The true-crime writer looks at the deadly encounter between a young Black man and two White police officers, and how the trials that follow captivated San Diego.
Five years ago, as Peter Houlahan finished work on his debut true-crime book, a fellow writer sent him an old newspaper article and with it a note asking if he knew the story of a man named Sagon Penn, the San Diego Police Department and the criminal trial that captivated that city in the mid-’80s.
Houlahan, author of “Norco ’80,” did not. But as he read the piece he’d been sent, he grew more intrigued by a story that many in San Diego remember.
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In brief, the story goes like this: On March 31, 1985, Penn, a young Black man who trained in tae kwon do and studied Buddhism, was driving a pick-up carrying other young Black men when he was stopped in the Encanto neighborhood by two San Diego police officers, who were White. The officers, who were leaving an earlier call about an armed gang member, grew frustrated that Penn – who attempted to hand the officer his wallet in compliance – wouldn’t remove his driver’s license from the wallet. Within minutes, as a crowd of witnesses gathered and a civilian ride-along observer watched from a police cruiser, the incident turned violent and Penn grabbed one of the officer’s guns and shot both, one fatally, and the observer.
The district attorney filed charges against Penn including murder and attempted murder. His defense attorney and many witnesses argued Penn had acted in self-defense after the police officers began beating him with billy clubs. After two separate trials, Penn was acquitted.
“It held enough to certainly get my interest,” Houlahan says. “It’s pretty astonishing. You’re like, ‘Wait a minute, the young Black man got the gun and then this happened – and then not guilty?
“You can kind of sense on a story that there’s got to be a lot more layers to it. Then you just start digging, and it was pretty clear pretty fast.”
Houlahan’s new book, “Reap the Whirlwind: Violence, Race, Justice and the Story of Sagon Penn” arrives in bookstores on July 23.
In an interview edited for length and clarity, Houlahan talked about the years of research he did, weaving together the different narrative threads of the story, how the case did or did not change relations between the Black community and police in San Diego and beyond, and more.
Q: You grew up in Southern California and had vivid memories of the bank robbery you wrote about in ‘Norco ’80.’ Were you also familiar with this one?
A: When I started the book, I knew nothing about it — and I was a complete news junkie. And, at the time, I went to UC San Diego. I was there from ’79 to ’84, so I left right before this. I probably saw it in the L.A. Times but it did not stick with me.
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Q: You mentioned coming across 1,400 news articles and tens of thousands of pages of legal documents in your research. How do you begin with something that has so much material to dig through?
A: The good thing about writing about a criminal event, especially one that goes to trial, is that there is a tremendous amount of documentation that’s generated. By its nature, a bunch of people pick apart this thing to its granular level — investigators, defense attorneys, defense investigators, criminalists. From the moment it’s over, every single police officer writes their report if they had involvement.
They get interviewed again by a detective. Then the detectives go out and interview, as soon as possible, every single eyewitness: Where were you? What did you see? The evidence techs run their ballistics and everything. So there’s a tremendous amount out there.
Now here’s the wrinkle with the Sagon Penn case. He was found not guilty; it’s an acquittal. So nobody has to save anything.
Q: So what court and law enforcement documents did you have? Where did you find it?
A: What’s in the courthouses is mostly appeals. Some very interesting stuff. But the trial testimony was not. The police reports were not. The San Diego Police Department had nothing, and they said they weren’t really willing to work with me. But I totally believe them when they say they had nothing. And I did find the police reports.
It was the defense attorney Milt Silverman who had everything in the basement of his offices. That was an adventure, because, I mean, the cases he’s had are unbelievable. They’re remarkable. And he’s kept most of them in boxes in the basement of that 120-year-old house (where his offices are).
Q: You interviewed a large number of people.
A: I don’t like to dig into my big interviews, like with Milt Silverman or (deputy district attorney) Mike Carpenter, or even Colleen Riggs (wife of slain police officer Tom Riggs), until I really know what you’re talking about.
But there’s a point when I start talking to people who have different levels of involvement. I started talking to a lot of the witnesses. Some of the guys who were riding in the truck. Some of the police officers. Donovan Jacobs (the SDPD officer who Penn alleged had beat him) did not speak with me. Again, I get it. He certainly was aware of it. I contacted him in many different ways.
SEE ALSO: Read excerpts from Peter Houlahan’s book about a notorious bank robbery and gun battle, “Norco ’80”
Q: Once you have all of this material, documents, interviews and so on, how did you find the threads of the narratives the book delivers? Milt Silverman obviously is key figure, but there are many other points of view here.
A: Newspaper articles will mostly bring out the big points in it. The defense is saying that all this was caused by Donovan Jacobs. It would never have happened if it weren’t for him. Sagon Penn was receiving a beating and he reacted in self-defense. And the prosecution is pretty straightforward. They’re just saying, a cop walked up to another guy, and what you saw happen, happened.
That’s the two sides of the story. I feel like Milt Silverman and Mike Carpenter wholeheartedly believed in what they what they believed. I think Mike Carpenter absolutely felt Sagon Penn was responsible and should be held accountable. And Milt Silverman felt like absolutely not. You start to pick up those threads.
Q: And beyond the courtroom and the trials?
A: One of the most fascinating threads was how was it spilling out into society. Pretty immediately certain family members (of Penn) and members of the Black community are saying he was getting beaten and that the police started this. So you see that polarization beginning. And the police are saying something different.
Then, of course, it goes to the media. I thought it was fascinating the way the media splintered, and how it played in the media. So you follow that thread.
Q: It was interesting to see how the leadership of the San Diego Police Department at the time was trying to be more progressive and improve relations between the department and minority communities. And then this happened.
A: The city as a whole is really a character in this. It is a unique place, the fact that they were so willfully naive — so ‘We are not L.A.’ But leading up to that, they had the first and biggest mass shooting (to that point), the (San Ysidro) McDonald’s massacre. They had the first shocking school shooting, Brenda Spencer, the ‘I don’t like Mondays’ shooting. And then the PSA plane crash was the biggest in California history. So they had a lot of big things happening and still it was kind of fun in the sun.
Q: One major character, Penn, died in 2002 — that was the article your friend sent in 2019. How’d you decide to write about him for the book?
A: That is absolutely a huge challenge in this. In some ways, you know, this all happens to him. And then he kind of disappears during the trial. But you talk to people who could give you an idea of what he was like. His taekwondo master, James Wilson. (Penn) actually gives some interviews. There’s a very short documentary done by some local news guys.
The family did not care to participate. For whatever reasons, they’d had too much. A few did speak to me off the record, and they confirmed a tremendous amount of documentation. He did not testify in the trial, but his three big statements (in separate police interviews) are pretty astonishing. When he talks about the incident, he becomes pretty focused and very consistent. Otherwise, he’s rambling, he’s all over, non-sequiturs.
Q: This happened before Rodney King, before George Floyd and many other cases involving police and Black men. Did anything change in San Diego or elsewhere as a result of this?
A: At the time, a number of people said that there was a feeling a young Black man could get a fair trial in San Diego. But you ask other people, today, and they’ll say nothing has changed. I think there were, and would be today, people who came out of the Sagon Penn trial thinking exactly what they thought going into it.
Because it’s not something that fits neatly into anybody’s preferred narrative. It’s sloppy, it’s messy.
You know the reason why it’s called ‘Reap the Whirlwind’? These are things that start and just get so much momentum that they almost are inevitable and cannot be stopped.
