Early on March 3, 1991, four Los Angeles policemen, Stacy Koon, Ted Briseno, Lawrence Powell, and Timothy Wind, conducted a traffic stop of a car driven by Rodney King. When King stepped out of the car, an officer fired a 50,000 volt Taser electric dart gun, similar to a stun gun, at him. Thereafter, the police officers reportedly hit King with their batons between 53 to 56 times. As the result of the beating, King suffered serious injuries, including several broken bones.

A private citizen recorded the entire incident on video and later sold it to a local television news station. The local news station, in turn, sold a copy to Ted Turner's Cable News Network headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. In the wake of repeated nationwide broadcasts of the beating, the four officers involved in the incident faced assault charges in state court in California.

Remarkably, in the state criminal trial, a jury...