Two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies beat, kicked and pepper-sprayed a handcuffed, mentally ill inmate and then wrote false reports to cover up their actions, a prosecutor told a jury Tuesday, but defense attorneys countered that the use of force was minimal and justified by the prisoner’s refusal to follow orders.
Joey Aguiar and Mariano Ramirez are the latest of nearly two-dozen current and former sheriff’s employees to be tried by federal authorities in connection with a probe into brutality and other misconduct in the department at a time when Lee Baca was sheriff.
According to the indictment, Aguiar and Ramirez violated the civil rights of a defenseless Bret Phillips by assaulting him inside Men’s Central Jail on the morning of Feb. 11, 2009.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Williams told the jury that the inmate was handcuffed to a waist chain when he was “smashed” against a concrete wall, kicked and punched in the head and upper body, struck with a flashlight and pepper-sprayed in the face.
The prosecutor maintained in her opening statement that the alleged attack was an “abuse of power, abuse of the badge. It was criminal.”
Afterwards, the deputies huddled to get their stories “straight — verbatim straight,” Williams said. She alleged that in official reports, Aguiar and Ramirez falsely wrote that force was used against Phillips because he hadn’t obeyed orders and attempted to “head-butt” Aguiar in the face.
However, “there was a witness that (the defendants) hadn’t counted on being there,” the prosecutor said.
A chaplain came forward the following day to say that he had seen the attack, Williams said.
Deacon Paulino Juarez — who was at the jail that day pushing a cart laden with Bibles and other religious material for interested inmates — said under oath that he watched as deputies beat the inmate bloody, leaving a pool of blood on the floor, the prosecutor told the panel.
Williams said Juarez will be among witnesses during the trial, which is expected to last about seven days.
Vicki Podberesky, Ramirez’s attorney, countered that an escalating use of force by the defendants was necessary during what she said was a minute-long incident because Phillips was resisting orders to calm down and return to his cell.
“Sometimes, a deputy must use force,” she told the jury. “It was force that was reasonable under the circumstances.”
As for the pool of blood the chaplain claims he saw, Evan Jenness, Aguiar’s lawyer, countered that the “hard evidence does not match” Juarez’s account.
“What the chaplain believes he saw did not happen,” Jenness said, adding that in the context of the trial, Juarez is “an advocate for the prosecution.”
She said that, in fact, “there was no blood” on the floor after the incident.
Jenness told the panel that a lawful amount of force was used against Phillips in order to “restore order and gain control of a violent and recalcitrant inmate.”
Williams told the jury that Phillips had a criminal history and suffered from mental and physical illnesses.
Attorney Gloria Allred filed suit in 2014 on behalf of Phillips, who she says suffers from schizophrenia. The suit, which seeks unspecified damages, claims the sheriff’s department did not protect the now 45-year-old inmate from being victimized.
Aguiar and Rameriz have been relieved of duty without pay pending the outcome of the trial, a sheriff’s spokeswoman said.
–City News Service