LOS ANGELES : King Jury Cannot Consider Enhanced Tape, Judge Rules

During the first full day of deliberations, U.S. District Judge John G. Davies ruled that a federal jury in Rodney G. King’s federal lawsuit against the city may not consider as evidence a copy of an enhanced audiotape of the beating.

Davies said he would not allow jurors to replay the tape because it was reproduced without court supervision. King’s lawyers offered the tape as evidence that racial slurs were uttered during the beating by police on March 3, 1991.

Without the tape, jurors will have to rely on a soundtrack of the videotape beating in which the sound is distorted by noise from a helicopter hovering over the scene.

In the first phase of the trial, King’s attorneys are asking the seven women and three men to award their client $15 million for his injuries. The city’s lawyers say King should get about four times his medical expenses, or $800,000. After a compensation verdict is reached, the second phase of the trial will determine the individual liability of police officers and other defendants for punitive damages.