SIMI VALLEY, Calif. -- Los Angeles police officer Laurence Powell, under aggressive questioning Wednesday in his brutality trial, carefully avoided answering a prosecutor's questions about whether his repeated clubbing of motorist Rodney King was justified.
In his second and final day as a witness in his own defense, Powell, 29, said the highly publicized videotape of the King beating was 'an accurate portrayal of the incident but it was not my memory.'
Under rigorous cross-examination by Deputy District Attorney Terry White, Powell defended his actions during King's March 3, 1991, arrest, but admitted another viewer of the tape could have a different perception.
'You can't look at the videotape and say every (blow) is reasonable, can you?' White asked.
'I can if I put it in my perspective,' said Powell, one of four white Los Angeles police officers charged with the beating of the 26- year-old black motorist following a high-speed chase through the San Fernando Valley.
King's arrest was recorded by a nearby resident on a videotape that was shown repeatedly on television news reports. The tape, which showed King being kicked and clubbed by officers 56 times, shocked viewers and set off political infighting among Los Angeles city officials.
An appeal court ruled that the political fallout had tainted the Los Angeles County jury pool and ordered the trial moved to this eastern Ventura County suburb.
Powell said he has seen the now-famous videotape some 40 to 50 times, but it is not what he remembers seeing the night of the beating.
The videotape -- which shows Powell, officers Theodore Briseno, 39, and Timothy Wind, 31, and Sgt. Stacey Koon, 41, beating and kicking King and firing stun-gun darts at him -- is the key element in the assault and excessive force case against the four officers.
White fired caustic questions at the officer, at times asserting Powell was not telling the truth.
Powell, whose father and sister were in the audience Wednesday, remained calm and did not appear rattled by the prosecutor's tone. The onslaught also brought virtually no objections from defense attorneys.
In addition to the charges of assault with a deadly weapon and excessive force under color of authority, Powell and Koon are charged with filing false police reports to cover up their actions.
One report, written by rookie officer Wind, had to be approved by Powell, his training officer. Powell also prepared a second use-of-force report which was approved by Koon.
Much of White's cross-examination was spent picking apart Powell's reports in an attempt to find inconsistencies.
Powell admitted the records did not contain 'exact detail' but were a 'synopsis' of the events that night.
Powell has contended the beating stemmed from his belief that King was under the influcene of PCP, a hallucinogenic drug that makes a user extremely powerful and aggressive.
White suggested Powell was trying to cover up the beating because his reports downplayed King's injuries, omitting mention of facial wounds and 21 stitches, and included no remarks about King's alleged PCP use.
King, an unemployed construction worker on parole, was later found to have a blood-alcohol levle of .19 -- more than double the legal limit for California drivers -- but tests for PCP and other illegal drugs were negative.
Eyewitnesses have testified that Powell hit King in the head with his 24-inch steel baton in violation of department policy.
Powell told jurors Wednesday he believed he was in a 'fight' with King, claiming the motorist repeatedly tried to attack officers.
Powell described how his first baton blow hit King's chest as King collided with Powell's right side.
'It was kind of a matador-and-bull situation,' Powell said, describing a checked swing with his baton.
On Tuesday when Powell first took the stand, he appeared to distance himself from Koon by emphatically stating the sergeant was 'in control of the situation' and shouted commands to officers on where to hit King.
But on Wednesday, Powell sidestepped White's attempts to get him to pin blame on Koon, the ranking officer on the scene.
'If there was excessive force used that night, would Sgt. Koon be responsible?' White said, his finger pointing at Koon behind the defense table and his voice rising.
'That's not a question I can answer,' Powell replied. 'That doesn't make sense.'
'You wouldn't say it in front of this jury if the force was excessive, would you?' White countered, implying the prosecution's contention that a code of silence exists among the police.
Powell calmly replied, 'No, that's not true.'
'Everybody out there was responsible for their own actions,' Powell later added.
White also questioned Powell about his perceptions of King as a man or an animal, apparently alluding to several animal analogies Powell and Koon used after the incident on patrol car computers.
'At any time during that evening did it go through your mind this was not a human being you were beating?' White asked.
'No.'
'He deserved to be treated like a human. He wasn't an animal, was he?' White said.
'No, he was just acting like one ... because of his uncontrollable behavior,' the officer replied.
Jurors have heard testimony that Koon referred to King as a 'lizard' and that Powell used the phrase 'gorillas in the mist' in reference to a black couple's domestic dispute he handled earlier that night.
Wind's attorney was scheduled to begin presenting his case Thursday and was expected to ask Superior Court Judge Stanley Weisberg to allow him to present evidence about King's criminal record, which was unknown to the officers the night of the beating.
Wind was expected to take the stand either Thursday or Friday.
