Rodney King Trial Reactions

following the riots that ensued, pundits and public alike pointed fingers of blame at different parts of our judicial system--and, indeed, at society at large. The essential problem, most critics said, lay not just in Los Angeles, but at the very core of our understanding of law and law enforcement. To perhaps a majority of Americans, the King trial evinced a failure not so much of people but of institutions. We had witnessed a profound systems failure, and one with national repercussions.

Such a reaction was both understandable and misguided. The pessimism was predictable in that the verdict presented many Americans--especially minorities--with a grimly visible reminder of the potential fallibility of our court system. Because the beating was captured on videotape, we all felt, in a way, as though we were jurors, hence the profound sense of injustice: The Simi Valley jury's verdict clashed with our own.

The Rodney King case is not alone in history. As we shall see, popular reaction has been at odds with the court before; the Sacco and Vanzetti trial is one example. Yet disagreement over one jury's decision does not necessarily entail a failure of an entire institution. The problem of injustice, in fact, goes deeper than our laws, goes deeper even than the Constitution on which these laws are based. Laws can be bent. If they could not,

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news that Sacco and Vanzetti would receive the death penalty, novelist John Dos Passos was typically strident in his criticism: The supreme court of Massachusetts has spoken at last and Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco, two of the bravest and best scouts that ever served the labor movement, most go to the electric chair. The decision of this capitalist judicial tribunal is not surprising. It accords perfectly with the tragical farce and farcical tragedy of these two absolutely innocent and shamelessly persecuted young men. Critics of the trial contended that much of the evidence used to convict Sacco and Vanzetti was circumstantial and suspect, and that the real reason they were being prosecuted was their radical political views. Dos Passos flatly states, "Sacco and Vanzetti were framed and doomed from the start." Close scrutiny of the evidence brought before the jury (and some that was not) has since led some historians to conclude that the two "workmen" may not have been innocent after all. Although much of the public supported the final decision at the time, very few writers and historians did. Even encyclopedias such as the Encyclopedia Americana seemed later to conclude that Sacco and Vanzetti had died unjustly.
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 3076
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)

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