By Joel Rubin
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES — Two former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies are scheduled to be sentenced in federal court Monday morning for their roles in the beating of a handcuffed man and a scheme to cover up the assault.
Sussie Ayala and Fernando Luviano were convicted in June alongside their supervisor at the county’s central jail facility. A federal jury found that the three violated the civil rights of Gabriel Carrillo, who was left badly bloodied.
The supervisor, former Sgt. Eric Gonzalez, was sentenced to eight years in prison this month.
The case is the first of a handful in which deputies face brutality charges stemming from a wide-ranging FBI investigation into the county jails.
The FBI’s inquiry set off a scandal that tarnished the career of longtime Sheriff Lee Baca, who stepped down last year, and led to the indictment of his former top aide on obstruction of justice charges. The investigation has so far resulted in the conviction of more than a dozen former sheriff’s officials on charges of obstruction and other crimes.
The first brutality case that went to trial centered on Carrillo’s attempt in February 2011 to visit his brother, then an inmate at Men’s Central Jail.
When Carrillo and his then-girlfriend were found carrying cellphones in the lobby of the jail visiting center -- a violation of state law -- they were handcuffed and taken into a private room.
After Carrillo mouthed off to Ayala, she summoned Luviano, who threw Carrillo to the floor. Other deputies joined in, unloading a barrage of kicks and punches. As Carrillo was held down and still handcuffed, Luviano pepper-sprayed him in the face.
Carrillo suffered a broken nose, bruises over his body and cuts on his face. Prosecutors argued during the trial that Ayala, Luviano and other deputies -- under Gonzalez’s guidance -- concocted a story that Carrillo had attacked the deputies and tried to escape when one of his hands was uncuffed for fingerprinting.
Based on that account, Carrillo was charged in state court with assaulting the deputies. The charges against Carrillo were dropped shortly before his trial was to have begun. The county later paid him $1.2 million to settle a civil lawsuit.
The federal civil rights charges against the deputies and Gonzalez relied heavily on the testimony of two other former deputies involved in the incident. The pair struck deals with federal prosecutors that required them to plead guilty to lesser charges and to testify at trial.
Both men told jurors that Carrillo had been handcuffed throughout the violent encounter, and they detailed how the group of deputies falsified their reports to justify the violence by framing Carrillo.
“We were all partners,” one of the now former deputies, Pantamitr Zunggeemoge, testified. “There’s a bond. And you don’t go against your partners.”
The testimony was a coup for prosecutors, who argued that an unspoken “code of silence” forbids law enforcement officers from outing other officers for misconduct.
Jurors said they concluded Carrillo had been handcuffed during the beating after viewing photographs taken the day after the encounter showing dark red abrasions and swelling on both of his wrists.
In handing down the stiff sentence against Gonzalez this month, U.S. District Judge George H. King showed little inclination for leniency, reprimanding Gonzalez for violating Carrillo’s civil rights and the public’s trust.
Ayala and Luviano will join Gonzalez in being the first deputies to be sentenced in a brutality case since the FBI began investigating excessive-force claims in the county’s jails more than five years ago.
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