On March 3, 1991, four Los Angeles police officers beat Rodney King as eleven other cops stood by watching. It just so happened that George Holliday, a plumbing store manager, was on his apartment balcony testing out his new video camera and he recorded the incident.

Rodney King had been apprehended by police in Los Angeles following a high speed car chase. When his car was stopped by police, King hesitated when the police instructed him to get out of the car. When he did get out, he appeared to lunge at the officers. King was struck by two darts from a taser stun gun (50,000 volts), which is usually enough to subdue any suspect. But apparently King still refused to obey the instructions to lie flat on the ground. In less than two minutes, King was struck with 56 baton blows and kicked six times. He suffered eleven skull fractures, brain damage, broken bones and teeth, and kidney damage. Not to mention emotional and physical trauma.

Four officers, Officer Laurence Powell, Sgt. Stacey Koon, Officer Theodore Briseno, and Probationary Officer Timothy Wind, were charged with criminal offenses, including assault with a deadly weapon. Their acquittal in April 1992 triggered the Los Angeles riot.

The trial was not held in Los Angeles. Defense attorneys sucessfully argued that a fair trial in LA would be impossible because of extensive publicity. The criminal proceedings were moved to Simi Valley, a predominantly white suburb of Los Angeles. Many people believe the fact that there were no blacks on the jury made the verdicts possible. Many people move to suburbs like Simi Valley to get away from poor blacks, many police officers live in the area.

The jurors discounted the testimony of the California Highway Patrol officer who testified that she tried to stop the beating and took down the badge numbers of the officers involved in order to report them to authorities. They even discounted the testimony of one of the defendants, Officer Theodore Briseno, who said that his colleagues were "out of control." They saw the video, but did not interpret it the same way most people did. They weren't swayed by experts who said the beating was excessive.

The jurors accepted the argument of defense attorneys who said that Rodney King was a difficult-to-subdue suspect who continually refused to follow police instructions to lie face down on the ground and led police to fear that he would inflict bodily harm. One juror later told journalists that King was "in control" of events.