A quick warning. This episode has some explicit language.

John Barnett got a phone call one night in March 1991. It was a friend of his telling him to turn on the local news. The video of four police officers beating Rodney King had just come out.

And he says, you see the cop who's kicking the guy on the ground? That's your client.

Barnett's friend was a lawyer for the LAPD's officers union. He wanted Barnett to represent

Theodore Brasino, one of the four cops on the tape. Barnett watched the video and formed his

own opinion about what he was seeing, the same way everyone else did.

I thought then, and I think now that it was a shocking display. You can see the brutality of it.

Still, Barnett accepted the job. He had never handled a case that got as much attention as this one would. When we went to court, we met in an underground place and they told us to put on flack jackets.

That was my first big clue that this was going to be different because they wanted the lawyers

to wear vests.

And not before and not since has there been a case where they were taking such safety precautions

for the defense lawyers.

Barnett had represented clients accused of committing awful crimes, from serial killers

to child molesters.

To a lot of people in Los Angeles, the officers who'd beaten Rodney King were just as unsympathetic.

A poll showed that 81% of potential jurors there believed the officers were probably guilty.

If the defense was to have any hope at all, they'd need to find a much friendlier jury pool.

Here's Russell Cole, an attorney for

another of the four officers. The defense wanted to try to get the trial into a county where

there was a better chance for a predominantly white jury. No question about it. Did anybody ever say

that out loud? No. Not that I recall. It's just the truth. That was not the

argument the officer's lawyers made when they asked the court to move the trial out of Los Angeles.

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