ABSTRACT
Federal law gave Rodney King a victory, but it was a tarnished victory. Bill Clinton and Janet Reno gladly hailed the verdict as vindication of the justice system. Like Clinton, Reno's political ties and sentiments were rooted in the conservative Deep South. She had been a tough, no-nonsense state prosecutor in Miami. During the 1980s, Reno played it close to the legal vest when it came to prosecuting police officers accused of racially motivated violence. In 1983, a county judge chastised prosecutors in Reno's office for acting as defense counsel for police in abuse cases and not fully presenting evidence at inquests. Civil rights leaders pressed Nixon, Carter, Ford, Reagan, and Bush to vigorously use federal statutes to curb police violence. On March 26, 1965, a somber Lyndon Johnson, flanked by Federal Bureau of Investigation director J. Edgar Hoover, announced the arrest of four Klansmen suspected of murdering civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo on an Alabama highway.
