Jurors Distrusted Gates, Vernon Testimony : Lawsuit: They give the reasons for the $3.84-million award to political activist Michael Zinzun.

A strong distrust of testimony from the city’s two top police officials--Police Chief Daryl F. Gates and Assistant Chief Robert Vernon--played a key role in a $3.84-million award to political activist Michael Zinzun in a three-week defamation and civil rights lawsuit that concluded Tuesday, members of a Los Angeles Superior Court jury said.

The 12-member jury ordered Vernon to personally pay Zinzun $10,000 in punitive damages for having used a Los Angeles Police Department computer to obtain and spread information about the former Black Panther Party member, who was campaigning for city office in Pasadena.

Last Friday, the same jurors ordered Los Angeles to pay $3.83-million in compensatory damages to Zinzun, who claimed that his 1989 campaign for the Pasadena Board of Directors, now renamed the City Council, was disrupted by Vernon’s actions. Zinzun lost to Chris Holden, son of Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden, who has been a strong backer of Gates during the controversy over the recent police beating of Rodney G. King.

In their trial testimony, Gates and Vernon said the assistant chief did nothing more than gather 156 pages of news stories about Zinzun from a private Lexis/Nexis computer service terminal that was located in the department’s Anti-Terrorist Division headquarters. Vernon said the clippings, which are available to the public through similar Lexis/Nexis terminals in libraries and attorneys’ offices, were meant for his neighbor, former Pasadena Mayor John Crowley.

Most of the nine jury members interviewed by The Times said the verdict reflected their belief that the top officers never revealed the true extent of Vernon’s actions in regard to Zinzun’s candidacy.

“I felt they had a blatant disregard for the truth,” said juror Kenneth Fleetwood, 34, a Pacific Bell business office worker. “I just believe there was more to it than was presented.”

“They kept trying to make you believe (the information) was public, public, public,” said Vance Smith, 29, a Southern California Gas Co. appliance service representative. “That was a smoke screen. I think there was more to it.”

Deputy City Atty. Mary House, who is expected to appeal the judgment, said the jury’s decision may in part reflect a diminished public confidence in the Police Department as a result of the March 3 beating of King.

“These are interesting times and Mr. Zinzun is the 15-year head of the Coalition Against Police Abuse,” said House, who went to trial after the City Council rejected a settlement offer of $450,000. “When he (Zinzun) sues the chief of police and the assistant chief, you have the makings of a movie script.”

House said she will likely ask Superior Court Judge Michael Berg to either overturn the verdict or lower the financial judgment based in part on the grounds that Zinzun, as a political candidate, was a public figure who could not have been legally defamed.

She said she would also contend in an appeal that the news articles gathered by Vernon were public information. “Lexis/Nexis is not a police record or police file . . . and regardless of the source, it is still public.”

Most jurors interviewed Tuesday said that the videotaped beating of King had not been discussed during deliberations. Zinzun has previously won a $1.2-million settlement from Pasadena over a 1986 encounter with police that has left him blind in one eye.

“The King case had nothing to do with this at all,” said juror Brenda Ray, a Los Angeles Municipal Court clerk. “I haven’t really been even following that case. It was the evidence alone.”

Some jurors said moral issues played a part in their decision. “Here Robert Vernon (a lay minister in a fundamentalist church) is supposed to be a Christian man,” said juror Betty Benefield, a Municipal Court secretary. “Ethics involve moral values. It was wrong for him to give this information out.”

Jurors said they arrived at the initial $3.83-million judgment--$900,000 more than Zinzun’s attorney, Dan Stormer, had sought--by awarding a $1-million award and adding $100,000 per year for the length of Zinzun’s anticipated life span. The $10,000 personal judgment against Vernon was based on added expenditures that Zinzun said he was forced to make in his election campaign in an attempt to blunt the effect of Vernon’s actions, jurors said.

Zinzun, 42, called the jury’s verdict “firm, fair and compassionate. They sent a message to the city that enough is enough and they won’t be a party to the antics of the LAPD.”

Vernon, who was not in the courtroom Tuesday, did not return a phone call seeking comment. Police spokesman William Frio said there would be no official department statement on the verdict because “Vernon is the subject here.”

Zinzun, who also played a key role in a $1.8-million lawsuit that resulted in the dismantling of the department’s Public Disorder Intelligence Division eight years ago, filed the suit against Vernon after The Times published a February, 1989, article stating that Gates had reprimanded Vernon for using a Police Department computer to research the background of the then-political candidate.

The article, headlined “Gates Reprimands Aide for Using LAPD Files for Political Research,” said that the anti-terrorist division, at Vernon’s request, printed out 156 computerized pages of “newspaper stories and other publicly available documents.”

The day after the March 7, 1989, election, The Times published a “For The Record,” clarifying the original headline. “As noted in the story,” the one-paragraph statement read, “the ‘files’ were not actual police files, but were newspaper articles and other publicly available documents stored in a commonly used computer database.”

Vernon testified during the trial that he had asked The Times to correct its headline shortly after the initial story was published. He also testified that he retrieved the news stories on Zinzun after an impromptu meeting with Crowley, who had asked him about Zinzun’s candidacy.

Gates testified that he orally reprimanded Vernon for inappropriately using a department computer to gather the information on Zinzun. Gates added that Vernon had been acting “in good faith” to make sure that any comments he made to neighbors about Zinzun were “from public access” rather than internal police files.

Several jurors said they had been turned off by Gates’ court apparel--a police uniform and holstered 9-millimeter pistol that he had worn to a Police Department awards ceremony earlier in the day.

“He looked like he was in a clown suit,” Fleetwood said. “It was a joke. I was not impressed.”

Jurors said they distrusted statements by the top police officials because of inconsistencies between their testimony and that of Crowley. For instance, Crowley said he had not asked for specific information on Zinzun, House said, while Vernon maintained that he had.

Some panelists added that they were suspicious because the data provided by Vernon was from a computer housed in a highly sensitive division of the department.

“The Lexis/Nexis came out of the Anti-Terrorist Division; it did not come out of the Traffic Department,” said juror Ann Apple, 40, of North Hollywood.

The defense contended that the computer in the Anti-Terrorist Division was the only one at police headquarters that was hooked into the private computer base.

Zinzun, who has made four unsuccessful bids for public office, testified that his campaign was destroyed by the effect of the initial Times article, which he said made him look like a terrorist. Meanwhile, Zinzun’s attorney, Stormer, sought in court to portray the actions of Gates and Vernon as less than aboveboard.

For example, in his closing arguments, Stormer termed Vernon’s testimony about how he used the Lexis/Nexis system a “cockamamie story.” He said similarly worded letters written by Vernon and Gates were meant “to cover up what they had done.”

The City Council has the option of paying the $10,000 personal judgment issued against Vernon, who earns a $136,000 annual salary. City Councilwoman Joy Picus, who had opposed a pretrial settlement of the case, said “it would be difficult to predict how the council would respond.”

Picus termed the $3.83-million judgment “terrible . . . really painful for those of us trying to deal with a budget deficit.”

Zinzun said he plans to donate at least $50,000 of the judgment to activist groups fighting police abuse.