3 Judgment Calls Shaped Sentencing : Legal analysis: Conclusions of Judge Davies could affect King’s willingness to settle his multimillion-dollar damage suit against the city.

En route to his relatively lenient finding that two Los Angeles police officers should serve 2 1/2 years in prison for beating Rodney G. King, a federal judge Wednesday made three key judgment calls:

The beating was severe. King provoked it. And the officers have already suffered substantial punishment.

U.S. District Judge John G. Davies’ first decision--that the assault against King was “aggravated” rather than minor--eliminated the possibility that he would sentence the officers to as little as 10 months in prison, the low term contemplated in federal sentencing guidelines for such a violation of civil rights.

In fact, it opened the possibility that he would throw the book at Sgt. Stacey C. Koon and Officer Laurence M. Powell by sentencing them to the maximum terms set forth in the guidelines: 10 years for Koon and nine for Powell.

But Davies clearly did not have that in mind. In lengthy remarks from the bench, Davies laboriously laid out a series of legal and mathematical equations that made it apparent he was heading for somewhere in the vast middle ground.

The judge said that most of the officers’ conduct was reasonable because King, in leading them on a high-speed chase and initially resisting, had provoked them.

Davies ruled that the officers acted reasonably during most of the 82-second period of the beating that was videotaped--not just the first 30 seconds, as prosecutors alleged. Davies thus said that King’s most serious injuries--including his facial and ankle fractures--were lawfully inflicted.

That could affect King’s willingness to settle his multimillion-dollar civil lawsuit against the officers and the city--particularly because in a coincidence of the legal system that case has been assigned to Davies.

Davies said the officers only violated King’s civil rights during the last 19 seconds of the beating, captured on a videotape by a bystander. According to the judge, the tape showed there was a turning point in the melee when King gave up and remained still for 10 seconds. It was only then, he said, that the officers violated King’s civil rights when one officer under Koon’s command stomped on King when he should have handcuffed him, and two others, including Powell, inflicted nine or 10 more blows with their batons.

Davies was free to apply his own interpretation of when the beating became illegal because it was unclear where the jury, in delivering guilty verdicts for Koon and Powell, drew the line.

If he had stopped there, the judge could have sentenced Koon and Powell to four or five years, according to the guidelines, which were imposed on federal judges in 1984 in an attempt to make sentencing more uniform.

That was the sentence--roughly midway between the minimum and maximum--that many legal observers had predicted he would impose in an effort to balance the interests of law enforcement officers and the community at large.

But then, in his most controversial judgment--and the one likeliest to be the focus of a government appeal--Davies said that he was going to give Koon and Powell credit for a number of factors not specifically addressed by the guidelines.

These included the suffering they had undergone because of the extensive publicity their case had received, the impending loss of their careers as police officers, their extreme vulnerability to abuse in prison and their having been subjected to two trials--one in state court where there were acquittals on all but one count, followed by the trial in federal court on civil rights charges.

The judge acknowledged that having two such trials did not represent unconstitutional double jeopardy, but he said nonetheless that it raised the “specter of unfairness.”

Davies said it was appropriate to depart from the guidelines because they were designed for a typical case in which a law enforcement officer made a deliberate and unprovoked assault, not a case in which officers were subduing a resisting suspect and went too far.

The government’s chances, should it appeal, are iffy.

Southwestern University law professor Myrna Raeder, who chairs the American Bar Assn.’s committee on criminal procedure, said she believes there is a good chance the judge would be upheld. “If there ever was a case was not contemplated by the guidelines, it’s the Rodney King case,” she said.

Raeder said she had expected a stiffer sentence. But she said: “He tried to come to a just sentence that would both permit law enforcement to feel the community was not looking over their shoulder every time they tried to make a lawful arrest, but which clearly made the point that law enforcement has to respect the rights of every citizen.”

Her colleague, Southwestern professor Robert Pugsley, said he believes the government would have “maybe a 40% or 50% shot” at winning an appeal because of the special credits Davies gave the defendants. He said he was disappointed with the sentence.

UCLA law professor Peter Arenella said that a judge “has to balance the needs of the community against considerations of fairness to individual defendants. In this particular case, Judge Davies focused more on fairness to the defendants than the needs of the community.”

Nonetheless, Arenella said the sentencing order “certainly is a legally defensible one under the federal sentencing guidelines.”

The ramifications of the sentencing decision could extend well beyond the trial of the four officers.

Inevitably for some, the sentences given Koon and Powell will become the basis of comparison for the defendants in the taped beating trial of trucker Reginald O. Denny at the start of last year’s riots that followed the state trial.

Legal scholars draw significant distinctions between the cases, most notably that the LAPD officers initially had a legal right to use force and the Denny case defendants did not.

“I believe all of the comparisons to the Denny case are completely inappropriate,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, a USC law professor.

Davies’ sentencing decision, along with his comments on the limited nature of the illegal activity by the officers, also could affect King’s lawsuit, some attorneys said.

One legal expert who asked not be identified said the judge’s apparent “minimalist view” of the officers’ actions could provide an incentive for King to consider negotiate a settlement.

“I think it strengthens the city’s position from a settlement point of view,” said Assistant City Atty. Annette Keller, who has worked on the case.

King’s attorney, Milton Grimes, declined comment Wednesday afternoon, but Chemerinsky, the USC law professor, cautioned that predicting the impact on settlement discussions is risky.

Despite Davies’ comments, King still has jury convictions of two officers in the beating case going for him, he noted.