2 to be retried in jail abuse case

New trial is planned after jurors deadlock on whether sheriff ’s deputies were justified in use of force against a handcuffed inmate.

Federal prosecutors will retry two Los Angeles County sheriff ’s deputies after jurors deadlocked this week on whether the pair used excessive force against a handcuffed jail inmate.

The eight- day trial of Joey Aguiar and Mariano Ramirez concluded Tuesday with a mixed verdict.

Jurors acquitted the men of conspiring to violate the inmate’s civil rights and convicted them of writing false reports about the February 2009 incident.

Jurors, however, were divided 10- 2 in favor of guilt on whether the force the deputies used was justified.

Prosecutors f iled a letter late Thursday with U. S. District Judge Beverly Reid O’Connell alerting her to their plans to try Aguiar and Ramirez again on the undecided charge.

They declined to comment Friday on the decision.

Pair face 20 years

The retrial is tentatively scheduled to start Feb. 16, but a date is expected to be f inalized at a court hearing Monday.

The deputies each face as many as 20 years in prison on the false records convictions.

During the trial, defense lawyers argued the deputies had used necessary force to subdue the inmate, Bret Phillips, after he tried to attack Aguiar.

The deputies wrote in internal department reports that Phillips, now 44, tried to head- butt Aguiar and continued to struggle after being pinned on the ground.

The deputies said they both repeatedly punched Phillips, and Ramirez struck him with a f lashlight and pepper- sprayed him in the face.

Prosecutors countered, saying Phillips did nothing to justify the assault.

They portrayed the deputies as angry and bent on punishing Phillips for acting out and said Phillips posed no serious threat since his hands were shackled to a chain around his waist.

The jury forewoman said after the verdict that jurors decided the government failed to prove the deputies had conspired together to violate Phillips’ civil rights.

Mirroring reports

Jurors were also in strong agreement, she said, that the reports the two deputies wrote, which mirrored each other verbatim in places, could not have been truthful.

Discrepancies between medical records that showed Phillips suffered minor injuries and dramatic accounts of a brutal beating from the prosecution’s witnesses were stumbling blocks for the two jurors opposed to convicting the deputies of violating the inmate’s rights by using excessive force, said the forewoman, Janet Giampaoli.

The incident occurred when Phillips was being held in a special unit of Men’s Central Jail used to separate violent and other high- risk inmates from the facility’s general population.

Phillips, who testified that he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, was in custody on a domestic violence charge.