The Best Defense . . .

THREE WEEKS AGO, RODNEY KING TESTIFIED COMpellingly about how Los Angeles police clubbed him in the head and shouted racial slurs during his notorious videotaped beating two years ago. This time it was a tough-talking Stacey Koon, one of four officers on trial for violating King's civil rights, who contended that King brought the beating on himself. Koon, the commanding officer on the scene, told jurors that King displayed threatening "hulk-like strength," appeared to be high on drugs and failed to heed police commands. "He made all the choices, all the wrong choices," said Koon. When a flurry of baton blows had no effect, "I then ordered the officers to attack his joints," Koon recounted. "The intent I had was to cripple him, to break bones, to make him unable to push off the ground." The defense got further support when the judge refused to allow into evidence passages from a draft copy of Koon's book, Presumed Guilty, about the incident, in which the author makes racially inflammatory statements.