Defense Witnesses Say Police Beat Penn Before Shootings

The first defense witnesses in Sagon Penn’s murder trial, a church choir leader and a Sunday school teacher, testified Tuesday that police agents Donovan Jacobs and Thomas Riggs shouted racial slurs at Penn and continued beating him after he offered to surrender.

Witnesses also said that investigators who interviewed them after the shooting either omitted critical information about the incident or inserted erroneous information in official police reports presented as evidence.

Defense attorney Milton Silverman began laying Penn’s defense by questioning two women who said they heard Jacobs and Riggs, both white, call Penn a “nigger” and Jacobs tell him that he was “gonna beat your ass.”

Penn is accused of using Jacobs’ service revolver to kill Riggs and wound Jacobs and Sarah Pina-Ruiz, a civilian riding along in Riggs’ car.

Cynthia Clantion, choir director at Spring Valley Community Church, told a Superior Court session presided over by Judge Ben W. Hamrick that she was getting ready to go to church at the time of the March 31, 1985, incident when she walked across the street toward Penn’s truck. Clantion testified that she mistook the vehicle for a truck owned by a friend. When she arrived at a yard adjacent to the driveway where the shooting occurred, Clantion said, she saw Jacobs straddling Penn, who was lying on his back.

“He (Jacobs) told him to turn over. Penn said, ‘How can I?’ and he (Jacobs) hit him and kept hitting him,” Clantion said. While Jacobs pummeled Penn with his fists, Riggs was kicking him and hitting him with two police batons, she said.

According to Clantion, at one point an angry Jacobs told Penn:

“You think you’re bad. You think you’re bad, nigger. I’m going to beat your ass.”

While he was being beaten, Penn kept asking Jacobs what he did wrong and why the police were beating him, Clantion said.

“We (a crowd that had gathered) were screaming, ‘Stop! Stop! You’re going to kill him.’ . . . The way they were beating him, it wasn’t even called for. . . . Is that the way to serve and protect?” Clantion said.

Another witness, Patricia Ann Lowe-Smith, said Riggs “meant business when he was kicking Penn. Nothing was easy. . . . They weren’t playing. They were meaning to do some damage.”

Demetria Shelby, a Sunday school teacher at Clantion’s church, testified that she was interviewed after the incident by an officer identified only as Detective Thwing. Shelby, who witnessed the shooting, said that she told Thwing that Jacobs called Penn a “nigger” and had threatened to “kick his ass.”

However, Shelby’s comments did not appear in Thwing’s report, which was presented in court Tuesday.

Betty Paradero, who lived in a house adjacent to the driveway where the shooting occurred, also contradicted a police report that quoted her as saying that a crowd had threatened to attack Riggs, who kept bystanders away from Jacobs and Penn. Paradero was interviewed by Officer John Simms.

“I don’t recall telling him that it looked like the crowd was going to attack the police officer,” Paradero said. “I remember telling him that the police officer (Riggs) with the stick (baton) was telling the crowd to back up.”

Carlton Smith, who lived in a house across from Paradero’s that also is adjacent to the driveway, testified that Jacobs kept ordering Penn to turn over so he could be handcuffed. According to Smith, Penn tried to comply and offered to surrender but Jacobs and Riggs continued to beat him.

“Mr. Penn was saying, ‘What did I do?,’ and (Riggs) hit him with the stick and told him to shut up. Then he (Penn) said, ‘OK, you got me.’ Then (Jacobs) told him, ‘Didn’t I tell you to shut up, boy?’ and hit him with his fists,” Smith said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Carpenter tried to raise doubts about Penn’s willingness to cooperate with the officers. But each time that he tried to hammer away at this point, the witnesses offered the same response.

Carpenter’s exchange with Shelby was typical:

Carpenter asked, “Did you at any time see Mr. Penn try to turn over?”

“How could he? He couldn’t move,” Shelby said. Shelby said that Jacobs, who was sitting on top of Penn, would not let him move.

In each instance, an exasperated Carpenter would ask the witness to answer again with a simple yes or no.

Contradicting other witnesses, Paradero testified Tuesday that she saw Jacobs kneeling over Penn, hitting him with a police baton. She said that she did not see Jacobs hit Penn with his fists.

Several witnesses have testified that Riggs was wielding both his and Jacobs’ batons, and that Jacobs used only his fists on Penn.

The incident began when Jacobs followed Penn’s truck into the driveway, after he had radioed a police dispatcher that he was stopping a truck full of black gang members. (Neither Penn nor others in the truck were gang members, police later determined.) Witnesses have said a dispute arose when Jacobs asked Penn for his driver’s license and Penn declined to remove the license from his wallet. Penn and Jacobs then started fighting.

Clantion said that she saw “a ball of fire” when Penn began shooting, and she saw Jacobs “fall to the side.” Shelby said that Riggs “flew over the brick wall” separating the driveway from Smith’s yard when he was shot.