Juror in Murder Trial Dismissed After Comments on King Beating : Courts: Judge says woman has a prejudice against police. Despite request for a mistrial, deliberations will continue.

By MICHAEL CONNELLY

March 28, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

A Van Nuys Superior Court judge Wednesday dismissed for misconduct a black juror in a murder trial who other jurors said argued that police are untrustworthy racists, citing the Rodney G. King beating as proof.

Judge Kathryne Ann Stoltz dismissed juror Kathy Perdue for refusing to set aside her prejudice against police after other jurors complained that Perdue refused to consider police testimony in debating the possible guilt of the two black defendants.

Perdue later denied that she was prejudiced against police or obstructed the jury’s deliberations.

Stoltz dismissed Perdue, along with two other jurors let go on unrelated grounds, after one week of deliberations in the 2-month-old retrial of Devin M. Feagin, 21, and Terrill Ross, 19. The two are accused of slaying a Woodland Hills man during a robbery at his home. The first trial ended last year in a mistrial.

Over the objections of defense attorneys who asked for another mistrial, deliberations are scheduled to begin again today with three alternate jurors appointed to the panel.

Stoltz dismissed Perdue at the request of Deputy Dist. Atty. Antoinette Decker after questioning all 12 jurors about problems in their deliberations.

Several jurors told Stoltz that Perdue had strongly disagreed with the others on facts in the case and brought up the Rodney King incident, in which police were videotaped beating a motorist with batons, to support her argument that police officers lie and are biased against blacks.

One juror told Stoltz that Perdue had said, “If a policeman said it, then I don’t believe it.”

The defense contends that police planted fingerprint evidence tying Ross to the murder scene.

In dismissing Perdue, Stoltz said, “I am convinced that she did come in with a preconceived prejudice against the Los Angeles Police Department.”

Perdue, 32, who lives in the San Fernando Valley, said in an interview, “I had an open mind. I kept an open mind all the way. I did not have any prejudice against the police.

“I brought up the Rodney King incident only as an example” of police misconduct, she added.

Stoltz also dismissed jurors Hector Lelong and Gary Solomon.

Lelong was let go on the grounds that he looked up the word preponderance in a dictionary--indicating that he may have confused the civil trial standard of “preponderance of the evidence” with the stricter criminal court standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Solomon was dismissed for telling another juror that Feagin would have to “prove he was not tough,” a violation of the standard that jurors must require the prosecution to prove guilt, not the defense to prove innocence.

The unusual turn of events in the case began after Perdue, one of two black jurors, sent a note to Stoltz saying that the jury would be unable to reach a unanimous verdict. “The other jurors are doing everything possible to assume guilt without giving the defendants the benefit of the doubt,” she wrote.

Perdue also charged that another juror made an insulting reference to black dialect used by the defendants when they testified, but the judge said the juror denied doing so.

After the hearing, Lelong declined comment.

Solomon, 35, of Santa Monica said in an interview that deliberations were plagued from the outset with problems due to Perdue’s unshakable beliefs in police bias and her feelings over the Rodney King incident.

“We were deliberating and one of the jurors was distinctly affected by the news events going on outside,” Solomon said. “It was becoming a black-white thing.”

Solomon said that Perdue contended that police officers lie, saying “they had no problem doing it in the Rodney King case.” Solomon said that when other jurors told her the beating case was an unrelated issue, Perdue refused to alter her stance.

Attorneys for Ross and Feagin said the jury’s squabbles will make it impossible to reach a fair verdict.

“What’s happening here is that 80% should be gone,” Ross’s attorney, Patrick Atkinson, said of the jurors. “We don’t have a trial.”

In asking for a mistrial, Feagin’s attorney, Jack R. Stone, told Stoltz that dismissing Perdue from the panel would remove the lone vote against convicting the defendants. “You’ve taken a hung jury and unhung them,” he said.

Feagin and Ross are charged with killing Howard David King, 67, during an April 29, 1988, robbery at his Woodland Hills home.

The beating of Rodney King--no relation to Howard King--was videotaped by a bystander and has caused a national uproar over police brutality. Four Los Angeles police officers have been indicted and grand jury and FBI investigations continue.