Latest LA County Sheriff’s Dept. Jail Inmate Abuse Trial Begins Tuesday

On Tuesday, jury selection begins for one more federal trial involving members of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department who are accused of abusing jail inmates.

The incident in question, which occurred at the county’s Twin Towers Correctional Facility, involves an LASD training officer named Bryan Brunsting and Jason Branum, a young deputy who was under Brunsting’s supervision.

According to the federal indictment, on March 22, 2010, Brunsting allegedly ordered Branum—and another unnamed deputy identified as Deputy B— to assault an inmate named Philip Jones for “verbally disrespecting” a custody assistant. Brunting and Branum then reportedly escorted inmate Philip Jones to an out-of-the-way area that was “not visible to others in the module.” And then, according to the indictment, the three hit, kicked, pepper sprayed “and otherwise assaulted” Jones for his perceived disrespect.

After the incident, Brunting allegedly guided Branum and “Deputy B” in writing up reports that would portray Jones as the aggressor in the situation, to the point that Jones would be charged criminally.

The implication was that the alleged beating and cover-up was not isolated, but that Brunting routinely instructed his trainees in the art of retaliation against perceived slights or acts of “disrespect,” along with methods of disguising any questionable beatings as necessary uses of force to control aggressive inmates.

Deputy B, as it turns out, is Joshua Sather, a then-23-year-old deputy who, at the time, was reportedly only a few weeks out of the academy, who graduated at the top of his recruit class, and who resigned from the department six days after the beating incident. Prior to resigning over the alleged incident, Sather told his uncle, a veteran LASD detective, that his supervisor made him beat up a mentally ill inmate, and then told him to lie about the beating in a report.

The uncle, Steven Sather, after hearing his nephew’s story, drove to twin Towers and had words with Brunsting, about making his nephew “beat up ‘dings,’ ” slang for mentally ill or mentally disabled.

(Robert Faturechi, writing for the LA Times, broke the story of Sather, the “muscled, tattooed rookie” who was deeply distressed at what he was allegedly being “trained” to do, and the detective uncle attempted to protect his nephew from allegedly unethical training officers.)

Following Sather’s allegations, LASD officials launched an investigation and, as had become all too predictable, the department concluded that this had merely been a case of an uncooperative inmate being subdued with appropriate force. The DA’s office also declined to file charges.

The FBI, which was already investigating reports of brutality in the jails, was not so willing to dismiss the deputy’s account so easily.

Now, six years later, Sather will likely be the federal prosecutors’ most crucial witness.

Here’s the indictment that outlines the charges.

The trial comes approximately ten months after the county signed a far reaching agreement for reform with the U.S. Department of Justice concerning the sheriff’s department’s failure to provide a safe, appropriately monitored, non-abusive environment for mentally ill inmates inside the county’s jail system. The agreement, signed in August 2015, was the culmination of two DOJ investigations that span nearly two decades of scrutiny of LA’s county lock-ups, starting in June 1996, “to determine whether the conditions in the jails violated the constitutional rights of its prisoners,” specifically the mentally ill.

The trial also comes a little over a year after the settlement of a massive class action lawsuit brought by the ACLU—-Rosas v. Baca—-which alleged that Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca and his top staff condoned a long-standing and widespread pattern of violence and abuse by deputies against those detained in the county’s jails.

More on the new trial later this week.

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MONDAY MORNING SENTENCING FOR FORMER SHERIFF’S DEPUTIES IN PREVIOUS JAIL BEATING CASE

And while we’re on the topic of jail abuse and cover-ups, former Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department deputies, Joey Aguiar, and Mariano Ramirez, will be sentenced on Monday morning by U.S. District Court Judge Beverly Reid O’Connell, pursuant to their conviction in early February of falsifying reports against Men’s Central Jail inmate, Bret Phillips, portraying Phillips as the aggressor in a 2009 use of force incident that resulted in the inmate being beaten with fists, sprayed with pepper spray, and struck multiple times with a flashlight, according to the deputies’ own accounts.

The Aguiar/Ramirez verdict was confusing in that the jury voted to convict Aguiar and Ramirez of falsifying official reports, but also acquitted the deputies on the charge of conspiring to violate inmate Bret Phillips’ civil rights.

Then, on a third charge for the alleged beating of Phillips—who according to the government’s witnesses was nonresistant—–ten jurors voted to convict, while two voted to acquit, producing a mistrial on the single count.

Federal prosecutors Jennifer Williams and Mack Jenkins originally planned retry the deputies on the beating charge.

The retrial was prevented when, a few days after the verdict, a deal was struck in which Assistant U.S. Attorneys Williams and Jenkins agreed not to retry. In return, Aguiar and Ramirez, along with their attorneys, Evan Jenness and Vicki Podberesky, agreed not to appeal the deputies’ convictions, or to in any other way challenge them.

Aguiar and Ramirez are expected to receive sentences of around two years in a federal prison.

The case was differed from lot of jail beating allegations in that the 2009 incident was witnessed by a civilian, Chaplain Paulino Juarez, who has been working as a Catholic chaplain at LA County’s Men’s Central Jail since 1998.

The Aguiar/Ramirez sentencing and the new Brunting/Branum trial echo each other in certain ways in that both alleged victims were classified as mentally ill.

More after the sentencing.