price said.
Price said Hight probably did the right thing in protecting the officers' rights by at least temporarily blocking their discipline proceedings, because prosecutors could use evidence garnered from the discipline proceedings in the criminal case.
Price, who has tried many cases in Inglewood and Torrance, said he believes the officers gained a significant advantage by getting a change of courthouses.
"They've gone from a courthouse that has a significant number of black jurors to a courthouse that has an insignificant number," Price said, "and that insignificant number is dwarfed by a largely white, conservative, pro-police jury pool."
"It is clear the defense did not 'paper' Judge Meigs because he is a bad judge," said criminal defense lawyer Andrew M. Stein, using the colloquialism lawyers use to refer to the filing of an objection against the assignment of a particular judge. "There's not a defense attorney in this town who would say Judge Meigs would not give them a fair trial. They 'papered' him clearly to engineer the case out of an Inglewood jury. There is no other logical reason."
But Stein added, "Any defense attorney worth his salt - and John Barnett is one of the most outstanding defense attorneys in this state if not this country - would have been remiss not to exercise his peremptory challenge when he knew the case would be sent to Torrance. The jury pool in Torrance ... is significantly different than the one in Inglewood."
Earlier in the day, talking over protesters with bullhorns outside the Inglewood courthouse, Barnett disputed that assertion. Inglewood and Torrance are in the same court district and have "a similar jury pool," Barnett said.
Kyle Christopherson, spokesman for the Superior Court, and Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the district attorney's office, also both maintained that Torrance and Inglewood have similar jury pools.
"Things have changed a lot down there," Gibbons said, disputing the assertion that the jury pool is mostly made up of white conservatives.
Each court draws jurors from a 20-mile radius, which means the Inglewood and Torrance jury pools "slightly" overlap, Christopherson said. Torrance is 15 miles south of Inglewood. According to the 2000 Census, Torrance is nearly 60 percent white, 2 percent African-American, 12 percent Latino and 28 percent Asian-American.
By contrast, according to census figures, Inglewood is half-African-American and half-Latino with whites, Asian-Americans and others making up only a fraction of the population.
Unlike the move of the King case to Simi Valley, the decision to hold the Inglewood trial in Torrance was not a formal change of venue, although Barnett said Tuesday he may ask later that the case be moved out of the county.
Until the 2000 unification of the Los Angeles Municipal and Superior courts, Inglewood handled only municipal cases and sent all felony cases to the Torrance or Airport courts. While court officials said Tuesday that it is still common for overflow felony cases to be sent to Torrance or the Airport, last year Inglewood handled 1,944 felony cases, according to Christopherson.
Judge Rodney G. Forneret presided over Tuesday's hearing and assigned the case to Torrance.
Some lawyers questioned why the case, which was indicted downtown, was moved to Inglewood in the first place. A long case, such as this one, is commonly tried in the downtown criminal courts building, Christopherson said, but that's up to the court's discretion.
Legal observers said that both sides in the Inglewood case could have drawn a far worse judge than Hourigan.
Hourigan, 60, was a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney for 15 years before being named a South Bay Municipal Court commissioner in 1984. The following year, Gov. George Deukmejian elevated him to the Superior Court.
"Judge Hourigan is a man of integrity," Stein said. "He is wise, fair, colorblind. Justice is justice for all people in his court. I don't think anybody would say they couldn't get a fair trial before him."
David Houston
david_houston@dailyjournal.com
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