Prosecutors Won't Oppose Venue Change : Trial: Case against 4 officers will be heard outside county in a rare move. Defense attorneys petition to remove Judge Kamins.

By RICHARD A. SERRANO

July 25, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

In a move that will hasten the trial of four Los Angeles Police Department officers accused in the Rodney G. King beating, prosecutors announced Wednesday that they will not oppose an appeals court order transferring the case out of Los Angeles County.

The decision assures that for the first time in years a highly publicized and politicized Los Angeles trial will be conducted away from this jurisdiction. It also means that a California judicial panel will begin searching other locations around the state for a suitable courtroom, and the trial could start as early as this fall.

“I don’t think this should delay the trial anymore,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Terry White. “I think it could start within 30 to 60 days.”

John Barnett, attorney for accused Officer Theodore J. Briseno, agreed that the trial might commence soon, noting that once an alternative site is chosen, “things will start moving real fast.”

“It’s very inconvenient and it’s very expensive,” he said of the strain of moving the trial out of Los Angeles County. “Justice sometimes goes that way. Justice sometimes can be expensive and uncomfortable.”

When the state appeals court on Tuesday ordered that the trial moved, many court observers expected the district attorney’s office to petition the state Supreme Court to keep the case here.

Since the officers were indicted two weeks after the March 3 beating of King, the prosecutors have insisted that a fair and impartial jury could be impaneled here, despite the repeated broadcast of a videotape of the beating and the barrage of media attention that followed.

The prosecutors noted that a change of venue is extremely rare. They cited the Charles Manson, Night Stalker and Hillside Strangler murder cases as examples in which nonpartisan juries were found in Los Angeles.

It has been nearly 20 years since the last trial was moved out of Los Angeles. Only about a dozen requests for a change of venue are granted each year in California in a statewide court system that handles 8,000 felony cases.

But at the courthouse Wednesday morning, White surprisingly announced that he will not attempt to have the appellate court’s ruling overturned and that the trial will move forward. He said his office believes the state Supreme Court will affirm the ruling by the 2nd District Court of Appeal.

He added that the prosecution will not be hampered by a change of venue, regardless of where the trial convenes.

“We think a fair and impartial jury can be found anywhere in California,” he said. “So we have no preference. We are just as prepared as before to put on the case and get on with the trial. We don’t care if it’s in Northern California or Southern California.”

Under California court rules of procedure, the state’s administrator of the court will begin surveying all of the counties outside Los Angeles to determine which is best suited and capable of holding the trial. The administrator then will submit a list of potential sites to the trial judge. After consulting the attorneys, the judge will select the new location.

In a related development Wednesday, the state Judicial Council was asked to choose a judge outside Los Angeles County to decide on a request from the defense attorneys to remove Superior Court Judge Bernard J. Kamins from presiding over the King case. The officers’ attorneys believe Kamins has curried favor with the prosecutors and the press, and that his actions have generated harmful publicity and confusion about the case.

The appeals court, in its ruling on the change of venue, also found fault with Kamins.

“Unfortunately,” the appellate court said, “the trial judge’s actions have contributed to the publicity surrounding this case and have resulted in no small amount of public confusion about the venue issue.”

But Kamins, in an 11-page affidavit he filed Wednesday, sharply disputed those allegations. He said he has not played favorites. And he said he has worked hard to keep his focus on the merits of the case and away from the persistent public uproar and political firestorm that have engulfed City Hall and Parker Center.

“I am not prejudiced or biased against or in favor of any party to this proceeding or their counsel,” Kamins said in his sworn affidavit. “I know of no facts or circumstances which would require my disqualification or recusal in this case.”

Although he has expressed different opinions on the need for a change of venue, Kamins said in the affidavit that he believes a fair trial could be held here. He disagreed with the appeals court that the political feud between Mayor Tom Bradley and Police Chief Daryl F. Gates has tainted the jury pool here.

“The political controversies,” he said, “have nothing to do with the issues that will be submitted to the jurors to decide.

“The main focus of the venue issue should be whether jurors can be selected who can make a decision based solely upon the facts, the law and the evidence officially presented to them in the courtroom.”

The allegation that Kamins gave favored treatment to the prosecutor stemmed from an incident in June in which the judge sent a letter to the appeals court indicating that he would not oppose a change of venue as long as the trial was not delayed. Kamins said he subsequently became alarmed when he heard radio news reports in which prosecutors expressed dismay over the memo.

To ease their concern, Kamins said, “I directed my law clerk to advise the district attorney’s office not to panic, to trust me, and that this will all be explained the following day at a hearing.”

However, he conceded that his words to the district attorney’s office “were not carefully drafted and were not well chosen.” In addition, he admitted that “upon reflection, I should have directed my law clerk to immediately relay the same message to defense counsel.”

“I recognize that my hastily sent message was ill-advised,” he added. “At the time, and under the circumstances, I then believed that it was sent in furtherance of my judicial duties.”

In a separate legal brief filed on behalf of Kamins, county attorneys denied that Kamins “is playing to his image in the press” in the way he has conducted the pretrial hearings. The attorneys noted that Kamins refused to allow the Christopher Commission access to the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division report into the King beating, and that he fined a reporter for The Times for refusing to divulge who leaked the document to the newspaper.