officers - The Black Vault

Rodn~y King.
(Continued jhnn pagt• H2) cas~· ... and it
turns out where IKingl was staying was
right down the hill from where I live,"
says Pa~adena attorney John Burton, a Police
Watch co-chairperson. "I was flipping
out. I was saying, 'Oh, please, I've
got to get this case!' "
But the rush to represent King was by
no means limited to members of the brutality
bar. The jail where he was being
held for resisting arrest suddenly looked
like an American Bar Association convention.
"It was just ~ circus," says Robert
Rentzer, a criminal lawyer in Los Angeles.
"Everybody was trying to get a piece
of Rodney."
But they were too late. Someone had
gotten there ahead of them.
The attorney who'd already landed
King's signature on a retainer agreement
was not a member of the brutality bar, nor
was he known to have ever tried a civilrights
case. The legal community was
stunned when it discovered that Steven Lerman,
a P. I. specialist, had signed the client.
"We in the police-misconduct bar in
Los Angeles just consider [King's] hooking
up with Lerman to be one of the great
tragedies of the twentieth ·century;" said
one disappointed lawyer, "sort of up
there with the Moscow trials and the sinking
of the Titanic."
How did Lerman get the case? He refuses
to say, citing attorney-client privilege.
Angela King, who was privy to the
decisions being made in the early hours of
her nephew's trouble, says that Lerman
was suggested to the family ~y Warren
Wilson, a reporter at Channel 5-the station
that had the Holliday videotape first.
Wilson, one of the best-known black
reporters in town, has been a fixture ori
local television for years. He also has a
law degree, although he has not yet
passed the California bar exam. Wilson
says that he does know Lerman, and that
· Lerman's name was one of several he
mentioned to the family while he was covering
the story.
The question of propriety seems obvious,
but attorney Stephen Yagman, a police-abuse
specialist who practices in Los
Angeles and New York, says that reporters
routinely steer potential clients to lawyers
in L.A. "A lot of lawyers in this
community, including me, have tie-ins
with people in the media, people I'm buddies
with. And if people say to them, 'Do
you know a lawyer?' the reputable reporters
will say,. 'I can't recommend a specific
person,.but here are the names of three or
15H
four p~ople who do this.' The less ·able
ones will ~ay. "This guy here is the
he~t guy there i·~: I've gotten maybe 30
per~·ent of the case~ we have from people I
know in the media.··
However Lerman got King, once he
had him he held tight. Rentzer, who was
hired by the family to handle Rodney's
criminal charges, says he had an agreement
that he would have a hand in the
development of King's claim against the
city. When the criminal charges were
dropped, Rentzer says, "Lerman manipulated
me out of the case.'' ''I would deny
that. I chased him out," Lerman says_. _
ur the elbowing to get close to Rodney
was not limited to lawyers. Rod­
B
ney's new fame caused a bitter rift within
his family over such suddenly relevant
matters as movie rights and merchandising-not
to mention who would get to go
on Donahue.
Rodney's mother, Odessa, is a deeply
religious woman whose faith prevents her
from getting involved in matters of this
world-a category in which her son's legal
case securely fits. She stayed in· the
background, and insisted that her 'four
other children, also Witnesses, do so, too.
That left a void, which Aunt Angela and
Kandyce Barnes, the aunt of Rodney's
wife, Crystal, struggled to fill.
Kandyce had two advantages-she. was
well spoken and, through Crystal, she had
Rodney's ear. Angela says there have
long been class tensions between the two
families. "They had some money, they
had a home, and [to them] we were just
~!urns-you know, lower-class people.
..•. They just pushed their way on in
there."
A month after the beating, Kandyce
and Steven Lerman went to New York to
appear on the Phil Donahue show, and,­
speaking for the family, she told the nationll_l
television audience -that Rodney
was "very paranoid." She said that he
awoke in the middle of the night, screaming,
"Don't beat me! Please leave me
alone!" ·
Aunt Angela went ballistic over the Donahue
show: ''These little aunts and the. inlaws,
they get on there like they've been
knowing Glen. They don't know him. No,
no. Noway .... Thesepeoplearesnakes."
And her antipathy was not eased by the
events that occurred next.
Kandyce, saying that she had experi-.
ence in negotiations, persuaded Rodney to
let her guide him as he chose among offers
to buy the rights to his story. The
company she selected was an unknown
newcomer, Trip~~ Entertainment.
James Banks. the Triplc-7 vice president
and lawyer. deseribes it as "a motion-picture
producing company. as well
as a television production company and
a book company." Actually, that is a
hopeful assessment. So far. the company
has produced only a how-to-make-yourchild-a-star
video, due out this summer.
Banks says that Triple-7 "consists of
people who have been in the entertainment
business for many, many years,"
but "because of their involvement in
other projects they do not want to be
·known at this time."
The company was officially formed on
May 1, 199 I, two weeks before it signed
Rodney King. "As you can imagine, in
the beginning, the bidding was horrible,''
Banks says. "Everybody and his little
brother was coming out of the woodwork
to buy these rights, from one coast to the
other."
And how was Triple-7 chosen? Kandyce
says that spe merely acted as a "go-.
between;, for King, sorting out and presenting
him with the various offers, and
that Triple· 7 emerged as the best choice.
Banks, however, says that Kandyce approached
Triple-7 through a mutual
friend, one of the silent partners. "It
boiled down to the confidence . in the
friendship, in the relationship, that did it
for [King], no doubt about it in my
mind," Banks says. He adds that Kandyce
may get a co-producer's credit on the
movie and the mini-series Triple-7 plans
to make. ("I'm flattered to hear that,"
says Kandyce.) ·
Apparently, King had no advice on the
negotiation except for that of Kandyce.
Steven Lerman. says he did not participate.
And Aunt Angela knew. nothing of
the deal until after Rodney had signed it.
"He was not even well yet-that's what
made me sick.''
But, Banks notes, "the document involved
is as good as any Philadelphia lawyer
could put together. It's a bona fide
·contract." Banks declined to say how
much Rodney was paid for signing the
contract. Angela says she heard it was
$20,000.
And what did Triple-7 get for its money?
"Rights to Rodney King's story,"
says Banks, "lock, stock, and barrel."
For Banks, an entertainment lawyer,
and his partners, the King signing represented
a ·magic entry into the big leagues,
and to say he is enthused does an injustice
to his enthusiasm. "I mean, what else can
you compare this to? I don't think there:s
anything else. Not since those boys [the
Founding Fathers] signed that other document
[the Constitution).
VANITY FAIR /JUt Y 1992