Reap the Whirlwind, page 21
THREE WEEKS INTO the trial, Milt Silverman recognized an unexpected opportunity to humanize for the jury the otherwise unreadable young man. The moment came when Mike Carpenter called to the stand Detective Guy Johnson, who had executed the search warrant at Yusuf Abdullah’s house at North Fortieth Street where Penn lived. They had been looking for evidence of gang involvement, weapons, or anything to indicate Sagon Penn was capable of murder. What they got was a three-foot-tall tae kwon do trophy, boxing gloves, martial arts clothing, boxing trunks, and some athletic equipment inside a gym bag. Carpenter’s only objective in introducing the items through the testimony of Johnson was to show Penn’s expertise in several forms of fighting.
On cross, Silverman read from the extensive list of items to be seized as specified in the warrant written by Johnson in the early morning hours of April 1, 1985. “You were given a warrant that allowed you to look for firearms?” Silverman asked. “Yes, sir.” “Did you find any?” “No, sir.” “You were given a warrant that allowed you to look for ammunition?” “Yes, sir.” “Did you find any?” “No, sir.” “Did you find any drugs in the house at all?” “No, sir.” When Silverman had exhausted the list, receiving a “No, sir” response from Johnson in all cases, he lowered the document. “In both the truck and house, you found absolutely nothing of that ilk?”
“That is correct,” Johnson answered.
“There was nothing at all in that house to suggest to you that the people that were occupying that house had anything at all to do with gangs, was there?”
“That is correct.”
“Okay, let’s move then to the items here in the bag,” he said, peering inside Penn’s gym bag at the remaining contents that had not been displayed by Johnson.
“This is one set of gloves,” he said, pulling out a pair of bright-red boxing gloves tied together by the laces. He read the inscription written in felt-tip pen across one: “To Sagon Penn. Pernell Whitaker, ’84 Olympic Team.” Silverman asked, “Were you aware that Mr. Penn had volunteered his time to work with the United States Olympic team in 1984, and that these were a gift to him by the United States Olympic team?”
“No, sir,” Johnson said.
“Two photos of a young lady,” he said, displaying a yearbook-type photo of a girlfriend a boy might carry in his wallet. “Now let’s look at this one,” he went on, successively removing items that any young man might carry in a gym bag. “Something from Yves Saint Laurent. A [audio] tape of some kind. A letter. Looks like a tie. Here’s a belt. Something from the Selective Service people?” Silverman said, displaying a document confirming Penn had registered for the military draft. He held up an official-looking laminated identification card with Penn’s photo on it. “Something from Chief Kolender?”
“It’s a solicitor’s identification,” Johnson said. “It’s issued by the police department for persons going door-to-door for solicitation of sales.” Penn had obtained the identification so he could sell his grandfather’s bean pies.
Silverman turned the card so the jury could see it better. “It looks like a somewhat more youthful Mr. Penn in the photograph,” he noted. “At least smiling.” He held the card up for several more seconds, as if to say to the jury, look, this is the real Sagon Penn. “So, it appears that the person who got this was complying with the rule about getting a license to go door-to-door?”
“That is correct,” Johnson affirmed.
“A little pin here,” Silverman said, squinting to read it. “It says, ‘Southern California Police Athletic League Amateur Boxer.’” He set the pin on the table. “Wasn’t there something in here relating to Mr. Penn having applied for or gotten some sort of license as a community service operator?” he asked Johnson. “Do you know what that is, sort of being a police officer?” Johnson did not recall the document but knew what the position was. Even without the document, Silverman had made the jury aware that his client had been trying to enter the field of law enforcement.
Silverman had done more than show the absence of incriminating evidence. He had given Sagon Penn a personality that contrasted sharply with the prosecution’s version of an arrogant, defiant young man, resisting arrest. Silverman’s Sagon Penn was a handsome, smiling young man, perhaps with a very sweet-looking girlfriend, accomplished in his athletic pursuits, who made his bed, dutifully registered for the draft, conscientiously obtained all the credentials required to sell door-to-door, and was interested in a career in law enforcement. And the police? They had rummaged through all his stuff, found nothing, and even broke his tae kwon do trophy, which now lay in pieces on a table among other evidence.
ON THE EVENING of March 31, 1986, a blanket of low clouds hung over San Diego, the air damp with a persistent mist and occasional drizzle. By six o’clock in the evening, nearly 150 Sagon Penn supporters stood on the sidewalk across from the county jail to mark the one-year anniversary of the incident on Brooklyn Avenue. For a few fleeting minutes, the setting sun shone brightly as it passed though the thin space between the cloud cover and Pacific Ocean before sinking below the horizon at 6:09 p.m. Minutes later, the multiracial crowd gathered behind a long banner that read FREE SAGON PENN. Some held candles that flickered in the dusk as the crowd fell into silent observance of the moment Sagon Penn first encountered Donovan Jacobs. Inside the tiers of jail cells facing the street, inmates could be heard whistling, whooping, and applauding the protesters. And then from the cell block came the persistent chant of “Free Sagon Penn! Free Sagon Penn!”
Two and a half miles away from the county jail, a crowd of almost 250 gathered at the War Memorial Building in Balboa Park to mark the one-year anniversary of the death of Officer Tom Riggs. Dressed in white, Coleen Riggs was among the assemblage of family, officers, police officials, and law enforcement supporters seated on folding chairs set out on the long, manicured front lawn stretching up to the gracious and unassuming building. Now three and a half years old, Adam Riggs held a stuffed chick he had gotten for Easter the day before. Coleen said she helped organized the event rather than stay home alone on the anniversary. “The more active I am today, the better I am.” By the 7:00 p.m. start of the ceremony, a slow drizzle had begun to fall. Chief Bill Kolender came to the podium to make a few brief remarks. Standing off to the side, a middle-aged Black man dressed in a suit and tie shouted at Kolender, “Who is responsible for protecting the people in the neighborhood?” An officer in the crowd led the man away as he continued to heckle the chief. To close out the ceremony, local musician Steve Vaus played a song called “My Daddy,” which he penned the day after the Riggs shooting, in which a heartbroken child struggles to understand that his murdered police officer father is never coming home again.
Coleen Riggs had her own thoughts about the trial. She said it was hard listening to the details of her husband’s death. But overall, “I think it is going rather well,” she said. “You never know until it is over, and it is really hard to know how some things are going to end. But the DA is a fine man and handling it very well.” However, there was one specific aspect of the trial that she felt was not going well. “It’s not Penn who is on trial, it’s the officers, and I feel sad that it’s going that way,” she said.
AFTER NEARLY THREE months of rigorous physical therapy at Grossmont Hospital, Donovan Jacobs had finally been released on June 25, 1985. A welcome-home party was thrown for him by his childhood friend James Stevens. It was attended by friends, fellow officers, and their spouses. One especially notable guest was Sarah Pina-Ruiz, brought to the party by Agent Thomas Hoenes, the officer responsible for arranging the ride-along that had ended in her being shot.
Six weeks later, Jacobs broke his public silence in a long interview in The San Diego Union. He expressed bitterness over accusations he and Riggs used excessive force and were responsible for the altercation. “Makes me wonder if everyday citizens are buying this,” he said. “If so, then you wonder, as a policeman, what we’re out there busting our butts for.” He said most cops in the Southeast “are miserable down there” and that the work was often dangerous. “Yeah, I’ve been scared down there. There is quite a bit more violence in the Southeast.” He ended the interview on an introspective note: “A lot of cops feel unappreciated for what they do. And they feel, if the citizens don’t care, why should they?”
Jacobs’s first interview was followed two weeks later by another article related to the wounded officer. “Women Are Out in Force to Get a Peek at Thirteen of San Diego’s Finest Beefcake,” read the playful headline in the August 23, 1985, edition of The San Diego Union. “Police officers sure can draw a crowd,” the article began. “At least they did Wednesday as thirteen officers who posed for ‘San Diego’s Finest: SDPD Off Duty,’ a 1986 Beefcake calendar, held an autograph session at a downtown restaurant. ‘I feel like a kid in a candy store,’ said Linda Kamman as she thumbed through her calendar and then peered at the officers. ‘They can arrest me anytime they want.’”
Chief Bill Kolender stopped by the party, calling the event “excellent” and the calendar “in good taste.” On the cover, a very off-duty officer emerges from a tropical grotto, water running off his tanned and sculpted body. Inside, a dozen handsome dudes sporting blow-dried hair, mustaches, and finely toned bods pose in testosterone-fueled settings holding fishing rods or guns, straddling a motorcycle, or stretched out before a fireplace.
The article went on to reveal that the person behind the calendar was Donovan Jacobs, who conceived the concept long before the Penn incident and bankrolled it with $18,000 of his own money. After twenty-two officers posed for test photos, Jacobs had the female employees at two banks rate the photographs. “I knew their selections would be different than mine would be,” Jacobs said. If any of the original twenty-two had been Black officers, they apparently did not meet the approval of the bank women.
Profits from the calendars were to be donated to the Thomas Riggs Memorial Fund. Dedicated to “All the San Diego police officers who have lost their lives in the line of duty,” the back of the calendar included a list of twenty-six names dating back to 1913. Centered at the top in bold was the name Thomas Riggs, with the inscription, “Friend, Father, & Hero. He will remain in my heart and mind forever—D.J.”
19
ON THE MORNING OF APRIL 8, 1986, DONOVAN JACOBS ENTERED the courtroom from a side door to avoid the overflow crush of spectators and media there for the most anticipated day in the trial of Sagon Penn. Jacobs looked like a man still in the process of recovering from a serious traumatic injury. Reduced nerve-impulse activity caused him to walk with a slight limp, and he wore a sling on his left arm due to partial paralysis, which would take more rehabilitation to improve. He was underweight and wore a serious, almost pained expression as he took the stand dressed in a blue suit with dark-blue elbow patches and a striped tie to match.
“I recall the truck was parked on the east side of Sixty-Fifth Street facing northbound,” Jacobs said of the moment he first laid eyes on Sagon Penn’s pickup.
“Did you see what it did?” Mike Carpenter asked.
“It made a U-turn and started heading southbound on Sixty-Fifth Street.”
“Now are you sure it was parked there and that it made a U-turn?”
“I know there is a point of contention over what happened, and I repeat in my mind everything from that day, and I keep coming up with the same thing: that it made a U-turn in front of me.”
“After the initial interview, they [Manis and Lindstrom] came back and were talking to you about the fact that that truck couldn’t have made a U-turn in the street there. So, you were aware of that controversy, is that right?”
“Yes,” Jacobs replied. “That is just what my memory tells me. It is possible it did not do that.”
“Did you notice anything about anybody in the bed of the truck?”
“My attention focused on one individual in the bed of the truck. He had a black golf-type hat on and a black shirt. Those are colors, and type of hat, gang-type hat, and the colors indicate Crip.” Carpenter asked what he did as a result. “I made a U-turn, and got on the air real quick, and said I had a truckload of Crips and I wanted Tom to follow me.”
Jacobs was confident enough in the accuracy of his memory to provide a detailed depiction of his interaction with Penn over the license. But at the point Penn turned and walked away, his recollections became “real vague.” He said his first reaction was “I’m going to have to intercept him and keep him from going up toward the house,” but then described taking an inexplicably circuitous route around the back and up the passenger side of the truck. When he got near the front, “I remember seeing Tom with his baton, he had the PR-24, the one with the handle. He had a baton in front of his face deflecting blows from the driver.”
“When you remember seeing that, what did you do?” Carpenter asked.
“I came up behind Penn and I hit him about four or five times with my baton across the back and the shoulders.”
“And with what force did you hit him?”
“Hard.” Carpenter asked what affect the blows had on Penn. “None at all. I remember thinking this guy is on something. You know, hitting him that hard with my baton that many times and I didn’t do anything.”
“What was going through your mind of the possible things he could be on?” Carpenter asked.
“PCP,” Jacobs said. He was referring to “angel dust,” the street drug that at the time was attracting major media attention for highly publicized incidences of users in extremely violent confrontations while exhibiting almost superhuman strength and ability to withstand pain. The jurors knew Penn had tested negative for drugs and alcohol, but if Jacobs truly believed he was engaged in a violent confrontation with a PCP user, it would justify him using an increased level of force to control the individual.
“After you hit him and didn’t appear to have any effect on him, what happened?” Carpenter asked.
“I remember he turned to me, and then the next thing I remember I am on top of him, and he is below me on the ground.”
“Do you recall being hit by Mr. Penn?” Carpenter asked.
“No, I do not.”
“Do you recall falling to the ground as a result of being hit by Mr. Penn?”
“No, I do not.”
Jacobs’s failure to recount anything that occurred between initially striking Penn with the baton and being on the ground represented the third significant gap or period of inaccuracy in his recollection of the incident, each separated by periods of detail and clarity. When describing what occurred while on the ground, Jacobs’s memory was clear. “I remember at one point that a crowd had moved within inches of my face, and I remember thinking that I was going to get my face kicked in by somebody in the crowd.” He recounted feeling a tug at his holster. “I thought, ‘This guy is going to try to go for my gun. He is going to try to shoot me.’ I said, ‘Enough is enough.’ Then I started to hit him with my fist.”
“Did you ever call Mr. Penn a ‘nigger’?”
“No, I did not,” Jacobs said emphatically.
“Is that a word that is in your vocabulary?”
“It is not. I do not use racial slurs.”
At one point in the struggle he detected that Penn might be attempting to turn over on his stomach, so he reached back to retrieve the handcuffs from the holder on the back of his duty belt. “What happened then?” Carpenter asked.
“I got shot,” Jacobs said. “I remember seeing his face, and a gun, and a flash. I remember I rolled off onto the ground, and I remember thinking, ‘I have got to get back up. I have got to get back up.’”
“Were you able to?” Carpenter asked.
Jacobs cleared his throat and began to answer, but then paused for a moment. His jaw tightened and released. He swallowed and his eyes glistened for an instant. But the display of emotion vanished as fast as it had appeared. “No,” he answered in a clear voice.
He knew he had been shot, but he felt no pain. “I just recall the shots and people screaming,” he said.
“Did you recall actually seeing [Penn] do anything to either Miss Pina-Ruiz or Agent Riggs or anything like that?” Carpenter asked.
“No,” Jacobs said. “I remember hearing an engine, car engine revving. I thought that I was going to be run over.”
“What happened then?”
“I got run over,” Jacobs answered in a soft voice.
“OFFICER JACOBS, I wonder if you could tell the jury here some of the things that you are confused about, about that day,” Milt Silverman said to open his cross-examination.
“The events leading up to the stop, the stop itself,” Jacobs said. “The whole events of that night are confusing.”
Silverman asked about his memory of the U-turn. “Do you have any idea why that particular thing might be an area of confusion?”
“I don’t know,” Jacobs said. “I was in pretty bad shape. Being shot and run over, I don’t know what my mind was doing.”
“Did it have anything at all to do with the fact that you felt you needed a reason for stopping that truck, and that seemed as good a reason as any?”
“No. I had what I thought was a gang member in the truck. I felt that was good enough to stop it.”
Silverman turned his attention to the stop itself. “Now, the fellow that you were worried about as being a gang member, the fellow in black, where was he?”
“He was initially in the bed of the truck. I don’t remember what happened to him afterward. My contact was with the driver, I was trying to keep him in focus. But there were so many people moving I wasn’t able to do a very good job.”
