SAN JOSE — While national attention focused this week on a viral video of a white South Carolina deputy sheriff slamming an African-American high school student to the floor, jurors in a courtroom here were riveted by an equally graphic video of a physical encounter between a young black man and a white San Jose policeman who was held civilly liable in a different case for excessive force.

In the San Jose video, Officer Allan De La Cruz picks up 22-year-old Nate Howard by his waistband and back, and slams him down so hard that jurors gasped as they watched his body bounce off the sidewalk.

Even De La Cruz testified this week that, “It was more violent than I intended,” though he still defended his actions.

But shocking as that moment of the seven-minute-long video may have been, it is Howard who is on trial this week, for misdemeanor resisting arrest. In a five-minute opening statement Tuesday, Santa Clara County prosecutor Traci Mason told the jury of six men and six women that Howard was asked at least six times to step away from a group of officers who were issuing a ticket to his friend for urinating behind a building after the bars closed in downtown San Jose on an early May morning in 2014. Howard refused, endangering officers who were trying to control the crowded streets, Mason contended, so De La Cruz’s use of force was justified.

“I’m confident you will find Mr. Howard guilty of obstructing, delaying and resisting arrest,” Mason said.

But Howard, who is 5 feet 6-inches tall and weighs 130 pounds, contends he never represented a threat to police and was merely attempting to come to the aid of his friend and right what he saw as a racial injustice. He believes police would have let his friend off with a warning if he were white, rather than detaining him and writing him a ticket.

“Before he knew what was happening, he was picked up … and thrown down,” Howard’s lawyer Jaime Leaños argued to the jury.

Howard was also struck at least twice with a baton by Sgt. Amir Khalighi, after the sergeant ordered him arrested and Howard allegedly resisted. Late Wednesday, a juror told the court outside the presence of the rest of the jury that he had worked downtown as a bouncer for years and recognized Khalighi when the sergeant took the stand late in the day. The juror said he did not have a good impression of the sergeant, adding that he thought Khalighi often escalated touchy situations and made them worse. The juror was excused by Judge Matthew S. Harris.

The trial comes amid national concerns about disparate treatment of blacks and other racial minorities by police that have erupted in protests when encounters with cops turned deadly in Ferguson, Missouri; Staten Island, New York; and Baltimore.

San Jose residents of color have long complained about disproportionate treatment by police. In response, San Jose last year began collecting data on traffic stops, which according to an analysis by this newspaper, show that officers pulled over, searched, curb-sat, cuffed or otherwise detained blacks and Latinos last year at far higher percentages than their share of this city’s population. Yet the stops seldom led to arrests or evidence of crimes.

Howard, now 24, is a motivational speaker who lives in San Diego and was visiting San Jose on May 24, 2014, to give a commencement speech at a graduation ceremony for black students at San Jose State. The incident occurred after the ceremony, when he and a group of about 10 students went clubbing downtown. If he is convicted, he faces a possible sentence ranging from probation to a year in jail.

Howard’s lawyer plans to call to the stand 47-year-old San Jose resident Danny Piña, whom the lawyer represented in federal court in 2009 when Piña won a small civil judgment for excessive force against De La Cruz. The officer was found liable for dislocating Pina’s elbow after stopping him for a missing headlamp on his bicycle, and for Piña’s broken nose, which was fractured either by De La Cruz punching him or bringing him down to the ground. The jury awarded Piña $11,000 in damages, as well as more than $100,000 attorney’s fees and costs.

In 2009, this newspaper also found that San Jose police arrested more people for resisting arrest — when no more serious crime is involved — than any department except San Diego, and often used force to do so. In 2008, an analysis by this newspaper also showed that the department arrested more people for violating the state public-drunkenness law in 2007 than any other department in the state, and a disproportionate number — 57 percent — of those arrested in San Jose were Hispanic.

But when Howard filed an excessive-force complaint about the incident last year, the San Jose Police Officers’ Association president at the time, Jim Unland, defended De La Cruz, arguing Howard ignored the officer’s repeated commands and that is plainly evident in the video.

“Simple, clear and reasonable commands from a police officer should always be followed,” Unland said at the time. “It is always unfortunate when those commands are not followed as it puts officers and those we are sworn to protect in potential danger.”

Contact Tracey Kaplan at 408-278-3482. Follow her at Twitter.com @tkaplanreport.