L.A. County jail inmate awarded $405,000 in pepper-spray attack

A federal court jury finds that three sheriff’s deputies assaulted the man in 2007 after he cursed at one after being declined fresh laundry at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility.

A federal court jury Thursday awarded $405,000 to a man who alleged that three Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies assaulted him in jail, pepper-spraying his anus and groin.

Alejandro Franco, a 23-year-old inmate at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility at the time of the alleged 2007 attack, told jurors that the deputies escorted him from his cell to an outdoor recreational center, where he said he was struck multiple times.

The deputies, none of whom are still on active duty, were upset with him, Franco said, because he had cursed at one after being declined fresh laundry.

When Franco refused to apologize, he said deputies pulled his boxers down and assaulted him with the pepper spray.

“I felt hollow inside,” said Franco, who described the alleged incident as a sexual assault.

One deputy placed a Taser near Franco’s head and revved it, the former inmate testified. “Boo,” Franco recalled him saying to the laughter of the others.

Two of the three deputies, Davie Chang and Anthony Pimentel, were relieved of duty with pay after the incident. The third, Kris Cordova, is no longer with the department. Each invoked the 5th Amendment against self-incrimination to all questions during the trial. Their attorney said the men are innocent of any wrongdoing.

The jury’s decision in favor of Franco comes just about a week after prosecutors declined to file felony criminal charges against the three deputies, citing insufficient evidence and an unreliable witness in Franco.

In their decision to not press charges of assault by a public officer, prosecutors acknowledged that Franco’s boxers had an orange stain that when analyzed showed components of pepper spray. A criminalist determined the stains were deposited on the inside surface of the fabric, according to the memo.

But prosecutors asserted that the residue may have come from a five-hour jailhouse disturbance a month before the alleged assault in which deputies used pepper spray throughout the facility multiple times. When an investigator came to retrieve Franco’s boxers after the alleged assault, the inmate said he had kept them hidden for two days so they wouldn’t be retrieved by the deputies who attacked him. But prosecutors concluded that Franco may have had that pair of boxers hidden for about a month after the jailhouse disturbance.

Franco’s credibility, prosecutors said, was damaged by inconsistent statements, and a potential exaggeration of residual back pain from the alleged assault. Franco’s lawyer said Thursday’s verdict vindicated his client.

“This jury really sent a message out that this clearly did happen,” said attorney Arnoldo Casillas. “No jury is going to tolerate police officers putting themselves above the law.”

Edwin Rathbun, an attorney for the deputies, said he was frustrated that the jury was kept unaware that the district attorney’s office opted not to file criminal charges.

The Los Angeles County counsel’s office said Thursday it was yet to be decided if the county will pay the award on behalf of the deputies.

By Robert Faturechi, Los Angeles Times

Man accuses deputies of Twin Towers jail attack

Former inmate files $3-million suit, charging that officers struck him and pepper-sprayed him in an alleged sexual assault.

The alleged attack inside the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles began with a simple request for a clean shirt.

But a former inmate told a federal court jury Wednesday that what followed was a degrading assault that ended with Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies pepper-spraying his anus and groin.

Alejandro Franco, who was 23 at the time of the alleged 2007 assault, is seeking $3 million, mainly for emotional suffering, in a lawsuit against the deputies.

Two of the three deputies have been relieved of duty with pay. The third is no longer with the department.

The three watched Wednesday as Franco testified that he had just received fresh laundry and was in line for medication when he noticed a foul smell from his pants.

Former Deputy Kris Cordova agreed to replace the pants. But when Franco returned to his cell, he noticed the same stench on his freshly laundered shirt. When he tried to have that replaced as well, he was rebuffed.

“You trying to get over on me,” Franco recalled Cordova saying.

Franco swore at the deputy and returned to his cell. Later that night, around lights-out, Franco testified, Cordova and two other deputies selected his cell for a random search. They cuffed him, Franco said, and he was escorted to an empty recreation room.

There, Franco said, Cordova asked him why he showed disrespect by dropping “the F-bomb” in front of other inmates. Another deputy, Davie Chang, punched him in the face, Franco testified.

When he refused to apologize, Franco said, the deputies hit him repeatedly. He said a third deputy, Anthony Pimentel, stood back, activating his Taser.

Franco said he was flipped onto his belly. Chang, he testified, pulled down his boxers, spread his buttocks and used pepper spray on his anus and genitals. The South Los Angeles man called the incident a sexual assault.

“I felt hollow inside,” Franco said. “I felt as if I wasn’t there.”

The burning lasted through the night, he said.

Gilbert Nishimura, one of the attorneys for the deputies, said his clients are innocent. All three took the stand Wednesday but pleaded the 5th Amendment to all questions.

Felony charges of assault by a public officer are being considered against the three men, said a representative of the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. The Sheriff’s Department turned over its findings from the incident in 2008, spokesman Steve Whitmore said.

“The sheriff requires deputy sheriffs, especially those in custody, to be the civil rights leaders of that community,” Whitmore said. “Just because someone is in jail doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be treated with the utmost respect.”

The deputies’ attorneys argued that there is scant evidence to prove the allegations. They also tried to connect Franco’s emotional issues since his time in jail — bouts of depression and antisocial behavior — to a dysfunctional upbringing and drug abuse.

Franco said he often thinks about the alleged assault and has had trouble maintaining motivation or intimate relationships. His attorney, Arnoldo Casillas, blasted the deputies for refusing to answer any of his questions during testimony.

“Cops tell the truth,” he said. “Cops don’t plead the 5th.”

If the jury returns a verdict in Franco’s favor, it’s unclear whether any damages would be paid by the county or the defendants.

By Robert Faturechi, Los Angeles Times

August 26, 2010

The Game Checks into Jail

Rapper to serve 60 days.

By Gil Kaufman

The Game began his 60-day jail sentence on Sunday night at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in Los Angeles, a label representative for the rapper confirmed Monday (March 3). The rapper (born Jayceon Taylor) pleaded no contest last month to a felony charge of possession of a firearm in a school zone.

The sentence stems from an altercation Game allegedly got into last February during a pick-up basketball game at the Rita Walters Educational Learning Complex in South L.A., with prosecutors alleging that Taylor punched an opposing player and then pulled a gun from his car and threatened to shoot the man. He was arrested on the charge in May of 2007 and, following the plea deal cut last month, was sentenced to 60 days in jail, 150 hours of community service and three years’ probation.

He had faced three counts of making criminal threats and possessing a firearm in a school zone, but two of the charges were dropped in the plea deal. According to reports, the rapper waited until just moments before midnight on March 3 — the deadline for him to check in to jail — to report to the facility.

In a recent interview with Monsta magazine, Game apparently proclaimed his innocence.

“The crazy part about this is that I’ve had guns before in my life,” Game told the mag. “But this time, I didn’t have a gun. And because one person said I had a gun and coaxed his homies into saying that I had a gun, I’m in a predicament where I’m asking, ‘Do I want to spend another million dollars to fight this trial, so who knows what jury’s gonna come in and say I’m guilty? Or do I want to save my money, go sit down for four months and accept this felony they’re trying to give me for no reason.’ ”

Phil Spector starts his 18-year jail sentence

On his arrival at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in Los Angeles on Monday, Phil Spector was immediately subjected to a strip search before being issued with his prison clothes and being shown to a special section of the jail where the most high-profile prisoners are locked up. Previous occupants of the prison have included Paris Hilton in 2007 and Robert Downey Junior in 1998.

A mere 15-minute drive from his Alhambra suburb 30-bedroom mansion where he shot Clarkson in the mouth after a party, Phil Spector’s new home is the world’s biggest prison, housing 4,000 inmates in its 1.5m square feet. On Wednesday, the eccentric millionaire music producer woke up to face the second day of what is likely to be an 18-year sentence for the 2003 murder of actress Lana Clarkson.

The prison is closed for visits from Wednesdays to Fridays, so Spector’s girlfriend, the 28-year-old Playboy model Rachelle Short, will have to wait until Saturday before reacquainting herself with her beau. She can, however, pick up the wig and suit he wore to court from the Inmate Reception Center Monday to Friday: from now on, Spector will wear only high-visibility jumpsuits.

Spector, prison booking number 1873015, will remain at Twin Towers until May 29 when he will learn exactly how long his sentence will be and which of California’s prisons he is likely to be transferred to.

Former inmates of the prison, a den of violent rapists, mentally ill prisoners and hardened gangsters, have suggested that the diminutive Spector will need to keep his wits about him if he is to stay unharmed. “Better be strong,” a released inmate named ‘Steve’ told ABC News. “Better know how to fight… [being small] is a disadvantage if they got to fight, there’s a riot, they’re gonna get messed up.”

ACLU report: L.A.’s Men’s Central Jail ‘nightmarish’

ACLU report: L.A.’s Men’s Central Jail ‘nightmarish’
By Troy Anderson, Staff Writer
Updated: 04/15/2009 06:44:42 AM PDT

Describing it as a medieval dungeon that can “drive men mad,” the ACLU on Tuesday called on the county to close Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles.

An official with the civil rights group who has studied some of the nation’s worst prisons for the past 16 years said for the “sheer horror and brutality” Men’s Central Jail is the “most nightmarish place I’ve seen.”

Worse even than the notorious Death Row at the Mississippi State Penitentiary or the Maricopa County Jail in Phoenix, she said.

“What makes Men’s Central Jail so horrific is the massive overcrowding,” said Margaret Winter, associate director of the National Prison Project of the ACLU.

“Many thousands of men, thousands of them suffering from serious mental illness, are packed like sardines in dungeon-like barracks, or they are hidden away in solitary confinement in coffin-like cells for days, months or even years in some cases.”

The press conference outside the county Hall of Administration came as the American Civil Liberties Union released a 50-page report by a national expert on jail mental health care documenting how brutally overcrowded conditions cause or contribute to violence and serious mental illness at the aging facility.

The report found about half the 5,000 inmates at the nearly 50-year-old jail suffer from mental illness. Most of them are awaiting trial and have not been convicted.

One of those inmates, John Horton, 22, was found on March 30 hanging from a noose in his cell after spending more than a month in jail following his arrest on a drug charge. Horton was held in solitary confinement in a dimly lit, windowless, solid front cell the size of a closet. His body was already stiff by the time jail officials discovered him.

Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore said Sheriff Lee Baca has long held the jail has outlived its usefulness and a new jail should be built with a safer and more modern pod design instead of linear rows of cells. Whitmore said the jail was built in the early 1960s and was originally designed to hold those who committed misdemeanors, but now houses a mix of nonviolent and violent offenders.

“We have been working on this for a very long time and the sheriff believes that ultimately Men’s Central Jail should be dismantled,” Whitmore said.

“Although we appreciate the input and the sheriff never turns a deaf ear to those who think they can do things better, this report is basically 30 years old.”

But Lawanda Hawkins, founder of Justice for Murdered Children, said she’s appalled by the proposal to close the jail, as well as Baca’s desire to build a new one.

“Wasting taxpayer dollars to build another jail? I just can’t imagine that when we’re all taxed out right now,” Hawkins said. “I understand the mental health issue. I sympathize with them. But a lot of these people committed serious crimes against our community and it’s not fair to continue to allow them to victimize us again.”

Winter said inmates with mental illnesses are kept in their cells 23 to 24 hours a day in “perpetual twilight, or even darkness.” She said the cells have no windows, poorly functioning toilets and showers and inadequate supplies of soap and clean underwear. She added that inmates are under constant fear of attack and often wait weeks or months for medications.

The ACLU report, written by Dr. Terry Kupers, a psychiatrist and author of “Prison Madness: The Mental Health Crisis Behind Bars and What We Must Do About It,” was written and given to Baca last year.

It was released publicly on Tuesday after months of negotiations with the Sheriff’s Department failed to result in any substantive commitment to follow Kuper’s recommendations.

Kuper found that idleness and massive overcrowding at the jail lead to violence, victimization, custodial abuse and ultimately psychotic breakdown even in relatively healthy people, as well as potentially irreversible psychosis in detainees with pre-existing mental illnesses.

Melinda Bird, senior counsel at the ACLU of Southern California, argued the county could save $250 million by closing the jail and spending money on more cost-effective alternatives such as electronic monitoring, drug and alcohol treatment programs, mental health treatment and vocational training.

“We are urging the Board of Supervisors to immediately address the conditions at Men’s Central Jail because they are medieval and drive men mad,” Bird said.

She said it costs $50,000 a year to house a mentally ill inmate, compared to $15,000 a year for those various alternatives to incarceration. Bird said New York City successfully closed one of its jails using similar methods.

The county also operates Twin Towers Correctional Facility downtown, opened in 1997, but Bird noted it is also full now and could not serve as an option to alleviate overcrowding at Men’s Central.

Tony Bell, spokesman for Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, said the supervisor is committed to ensuring the mentally ill receive treatment, but he said the ACLU has blocked legislation over the years that would ensure mandatory care for those in need of treatment.

“Furthermore, while we are waiting for a jail improvement project plan, it makes no sense to close our jail and spend billions of dollars in this fiscal climate,” Bell said.