County Paid Beaten Inmate $15,000 : Jail Abuse Incident Raises Questions

Ronald C. James suffered a mild concussion, facial cuts and swollen eyes when he was attacked by a sheriff’s deputy in County Jail downtown two years ago. Injuries to his mouth required stitches and he lost a tooth.

He was beaten so badly--a jail nurse said “the whole intact tooth had been extracted from the socket”--that county officials agreed this past February to pay $15,000 in return for James dismissing his lawsuit against the county.

James’ case is the only time in three years that an inmate has been awarded damages after being beaten by a jail deputy. And James still does not believe justice was done. He was denied the opportunity to testify in court against the man charged with criminally assaulting him, Deputy James Armand.

In fact, James was not even interviewed by the district attorney’s office before the trial, nor was he allowed to sit in the courtroom and watch the proceedings.

During the trial last year, the district attorney’s office presented only two prosecution witnesses: one deputy and one inmate. The defense attorney put on 12 witnesses, all of them jail employees who indicated that if James had been injured by any deputies, it was done in self-defense.

The jury deliberated only an hour and found Armand not guilty. He remains on duty today, working out of the sheriff’s station in Vista.

“The victim is usually the best witness but I was never brought into court or interviewed or anything,” James said in an interview. “There were no transcripts taken, no depositions taken. The jury didn’t get to consider my testimony at all.”

Had he been allowed to speak from the stand, James said, “I would have told them Deputy Armand exercised excessive force to the extreme.

“It was cruel and unusual punishment. He was acting out of boredom, out of stress for the job. What he did was over and beyond the call of duty. It was cruel and unusual and he used way over excessive force.”

Dozens of inmates have complained to The Times recently about alleged beatings in the six San Diego County jails, especially those in El Cajon, Vista and Santee. The U.S. attorney and the FBI are investigating the allegations to determine whether the civil rights of inmates were violated.

The James case is noteworthy because it’s the only time in recent memory that the county has prosecuted a deputy for a jail beating or settled with an inmate beaten by a jail deputy.

When the criminal case against Armand went to trial, it provided a glimpse at how the Sheriff’s Department, the district attorney’s office and the judicial system react to allegations of deputies abusing inmates.

Tom Adler, the attorney who represented James in the civil lawsuit against the county, said he was shocked at the “half-hearted” criminal prosecution of Deputy Armand.

Adler said he repeatedly encouraged Deputy Dist. Atty. Douglas C. Gregg to interview James and other inmates who witnessed the beating. And he said he also tried to intervene once the trial started, objecting to the way James and other available witnesses were being ignored.

“It was like a play and the district attorney was just there to act out the role of prosecutor,” he said. “From what I saw I was incredulous. I just can never recall a case where the prosecutor did not call a victim when he was available, even if he’s not all that credible.”

Gregg said James was not put on the stand because of his criminal background, his appearance and because the jail beating occurred only after James, who is white, allegedly started a fight with a black inmate.

The jury would never have viewed James as a sympathetic victim, the prosecutor said.

“You’re talking about a guy with a bald head and a Fu Manchu mustache and prison tattoos all over his body,” Gregg said. “He is suspected of being involved in the Aryan Brotherhood. And he gets involved in a fight with a black inmate, he’s making racial slurs against this black man.

“So I felt it was best to go without Mr. James at the trial.”

James, 28, denied that he is a racist and said he has only two small tattoos, both of them hidden by clothing.

The May, 1986, beating occurred while he was serving a 4-year sentence for drug-related burglaries in Imperial and Kern counties and two forgery cases in San Diego County. In 1980 he was charged with assault with a deadly weapon when he struck a transient with a stick during an attempted robbery in El Centro.

He currently is incarcerated in El Centro on a parole violation, after urine tests revealed he was continuing to take drugs.

“I’ve done a lot of things in my life that were wrong,” he said. “But I’m not a violent person. And after I was attacked I looked like hell. They put me back in a cell and people were telling me ‘What did you do? Tell us so the same thing won’t happen to us.’ ”

James said he was kicked and punched in the face repeatedly, while Armand held him in a headlock, while he was slammed against a cement wall and while he lay face down on the cement floor.

Gary Gomez, an inmate who witnessed the attack, told Sheriff’s Department investigators that the deputy throwing the most blows and kicks was “the big guy”--referring to Armand, who is 6-foot-7 and 230 pounds.

“The big guy grabbed James from behind in a headlock while at least two others grabbed his arms,” Gomez told investigators. “They ran him from the cell, pulling him backwards. They turned him around and ran him head first into the concrete wall across the passageway.

“Upon striking the wall, James’ head split open splattering blood onto the wall and floor. James immediately began yelling, ‘All right I give up, I give up.’

“Then they wrestled to the floor where the deputies began kicking and punching him. The big guy kicked him in the face, knocking out his eyetooth.”

Gomez was not called to testify at the trial.

Also not presented as part of the prosecution’s case were other inmate witnesses, including Robert Lee Shine, Patrick Prud’homme and John Marone, all of whom told sheriff’s investigators they saw Armand strike James.

But Gregg said he did not want the other inmates to testify because “they either misidentified who was doing what or they didn’t see what was happening.”

The trial against Armand, charged with misdemeanor assault in Municipal Court, began in February, 1987.

Recommended Prosecution

The district attorney’s office decided to file the charge after the sheriff’s Internal Affairs unit investigated the case and recommended that Armand be prosecuted. In its reports, the Internal Affairs unit listed five deputies, two booking clerks and five inmates willing to testify for the prosecution.

The reports also noted that sheriff’s investigators failed to contact James because he was in state prison and “he was not available for interviewing.”

Senior officers in the Sheriff’s Department declined to comment about the internal affairs investigation.

The only inmate to testify for the prosecution at the trial was Alfred M. Sahagun, who said he saw Armand hit and kick James a half dozen times.

“They were not toe taps,” Sahagun said. “They were definitely enough to cause quite a bit of pain.”

The only other prosecution witness was Deputy William Davis. He took the stand after first being interviewed by Frank E. Reid, a special investigator for the district attorney’s office.

In the interview with Reid, Davis said blood from James’ head injuries was not cleaned off the wall for three days. On the stand, Davis described the beating.

He said he saw Armand place James in a headlock and then strike him twice with his fist, even though James was doing “nothing defensive to get away.” He said Armand and two other deputies tripped James, forcing him to the floor.

“The next move was Armand’s,” Davis said. “He kicked the inmate in the area of the head three times with the right foot, shifted his weight to his right foot then and kicked him three times, approximately, in the head with his left foot.”

In describing the blows, Davis said, “His head vibrated back when the foot would go forward and stop.”

Davis said the assault did not stop there. “Armand then sank to his knees next to the subject’s head and shoulders and proceeded to punch with his fist in rapid punches.”

He said Armand was “out of control.” He said he yelled for Armand to stop and was about to put Armand--a fellow deputy--in a choke hold when Armand suddenly stopped beating James.

Gregg rested his case.

He said there was no question that James had suffered injuries. But he did not believe James truly knew which deputy kicked him while he was down.

“James was not in a position to see who kicked him when he was down on the ground, face down,” Gregg said. “At the best he could only see the tops of the deputy’s shoes.

“And with his behavior in the phone cell and the way he looked, I didn’t think that was going to help our case, quite frankly.”

Then came the defense portion of the trial.

Deputy Rodolfo Quinones, who said he helped train Armand, described the defendant’s interaction with inmates: “He dealt with them in a fair but firm manner and in my opinion, he was carrying out his job extremely well.”

Deputy Gary Steadman, who said deputies are allowed to “do whatever is necessary” to subdue a violent inmate, testified that he has never seen a deputy use his feet on an inmate.

Deputies Kenneth Harrison and Everard Dayrit said they did not see any closed fists striking James on the head.

Robert Erb Jr., the jail nurse, testified that the tooth was found on the floor, complete with roots and veins still intact. Erb testified that he witnessed the assault and never saw James being kicked in the face by anyone, so the tooth must have been knocked out during the fight with the black inmate rather than the struggle with deputies.

Finally, Armand testified in his own defense.

A deputy since March, 1984, he said that when he entered the phone tank to break up the inmate fight, James spun around and hit him in the mouth.

“I hit him back,” Armand said. “With my fist . . . I just punched him . . . in the face.”

He said they struggled, that he placed James in a headlock and that the two of them slammed into a wall. “I hit it first,” he said. They wrestled to the floor.

“At any time did you get up and kick him five times with one foot?” he was asked by defense attorney James Gattey.

“No,” Armand said.

The trial ended. The jury, after its brief deliberations, acquitted Armand of assault, which carried a maximum sentence of one year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Armand could not be reached for comment this past week. Lt. Dennis Kollar, head of the sheriff’s Internal Affairs detail, declined to say whether Armand was ever disciplined for the incident.

After the trial, Adler filed a formal court brief saying his client should have been allowed to attend the trial. Judge Charles P. Hayes agreed that James had a right to attend the trial, but that the court was not obligated to transport him to the courtroom from state prison, Adler said.

Meanwhile, James’ civil lawsuit against the county was set for trial in March of this year. But in February, Thomas L. Brown, county claims supervisor, authorized the settlement of the case.

“I can’t go into specific details,” Brown said. “But I can indicate to you that we looked at the facts and attempted to determine, if the case was litigated on the civil level, would there be exposure for the county.

“And we determined in this case that there was a possibility James would be able to recover some money.”

A total of $15,000 was paid out. After attorney’s fees and court costs, James said he received $8,000. But he still is angry about what he believes was a half-hearted prosecution.

“I’m paying now for what I did wrong,” James said. “And if I had beaten somebody so badly, I’d have gone to jail for sure.

“But he’s a cop.”