ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 29, 1997 TAG: 9701290050
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
ROANOKE POLICE SAY Steven Leftwich assaulted them. Leftwich says they attacked him. On Tuesday, his account was backed by an independent witness.
As Owen Hall drove his taxi through the deserted streets of downtown Roanoke at 4 a.m. Feb. 11, he spotted a gold Trans Am with a burned-out headlight being trailed by a police paddy wagon.
Hall circled the block and returned to the scene "because I figured something was going to happen, and I wanted to see it."
What he saw put him in front of a jury Tuesday as the only independent witness to what Steven L. Leftwich calls a case of police brutality, and what police say was a case of Leftwich attacking them in a wild brawl on the City Market.
Leftwich - who claims he was beaten and choked by a gang of police officers after a routine traffic stop - is charged with assaulting four officers.
But according to Hall, it was the police who were doing most of the assaulting.
Hall testified that after parking his taxi, he got out and saw a state trooper chasing Leftwich down the 100 block of Campbell Avenue, dousing him with pepper spray and hitting him in the head with a flashlight.
"Mr. Leftwich was trying to get away," Hall testified.
As Leftwich fell to the sidewalk and more police officers joined the fray, "one of them was stomping him right bad, it seemed like from where I was at," Hall told the jury. "It appeared to me that [Leftwich] was trying to protect himself."
But under cross examination, Hall admitted that he told a different story two days after the incident, when he was questioned by a Roanoke detective investigating Leftwich's allegations of excessive force.
Hall said he didn't tell the detective about officers hitting and stomping Leftwich because "I didn't want the police mad at me."
"I wouldn't say I lied to [the detective], I just didn't tell him everything," Hall said.
Testimony concluded late Tuesday, and the jury is expected to begin deliberations when the case resumes today in Roanoke Circuit Court.
Although excessive force by police is not officially an issue in the trial, that was hard to tell at times. Leftwich's family members and supporters filled half the courtroom, sometimes nodding as defense attorney Harold Barnes of Norfolk suggested that police were falsely implicating his client to cover their own abuse of power.
On the other side of the courtroom, almost as many police officers lined the pews in a show of support for the prosecution.
Leftwich, who is appealing four misdemeanor assault convictions and a two-year sentence he received last year in General District Court, testified Tuesday that police beat him so badly that he prayed to God he would survive.
After spending the night of Feb. 11 partying at several nightclubs, Leftwich turned the car keys over to his cousin, William Hayden, and was riding in the passenger seat when his car was pulled over on Campbell Avenue.
Officer A.P. Forbes testified that when he informed Hayden that his taillights - not a headlight as Hall had testified - were not working, he was told that Leftwich owned the car. As he spoke to Leftwich, Forbes testified, he noticed what appeared to be marijuana on the console.
Leftwich was asked to step out of the car, and from there his story differs drastically from what police say.
State Trooper R.J. Carpentieri, who had stopped to assist Forbes, testified that Leftwich struck him in the chest for no reason, and then began to struggle. Leftwich put up such a fight, police said, that it took nearly nearly 10 officers and repeated bursts of pepper spray to get him in handcuffs.
Leftwich, however, said Forbes grabbed him from behind for no reason after he got out of the car. Within seconds, he said, "the whole downtown was full" of police cars with flashing lights and shrieking sirens.
"They were like surrounding me," he testified. "It was like a pack of them. I was just trying to get away from the pack and the mace."
Leftwich said he began to black out after one officer grabbed him in a chokehold. "I said a prayer; I said `God, just don't let me die.'''
After the pepper spray cleared, Leftwich and four officers were treated at Roanoke hospitals for cuts, bruises and scrapes. Forbes suffered a concussion, and Carpentieri missed six weeks from work because of a separated shoulder.
Leftwich's story was supported by his cousin, Hayden. But several police officers testified that on the night of the incident, Hayden made no complaints of excessive force and told them he didn't know what Leftwich's problem was.
After Leftwich, 31, accused police of using excessive force, the Roanoke chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference asked for an investigation. After conducting an internal probe, police said the officers used no more force than was necessary to subdue Leftwich.
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