Beating of Rodney King
Early in the morning on March 3, 1991, an intoxicated man named Rodney King refused to pull his car over leading to an 8-mile police chase. When police finally got King to the side of the road, they ordered King to exit the vehicle and lie flat on the road. King slowly got on his hands and knees but never flat on the ground. King then stood up and made a half-hearted attempt to escape. One policeman hit King with a baton upside King's head to knock him to the ground. Around this time a group of police took out their batons and started hitting the unarmed King relentlessly. For about 90 seconds, 4 policemen kicked and beat King's head, neck, and with other police watching.
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Legal Results |
Social Results |
The day after Rodney King was attacked, video of the attack was given to media. The video soon became national news after CNN picked it up. The four policemen in the video were soon prosecuted by the the district attorney. The trial started in Los Angeles County, the location of the attack, however the defense filed a motion to move the trial to a predominately white area. The motion was initially rejected, though an appeals court found that the presiding judge had been impartial and granted the request of the defense. As jury selection started, the pool of 260 jurors included only a single black person willing to serve on the jury. This led to a deck stacked against King as the defense made the trial about race. With a race trial with one clear racial majority serving on the jury, it shouldn't have come as a big surprise for the policemen to be found innocent, yet many people were still shocked about the results because of the clear evidence.
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Even before the video evidence of Rodney King's beating was released, many African Americans believed that law enforcement unfairly targeted people by race. Most white Americans didn't believe these claims. When the video was released, black Americans were able to point to an obvious case of police brutality that more white people would agree with. In fact, 90% of LA residents would've convicted the policemen meaning numbers were much less split by race than ever before. However, this changed when the location of the trial changed. The defense presented the trial as a question of race to a panel of 12 white people, further enraging the black community while also not helping their case with white people. When the verdict was announced, many saw all preceding events of a clear example of oppression, and then the rioting began.
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