Jurors From State Trial Give Mixed Reviews to Verdicts : Aftermath: Some panelists say they are glad officers were found guilty. But others cite differences in the federal case.

The jury in the Rodney G. King federal civil rights trial accomplished what another 12 men and women in Simi Valley last year could not: It convicted two of the four officers, an outcome that relieved many who had feared another violent aftermath.

But on Saturday, four of the Ventura County jurors in the state case against the officers offered mixed reactions to the final major chapter in one of the most-watched police brutality cases in history.

Two of the jurors who had sought Laurence M. Powell’s conviction said they were emotionally torn by the federal trial’s results. But another juror said she was pleased that the federal jury in Los Angeles pronounced Powell guilty, while another--the former jury forewoman--said she would agree with its verdicts “no matter what.”

“I feel that no matter what the verdict had been, I would agree with it,” Dorothy Bailey, 66, who has moved from Camarillo to Utah, told Associated Press. “I do not have the prerogative to question their decision. I don’t think anybody has, unless they were sitting there every day.”

Virginia B. Loya, 42, of Ventura, who was among the four jurors who had argued to find Powell guilty last year, said she and her family hugged Saturday morning after watching TV reports of the guilty verdicts returned against Powell and Sgt. Stacey C. Koon. She and the others eventually joined the rest of the jury in acquitting Powell on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon. But they held out on the charge of assault under color of authority, causing the jury to deadlock on that count against Powell.

“I’m pleased,” Loya said. The federal jury “ended up with what I really wanted.”

Loya said Powell’s guilt was obvious from the videotape of the King beating, shot by amateur cameraman George Holliday. “The beating, the over-excessive force he used, all of that right there shows he was completely out of control.”

The federal jury was also right to convict Koon, she said.

“He was the officer in charge of this, and I feel there should have been a plan,” Loya said. “He could have stopped (King) in some other way. With so many officers there, there’s something he should have come up with.”

Loya said she was also pleased by the acquittals of Officers Timothy E. Wind and Theodore J. Briseno.

“I saw the film at a slower pace,” she said of the segment showing Briseno stomping the prone King on the back of his neck--which Briseno’s attorneys argued that he did to keep King from rising and being beaten further. “It did show that he was trying to help.”

Christopher C. Morgan of Simi Valley, who said his family endured months of threats after the first trial, did not share Loya’s pleasure with the federal verdicts. “There’s nothing to feel good about,” he said.

Although he said he thinks Powell used excessive force against King, it bothers him that the two juries will be compared when the trials were so different.

In addition to having different prosecutors, witnesses and testimony, the federal trial appeared to have a more controlled atmosphere than the one in Simi Valley, he said.

“The first trial was a three-ring circus,” largely because it was televised, he said. “We did the best job we could do under the circumstances.”

Another juror--a Thousand Oaks computer programmer who did not want to be identified--was cautious in evaluating the federal verdicts.

“My concern is whether it was justice or mob justice,” he said, referring to the threat of more rioting that had hung over the jury in the federal civil rights case.

The 39-year-old juror said he agreed that Powell had violated King’s civil rights. “But I didn’t want to see him railroaded,” he said.

The Thousand Oaks man said he believes that federal prosecutors did a better job than the Los Angeles County deputy district attorneys last year in arguing to convict the four police officers.

He said, however, that he cannot fully judge how the federal jury reached different decisions. “I don’t know what was presented” at the trial, he said.

Although he stands by his decisions in last year’s trial, the juror said he still carries the emotional baggage of the outraged public response to the jury’s verdicts. “It’s still hard to accept (that) something I did triggered the riots.”

He said he does not take full responsibility for the burning, looting and beatings that swept Los Angeles. The conditions in the poorest parts of Los Angeles were the root cause of the unrest, he said.

Now, the soft-spoken man said, after spending much of the last year defending the verdicts he and his fellow jurors returned, he just wants to get on with his life.

But noting that the trial of the men charged with beating truck driver Reginald O. Denny during the riots, and the sentencing of Powell and Koon, are still ahead, he said: “I’m not convinced I can put it behind.”