The L.A. Riots | 4. Glen

Summary

Podcast Summary: Slow Burn – The L.A. Riots | 4. Glen

Slate Podcasts | Release Date: November 24, 2021
Host: Joel Anderson

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode, “Glen,” centers on the personal story of Rodney Glen King, the man at the center of the 1991 LAPD beating that triggered the L.A. Riots. Rather than focusing solely on the notorious video or the uprising it helped ignite, the episode delves into King's life – his childhood, family, struggles, and the immediate aftermath of the attack. It examines how King wrestled with sudden national fame, personal trauma, pressure from the Black community, and the complicated racial and legal dynamics swirling around his case.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Aftermath of the Beating & The Search for Legal Help

• Ontricia Averet (King’s cousin) recounts the family’s scramble after hearing of the beating and the urgency to find proper representation.
  • “She was like, treece, I have a problem. Glenn got beat up by the police.” (00:12)
• Johnnie Cochran was contacted but unavailable (00:42).
• Rodney King’s mother, Odessa King, soon found attorney Steve Lerman, who was quickly thrust into the national spotlight:
  • “I was, like, looking at the sky, thinking, ‘wow, why me?’ And then I thought to myself, ‘why not me?’” – Steve Lerman (03:47)

2. Public Exposure & Media Frenzy

• The Holiday video aired and became an instant, global phenomenon.
• Lerman ensured the public saw King’s injuries firsthand, while King himself remained mostly silent.
• Black and Latino activists saw the tape as long-awaited proof of police brutality, but Lerman downplayed the racial angle, aiming his legal strategy at non-Black jurors:
  • “Mr. King doesn’t want to make it out as though they did this just because he was a black man.” – Steve Lerman (05:29)
  • “People didn’t want to hear about the black thing and kind of squeeze guilt out of white people... They beat him because he’s Rodney King.” – Steve Lerman (21:51)

3. King’s Early Life: Hardship & Context

• Juan King (Rodney’s brother) describes a religious, working-class family, and their move from Kentucky to California in search of economic stability (06:53).
• King’s father was an alcoholic and physically abusive, leaving scars that shaped Rodney’s personality and resilience (08:32).
  • “Every time I saw him, he was drunk. I’d never seen the man sober.” – Johnny Kelly, on Rodney’s father (08:37)
  • “We all grew up getting whippings, but Rodney weapons was more so like beatings.” – Johnny Kelly (08:50)
• Rodney found some solace in fishing and baseball, yet fell into trouble and dropped out of high school (09:42).
• Two arrests, including a robbery conviction, led to prison time. The chase that resulted in the beating came months after he was released on parole (12:11–12:41).

4. Trauma, Fame, and Familial Conflict

• King’s recovery was physically and psychologically arduous:
  • “He was like, ‘I’m bleeding. Blood is coming out of me all over’... Eventually he had to go back to the hospital.” – Ontricia Averet (16:15)
  • King needed a metal plate in his skull and suffered from nightmares and numbness (16:37, 19:02).
• He was deeply embarrassed by his helplessness on tape and became withdrawn and depressed. A disguise and heavy drinking became coping mechanisms (19:49, 20:04).
• The pressure tore at family dynamics and exposed rifts: white lawyer vs. Black representation; private pain vs. public expectation.
  • “A lot of black professionals... felt some type of way like, you know, why would you all have this Caucasian man representing you when... this is a black thing right here?” – Ontricia Averet (22:37)
  • “So you got his lawyer who wants to strip him of his blackness. It was about race. So expose the racism in the case. That’s what a good lawyer for the community would have done.” – Vester Mott Givens (22:17)

5. Navigating Notoriety and Legal Limbo

• Steve Lerman’s anxiety about King’s ability to stay out of trouble foreshadows further complications:
  • “My greatest fear was that the parole department would violate him...that would just be the end [of the case].” – Steve Lerman (25:49)
• King’s run-ins with the law after the beating made him a complicated figure for prosecutors and for the community.
• The narrative splits between Lerman’s approach (avoid the race issue for maximum legal settlement) and activists’ pressure to highlight racism.
• Prosecutors debated the wisdom of having King testify:
  • “He got fairly agitated when we sort of pressed him about details... if he blows up on cross examination, I might as well go home. The case is over.” – Terry White (28:57)
  • “The reality is, I didn’t think it would be good for him because he’d be at a disadvantage because cognitively he was challenged.” – Steve Lerman (29:31)

6. King’s Isolation, Struggles, and Quiet Strength

• King did not want to speak for a movement he never sought, disappointing many, but remained true to himself:
  • “He showed no interest in becoming the face of campaigns against police brutality... King was nowhere to be seen.” (23:29)
• The episode closes with a poetic, mournful reflection on King’s inability to meet others’ expectations:
  • “He was never enough for anyone. At that moment in time, he found himself where he could not meet the standards of anyone. So he just took these blows. It just never stopped.” – Ontricia Averet (30:33)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• “She was like, ‘treece, I have a problem. Glenn got beat up by the police.’” – Ontreecia Averet (00:12)
• “I was, like, looking at the sky, thinking, ‘wow, why me?’ And then I thought to myself, ‘why not me?’” – Steve Lerman (03:47)
• “Mr. King doesn’t want to make it out as though they did this just because he was a black man.” – Steve Lerman (05:29)
• “Every time I saw him, he was drunk. I’d never seen the man sober.” – Johnny Kelly (08:37)
• “We all grew up getting whippings, but Rodney weapons was more so like beatings.” – Johnny Kelly (08:50)
• “He was used to that abuse as a kid, so that’s why he would get up also. He could take it and he would get up, you know, and that pretty much came from his dad.” – Johnny Kelly (13:35)
• “He was never enough for anyone...he could not meet the standards of anyone. So he just took these blows. It just never stopped.” – Ontreecia Averet (30:33)
• “He said, ‘I’m scared to say yes. I’m scared. I don’t want to start a riot.’” – Steve Lerman, on Rodney King (25:06)
• “My greatest worry...was that the parole department would violate him...that would just be the end of a case.” – Steve Lerman (25:49)
• “I couldn’t walk in Rodney’s shoes, you know, being what he went through. So to me, I felt like, okay, if this is going to help the pain...go for it.” – Johnny Kelly on King’s drinking (20:19)

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Important Segments (with Timestamps)

• Initial family reaction and struggle to find a lawyer: (00:01–03:50)
• Attorney Steve Lerman takes King's case, describes his injuries and motivations: (03:21–03:50)
• Appearance before media and debates surrounding representation: (04:24–05:35), (21:09–23:01)
• Rodney King’s upbringing, relationship with father, and early struggles: (06:53–11:56)
• King’s prior arrests and context for the police chase: (11:21–12:59)
• King’s physical and emotional recovery; impact of trauma: (15:06–19:26)
• Internal and external family/community debates about race, legal strategy, and representation: (21:09–25:15)
• Legal pressure, parole anxieties, and public expectations on King: (25:49–27:59)
• Prosecutors' debates on having King testify at trial: (28:35–29:39)
• Conclusion: King’s fraught role, public perceptions, and isolation: (30:33–END)

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Tone and Storytelling

The episode is deeply empathetic, sometimes sorrowful, foregrounding Rodney King’s humanity while acknowledging the fraught political and racial forces at play. It refuses easy answers, highlighting the complex realities for individuals consumed by events larger than themselves.

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This summary offers a frame-by-frame sense of how the podcast moves from personal family drama and trauma to community fissures and finally to the unique, pressured isolation of Rodney King, all while keeping the listener grounded in the voices and lived experiences of those most affected.

Transcript

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

A quick warning this episode has some explicit language. On Sunday, March 3, 1991, Ontrisia Averet woke up to a phone call from her aunt.

[Ontreecia Averet]

And she was like, treece, I have a problem. Glenn got beat up by the police.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

Antresea's aunt was Odessa King, the mother of Rodney Glen King. Everyone in the family called him Glenn.

[Ontreecia Averet]

They beat him up really bad. And she thought she needed a criminal defense attorney.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

Ontricia was a college student and connected to black leaders around la. She reached out to a friend who was the president of the Black Business association in Pasadena.

[Ontreecia Averet]

And he was like, yeah, you know, call Johnnie Cochran. He says, yeah, just tell him, you know, Tyrone referred you, you know, tell Johnny you don't have no money.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

The next day, a Monday, Ontricia spoke with someone in Cochran's office. The receptionist told her that Cochran was in the middle of a trial. He wouldn't be available for several weeks. Later that same day, auntresia got another phone call from King's mom.

[Ontreecia Averet]

And she says, treece, I'm gonna go to Channel 5 News today. They have. Somebody videotaped the policeman's beating Glenn. So she went there and they showed her the video they. That George Holiday had filmed. And that evening I came over to the house because she called me from work. She was like, come over, come over. They're going to show it on tv. And when it came on television, it was just a surreal moment. I somehow I cut all emotions off as I was watching it and it was like. It was just. I was just watching something that wasn't real, like maybe it wasn't Glenn. It was just. And I knew that I had to be strong because everyone else had just lost it.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

After seeing the tape, Andresia knew the family really needed a lawyer. The Johnnie Cochran thing hadn't worked out, but Odessa King told her that that wasn't a problem.

[Ontreecia Averet]

Afterwards, my auntie says, you don't have to worry. I found an attorney.

[Steve Lerman]

Stephen A. Lerman. L E R M A N Attorney at Law. My job in 1991 was to look after the interests of my then client, Rodney King.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

Lerman was a personal injury lawyer. By 1991. He'd been practicing in California for nearly 20 years. He got connected to King's mother by a TV reporter. The day after George Holiday's tape aired on the local news, Luhrmann drove to the county's detention center in the San Fernando Valley. He met Rodney King in the visitation area.

[Steve Lerman]

His leg was casted, he was on crutches, his face was a mass of bruises, black and blue. His face was distorted because of his facial bones that were fractured. He was a mess, a real mess. So I just said, look, your mom hired me to represent you. It's just like that. He said, you can call me Glenn. I said, everyone calls me Glenn.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

Lerman whipped out his camera and started taking pictures. He wanted more evidence of what the police had done to King. A deputy told him to stop.

[Steve Lerman]

He said, you can't take pictures in here, counselor. You know that. I said, I understand, deputy, but I want to take pictures to make sure nothing new happens to him on his way down to Central jail. So with that, I left the jail, and I had a retainer with Rodney King's signature on it. I was, like, looking at the sky, thinking, wow, why me? And then I thought to myself, why not me?

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

Every plaintiff's attorney in America would have liked to represent Rodney Glenn King. He was at the center of one of the first incidents of police brutality to be captured on video. It seemed like it would be simple to win a big settlement from the city of Los Angeles and the lapd. The lawyer who did that would get a lot of publicity and a big payout. Luhrmann's first moment in the spotlight came when King got released from Men's Central Jail in downtown la. Luhrmann and one of his colleagues waited for King outside the jail, along with a crowd of reporters.

[Steve Lerman]

And I had all these microphones stuck in front of my face. What are you gonna do about this?

[Johnny Kelly]

What about this? What about that?

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

Lerman loved the attention. His father had been a comedian, and he was a natural showman. When King came out of the jail in a wheelchair, Lerman was ready to present him to America. That's Lerman. What is that from?

[Johnny Kelly]

That's from being stumped.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

That's King. Lerman wanted the world to see how badly his client had been beaten. That part was simple. It was less clear what story to tell about what King's beating meant, not only about the Los Angeles Police department, but about race and racism in America. Black and Latino activists and civil rights groups held up the King tape as clear evidence of something. They'd been arguing all along that law enforcement, and particularly the lapd, committed violent acts of racist brutality. Lerman, a white man representing a black client, didn't make that argument.

[Steve Lerman]

Mr. King doesn't want to make it out as though they did this just because he was a black man.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

This is Slow burn. I'm your host, Joel Anderson. Rodney King didn't go out for a drive on the night of March 3, 1991. Looking to become a household name, he became a public figure. Because the worst moment of his life had been caught on tape. Everybody had something to say about what happened to Rodney King, his lawyer, his his family, activists, politicians. But King himself mostly stayed quiet. It was difficult to figure out what he was thinking. In an autobiography published more than 20 years later, King wrote, I have never tried to be anyone other than me. And although that is often nothing to be proud of, I refuse to be a phony or to pretend that I'm something I'm not. So how did Rodney King navigate his new life in the public eye? What did he think about what had happened to him? And how would his struggles affect the trial of the officers who beat him? Episode 4 Glenn. Rodney Glenn King was born April 2, 1965 in Sacramento, California. His family moved to Southern California when Rodney was still a toddler. Here's Juan King, Rodney's younger brother.

[Juan King]

We grew up in Altadena, California. We lived a 50, 50 religious life. And my dad was not religious, but he abided by whatever my mom imposed, so that's where the other 50 was.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

Juan and Rodney were two of the four boys born to Ronald and Odessa King. The family settled in a middle class neighborhood just north of Los Angeles, near the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. That's the range you can see just beyond the Rose Bowl. Ronald King had worked as a day laborer in Louisville, where he grew up. But he needed to find more stable work to support his family.

[Juan King]

California is not like Kentucky, you know, it was more of an education required. And all he basically knew how to do was farm. So him and my mom got together and they started a janitorial business cleaning various homes in LA Canada, Glendale, Burbank, Hollywood, and some business offices and sweeps. And that's how they pretty much made a living for us.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

Rodney and another brother helped their father on overnight shifts, often on school nights.

[Juan King]

I believe it was Thatch's Thatch Medical Building where he would take Rodney a lot because Rodney could handle that buffer and that buffer, you know, it was a heavy piece of equipment. So he took Rodney a lot more than he took me.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

In Rodney King's autobiography, he wrote, daddy would have us cleaning and waxing them floors every damn night. He always had a bottle with him and a radio. He'd sit down and say, get to work, Rodney.

[Johnny Kelly]

Daddy was alcoholic.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

That's Johnny Kelly, one of Rodney King's best friends.

[Johnny Kelly]

So it was tough to really deal with his dad. Every time I saw him, he Was drunk, you know, I'd never seen a man sober.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

He says that Ronald's alcoholism fueled a violent streak. Did he talk about those beatings and stuff like that?

[Johnny Kelly]

Oh, yeah. He talked about the beatings his dad gave him. Oh, yeah. You can't argue with a drunk. You can't tell a drunk nothing. You can't even reason with him, you know what I mean? So it was that type of situation. We all grew up getting whippings, but Rodney weapons was more so like beatings.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

Rodney's difficult family life hurt him at school. Tired from buffing floors all night, he struggled to stay awake in class and keep up with his studying. He was placed in special education classes, which took a toll on his confidence. He wrote, that made me feel terrible, kind of worthless, like I wasn't a normal kid. He dropped out in his senior year of high school. But Rodney had some things working in his favor. He was friendly, he was handsome, and he was a great fisherman. He also excelled at baseball, a sport he called his great love.

[Juan King]

Rodney was getting looked at. He had took on a semi pro league at Brookside park and he had some scouts that was wanting to give him a chance, you know, in that semi pro level. I already know he would have made pro no problem.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

When school and baseball didn't work out, Rodney started working in construction and got a union card. He had two daughters to support, One with a former high school girlfriend and another with his then wife, Danetta. Rodney wasn't a homebody. When he wanted to get out, he would call up his friend Johnny Kelly.

[Johnny Kelly]

Me and Rodney was like Bunny and Clyde. You know, you saw him, you saw me, you know, we hung tight.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

What did that look like for y'? All?

[Johnny Kelly]

He loved to fish, and we did that. Fishing was a big thing for us. That was our getaway. That was the only thing we had to do. You know, we didn't have back then, they didn't have Nintendo's and all that type of stuff. You had to get outside and do stuff.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

There were a couple homies who didn't go looking for trouble. Rodney and Johnny liked to listen to music, smoke and drink. 40s King's Preferred brand was Schlitz malt liquor. By his early 20s, King had grown to 6 foot 3 and about 225 pounds. The size of a college linebacker. Juan King says that kept him from having trouble with the gangs in their neighborhood.

[Juan King]

And not too many people in the gang wanted to really fight him. He was a big guy and they really didn't want that rascal he was like a gentle giant, you know, a big guy that's real soft, easygoing, soft spoken, very friendly. Although when angered, he did have a temper.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

That temper could sometimes turn violent. In July 1987, when he was 22, King was arrested after his wife said he hit her and tampered with her car. He was convicted of misdemeanor battery and placed on probation. There was another arrest two years later when he was accused of robbing a convenience store. In his autobiography, King said he went into the store intending to steal cold cuts and bread. There's some dispute about what happened next. The store's owner said that King was carrying a tire iron. King said it was the other way around, that the owner had the tire iron.

[Johnny Kelly]

Johnny Kelly, well, he explained to me, hey, he been fishing all day, was hot. He had the money to pay for it. It's just that the guy was being weird and wouldn't accept the food stamp. So I just, hey, I saw it like he saw it at the time.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

King fled the store and drove away, but the police tracked him down. 10 days later. He pled guilty to robbery and was sentenced to two years. The store owner later said that he'd hit King first and that he wasn't mad at him. King spent 10 months in state custody, first in a firefighting camp near Mount Shasta and then in the California Correctional center in Susanville. He was released on parole in December 1990. King was still on parole a few months later when he led police on a high speed chase.

[Johnny Kelly]

From my understanding from Rodney, he was speeding, no doubt about that. He didn't want to stop because he just had got a job working for the union in construction, and he didn't want to go to jail. He wanted to, you know, go to work, which was going to be on that Monday.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

Johnny Kelly says that King told him that he'd been confused by what the officers were shouting at him.

[Johnny Kelly]

He would shout commands to him. At the same time you would hit him with a Taser and turn it up and he was shouting multiple commands, you know, so it wasn't about he was trying to get up and rush your officer. No, you hit him with that taser. You made him get up and you kept doing, hitting the trigger, playing a game with him, you know.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

Like everyone else in America, Kelly watched George Holiday's tape. But he was one of the few people who understood how King could take all that punishment.

[Johnny Kelly]

He was used to that abuse as a kid, so that's why he would get up also. He could take it and he would get up, you know, and that pretty much came from his dad.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

In an interview years later, King accepted blame for the chase, but not for what happened after he pulled over.

[Juan King]

I knew it was wrong to run for him, but once I stopped the car, everything was on them.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

Let's take a break. Before the video of his beating went national, Rodney King was virtually unknown to anyone beyond his family and friends. He was a 25 year old parolee who worked part time at Dodger Stadium. His only public record could be found in a handful of arrest reports. That all changed overnight after that press conference outside the men's central jail. King went to Steve Lerman's office. When they got there, they Lerman had him posed for another set of photographs. In one of them, he's standing shirtless before a white wall. His face is grotesquely swollen, almost completely round, and the whites of his right eye are red from a broken blood vessel. There are purple bruises all over his torso and upper arms and scars on his right cheek and under his right breast. Steve Lerman.

[Steve Lerman]

And those are the pictures that went.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

All over the world.

[Steve Lerman]

This is before he got cleaned up and repaired by my doctors.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

In the days that followed, reporters hounded King and his family members. People from as far away as Australia reached out and offered to send him money. It seemed like everyone in the world had seen that video and had an opinion about it. That included the President of the United States, George H.W. bush. Those terrible scenes stir us all to demand an end to gratuitous violence and, and brutality. One person who wasn't ready to grapple with that video was Rodney King.

[Steve Lerman]

He was just in recovery mode. I mean, really, he had the s knocked out of him. So, I mean, I, I, I think he was lucky to be alive. I, I think his concentration was, I am effed up.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

Lurman had booked King into a hotel under an assumed name to give him some much needed privacy. It was at that hotel, days after King's release from jail, when family and friends realized what bad shape he was in. His cousin Ontreecia spoke with him on the phone while he recovered at the Beverly Hills Ramada.

[Ontreecia Averet]

He was like, I'm bleeding. Blood is coming out of me. Blood is coming out of me all over. It's coming, he said it was coming out of him when he would urinate. He was having bleeding in the ears and the nose and stuff like that. Eventually he had to go back to the hospital.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

King needed to have a metal plate put in his skull which had been damaged in the beating. When he Was about to head into surgery, Luhrmann got a phone call from LAPD Chief Darrell Gates.

[Steve Lerman]

And he said, first of all, Mr. Lerman, I want to thank you for the way you've been handling this. And then I'd like to express my thoughts and apologize to Mr. King.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

The chief's call had caught Lerman by surprise. He put his hand over the phone receiver so he could speak to King privately.

[Steve Lerman]

And I said to him, I said, rodney, I said, you know, I got on the phone, I got Chief Gates on the phone, he wants to apologize. Do you have anything to say to him? And he couldn't really talk because the jaw is wired. He said, yeah, tell him to kiss my ass. So I went back with Chief Gates and I said, you know, I think he appreciates your attention, and when he comes out of anesthesia, I'll tell him your thoughts. Thank you.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

King continued to suffer after he was discharged from the hospital. He was in chronic pain and his injuries made it difficult for him to speak and think. He was also beginning to realize that millions of people had seen him on the ground, totally helpless, getting pummeled by the police.

[Johnny Kelly]

Johnny Kelly, it was just an embarrassment to see these cops jump on him. And that's how he felt. Only thing he could think about was the boots to the face, the boots to the ribs, the. Just the beating itself. He was having nightmares about it, you know, so he was in bad shape.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

King was growing apart from his second wife and decided it would be a good idea for Kelly to move in to help with security. But he was more than just a bodyguard.

[Johnny Kelly]

It got to the point where Rodney needed somebody with him 24 7. Not for his protection, but to protect him from himself. Sometimes Rodney would go through nightmares at night. Screaming, hollering, kicking, waking up. He wouldn't even, he wouldn't even recognize you. You can be with him all day, he can fall asleep and wake up, he wouldn't recognize you. I mean, there was situation where me and him got into fights. Yeah. So it was bad.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

Steve Lerman eventually moved King out of the hotel and into a massive apartment complex in LA's Miracle Mile district. It was a good place for King to hide from all the people trying to track him down. In that apartment, Kelly got an up close look at the day to day reality of Rodney King's life.

[Johnny Kelly]

One side his face was numb, and the other side he could feel and there was no taste in his mouth. So, yeah, like they say, literally beat the taste out of you. They beat the taste out of him. He Couldn't even taste pepper, hot sauce, anything. And I found that out. We was eating one day, and he was putting all this pepper on his corn. I said, man, what the hell's wrong with you? He said, I can't taste the shit anyway. I was like, wow.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

Doctors said King had permanent brain damage, and Lurman hired a psychiatrist to treat him for depression. The damage to his looks was particularly hard for King to deal with.

[Johnny Kelly]

He took a lot of pride in his look. He cared about his face, he cared about his hair. He cared a lot about his teeth. But he did care about his appearance, what he looked like, and all that type of stuff. But he knew he had some issues, and he was trying to deal with them the best he could.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

You know, King was terrified of going out in public and getting recognized. He wore a wig of dreadlocks to disguise himself, and he drank.

[Johnny Kelly]

He was trying to medicate himself to get away from the pain, and so that's why he started drinking so heavy.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

In an interview years later, King talked about his addiction.

[Juan King]

The alcoholic gene, it has trickled down. You know, my dad was alcoholic, and some of the drinking over the years was kind of embarrassment to me.

[Johnny Kelly]

I couldn't walk in Rodney's shoes, you know, being what he went through. So to me, I felt like, okay, if this is going to help the pain, you know, all I could do is let, you know, go for it. You know what I mean?

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

Who was your support system during all this time? Like, who were you? Like, who did you talk to about, like, man, Rodney's messed up, bro.

[Johnny Kelly]

I really couldn't talk to nobody. You know, it was just me and him, so it was just me and Rodney.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

When King and Kelly did venture outside, Kelly says they usually went to the same place.

[Johnny Kelly]

We lived in the law office. You know, we would go every day to the law office every day. You know, there was a lot going on. It was explaining to us not to get in trouble and how to do certain things, how to carry yourself and all kind of stuff. You know, there was a lot going on.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

Steve Lerman had his own reasons for encouraging King to keep a low profile.

[Steve Lerman]

Every night, I worried. Every night, I worried about a lawyer stealing him. I worried about something happening to him. I worried about him getting frisky and going out again.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

With King as his client, Luhrmann was now at center stage. And representing Rodney King meant making a lot of big decisions about legal strategy and about how to tell the story of what happened to King. On March 3, 1991, when he took on King's case. Lerman knew he wouldn't present the beating as a racist act. He was aiming to get the best possible settlement from the city and thinking about what kind of appeal would work best on white jurors.

[Steve Lerman]

Because I thought that if his civil case went to trial, people didn't want to hear about the black thing and kind of squeeze guilt out of white people. They beat him because he's black, they beat him because he's Rodney King.

[Vester Mott Givens]

Bullshit. We're talking about Rodney King. It's cause the man was black.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

Vester Mott Givens. He was a law student and community organizer in South Central.

[Vester Mott Givens]

So you got his lawyer want to strip him of his blackness. It was about race. So expose the racism in the case. That's what a good lawyer for the community would have done.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

King's cousin Ontreecia says the family faced a lot of pressure to find a black attorney to represent him.

[Ontreecia Averet]

A lot of black professionals, you know, they felt some type of way like, you know, why would you all have this Caucasian man representing you when, you know, this is a black thing right here? You know, this happened to a black man. How will these people represent, you know, Rodney in any type of way? If he needs representing, how will this fight work, you know?

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

Privately, the King family was divided about how to present his case. The LA Times reported that soon after King was arrested, he told his family in Luhrmann that the officers had taunted him with a racial slur. He later confirmed it had been the word nigger. King's aunt told the newspaper that she'd urged him to go public with that allegation. But King's mother, Odessa, overruled her. She was a devout Jehovah's Witness who was opposed to political action.

[Steve Lerman]

That's one of the reasons why she didn't want to be around anyone like Al Sharpton, because she didn't believe in making public statements about things like this.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

In the months after he got attacked by the police, King rarely spoke for himself. Instead, still broken from his beating, he let his mother call the shots and allowed Lerman to do the talking. King showed no interest in becoming the face of campaigns against police brutality or being part of the larger movement for racial justice. When Sharpton staged a protest calling on LAPD Chief Daryl Gates to resign, King was nowhere to be seen. Jesse Jackson led a similar march, and King again wasn't involved. King also didn't show up when 130 students at Cal State Northridge held a rally on campus. Dermot Givens refused to believe that King was making his own choices.

[Vester Mott Givens]

People in the community, other activists, we see this. We had a feeling we knew what was going on. There's nothing we can do. He's got his lawyer. They gonna get paid. They shut Rodney King off. He has now has no access to black folks.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

It's hard to know what precisely Rodney King was thinking in the months after the beating or if he was ever thinking straight at all. It's very clear that he wanted to be left alone. It's also possible that he felt things about the world and about what had happened to him that he didn't want to say in public. Here's an interview Steve lerman gave in March 1991.

[News Reporter]

In his only public statement about the beating, Rodney King said he did not think it racially motivated. But King's lawyer said he was asked about it again today.

[Steve Lerman]

He said, I'm scared to say yes. I'm scared. I don't want to start a riot.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

Let's take a break. On March 26, 1991, Steve Lerman filed a claim against the city of Los Angeles on behalf of Rodney King. A claim is a direct request for damages. It doesn't go through the court system. Lerman asked for $83 million. The city attorney's office rejected that request. Lerman responded with a federal lawsuit seeking an unspecified amount in damages. And he urged his client to stay out of trouble while that suit worked its way through the court system.

[Steve Lerman]

My greatest worry, and I mean my greatest fear, was that the parole department would violate him. And if he got violated and sent back to state prison, that would be the end of a case. Literally, that would just be the end.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

Just three days after Lerman filed that lawsuit, King got pulled over by a sheriff's deputy. He was cited for driving with an expired registration, tinted windows, and not carrying his license. He was issued a warning and allowed to go. Two weeks later, King got into more serious trouble.

[News Reporter]

A new dimension to the Los Angeles police brutality case. Tonight, the unarmed black motorist who was beaten in that incident has had another run in with the law.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

According to the police, King was driving when he solicited a sex worker at an intersection in East Hollywood.

[Ontreecia Averet]

Here's the police version.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

Two Vice officers in Hollywood saw a suspected male prostitute dressed as a woman get into a car. The man got into King's car, and they drove into a dark alley behind a nearby apartment complex. A pair of LAPD vice cops followed King in an unmarked car. When the undercover officers approached him, King put his car into reverse and sped away, almost hitting one of the officers. In his autobiography, King King wrote, I didn't know he was a cop, and I thought he was trying to rob me. A short time later, King flagged down a different pair of cops and pulled his car over. When the officers found out who they'd nabbed, they consulted with their superiors, and Daryl Gates was looped in. King was released later that night. Gates insisted that he was treated like any other suspect. Here's Tim Fowler, King's parole officer.

[Tim Fowler]

Well, they turned the case over to the attorney general's office to investigate. The attorney general investigate. I'd done an extensive investigation. It was clearly determined, hey, any individual has a right to protect themselves and run away. And he had no intent of running.

[Johnny Kelly]

Them down, you know.

[Tim Fowler]

Therefore, no charges were filed. There was no parole violation there. The general public assumed, this guy is getting away with murder. Let's, you know, let's get him, you know. There was no violation.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

It was a rare stroke of good luck for King, A disaster narrowly averted. But the pressure on him was about to get even more intense. As his civil suit got underway, Prosecutors were building a criminal case against the four LAPD officers who'd beaten him. All four were charged with assault with a deadly weapon and excessive use of force. Two of them, Stacey Coon and Lawrence Powell, were also charged with filing a false report. One of the biggest questions the prosecutors faced was whether to put Rodney King on the witness stand. Here's Terry White. He was the lead prosecutor in the case against the four police officers.

[Terry White]

Lerman was the only access I had to King. I mean, if I pissed Lerman off, then I have no access to him. So with Lerman, you just had to be a little gentle, a little easy with him, or at least I felt that way. Otherwise he would just take of care King away, period.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

White knew it might look bad if King didn't testify, but he also worried about what would happen if King did.

[Terry White]

He got fairly agitated when we sort of pressed him about details like they might have done on cross examination. He got fairly agitated, not really loud, but you could tell he's getting sort of upset, which we didn't need. I mean, you just didn't need that. What went through my mind was, well, this is what's going to happen. This is what it will be like on cross examination. I can't have him blow up on cross examination. If he blows up on cross examination, I might as well go home. The case is over.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

Steve Lerman told me that he thought King would struggle on the witness stand, especially while he was suffering the effects of a traumatic brain injury.

[Steve Lerman]

The reality is, I didn't think it would be good for him because he'd be at a disadvantage because cognitively he was challenged.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

Besides, lerman thought the DA's office didn't need King's testimony. Surely the videotape alone would be enough to secure a conviction. Rodney King never asked to be famous. At the lowest moment of his life, in an encounter that broke his body and damaged his brain, he was pushed into the very center of the public eye. King disappointed just about everyone. His failure or refusal to make any kind of public statement about race or racism irked a lot of black activists. His lawyers were frustrated that he couldn't stay out of trouble. The prosecutors decided he'd be useless as a witness, more likely to wreck their case than to win a jury's sympathy. The only people King didn't let down were the ones who knew him before the beating, the ones like his cousin who called him Glenn.

[Ontreecia Averet]

He was never enough for anyone. At that moment in time, he found himself where he could not meet the standards of anyone. So he just took these blows. It just never stopped.

[Narrator (Joel Anderson)]

Slow Burn is a production of Slate plus, Slate's membership program. You can sign up for Slate plus to hear a bonus episode of the show this week and every week for the next two months. And in this week's bonus episode, you'll be hearing more from Steve Lerman and Johnny Kelly. Head over to slate.com slowburn to sign up and listen now. It's only a dollar for your first month. We couldn't make Slow Burn without the support of Slate plus, so please sign up if you can head over to slate.com slowburn and a programming note we're taking next week off, but we'll be back with a new episode in two weeks. Slow Burn is produced by Jason De Leon, Ethan Brooks, Sophie Summergrad, Jasmine Ellis and me, Joel Anderson. Editorial direction by Josh Levine and Gabriel Roth. Artwork is by Jim Cook. Our theme music was composed by Don Will, mixing by Merritt Jacob. Special thanks to the Department of Special Research Collections at the UC Santa Barbara Library Lou Cannon, Jackson Van der Becken, Kucr Radio at UC Riverside, Devin Schwartz, Stan Mizrahi, Jared Holt, Lowen Liu, Evan Chung, Derek John, Janae Desmond Harris, Amber Smith, Bill Carey, Meredith Moran, Seth Brown, Rachel Strom, Chow2, Derek Johnson, Asha Saluja and Katie Rayford. Thanks for listening.

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