Judge rejects $6M award to inmate

Verdict overturned, new trial ordered in alleged beating by prison guard

Lawyers for a 36-year-old convicted murderer awarded a record $6 million in March by a federal jury in Denver for a beating he allegedly received at the hands of a prison guard are gearing up for a new trial, the result of a judge who overturned the verdict because she thought the outcome “shocks the conscience of this court.”

What had been the largest jury verdict ever rendered for a prison or jail inmate in Colorado is heading back to a new jury after U.S. Magistrate Judge Kathleen Tafoya said the first panel got it wrong. The new trial is expected to begin Nov. 26 in Colorado Springs and to last about a week. It initially was scheduled to begin in late July.

Without any request from Mullen’s attorneys, Tafoya negated the jury’s verdict on her own — $5 million in compensatory damages and another $1 million in punitive damages — a month after it happened, saying it made so little sense based on the evidence at trial that the only solution was to start over.

“The return of such an excessive compensatory damages award shocks the conscience of this court and clearly raises … the irresistible inference that passion, prejudice, corruption or other improper cause invaded the trial,” Tafoya wrote in her order. To not order a new trial “would result in manifest injustice.”

Inmate Jayson Oslund had sued former prison guard Mitchell Mullen for allegedly beating him, even though Oslund was suffering a seizure associated with his epilepsy. An earlier seizure that day left Oslund with a wound that required stitches and in need of a wheelchair.

Though Mullen denied the beating allegations — the Colorado Department of Corrections had been a defendant but was later dismissed — and maintained he was only trying to help Oslund get medical help, the jury found for the inmate.

Oslund’s lawyer, Zachary Warren, would not comment about the judge’s decision, but added: “We’re more than happy to put this case in front of a jury a second time.”

Noted defense attorney David Lane said he’s seen judges overturn verdicts and give the victory to the other side, but that Tafoya overstepped by ordering a new trial.

“I think it’s really disgusting,” Lane said in a telephone interview from Peru. “I’ve seen them throw out cases, or the judge thinks the verdict is against the weight of the credible evidence. Here she simply orders a new trial, saying she doesn’t like the winner … doesn’t like how it came out. That’s really

nutty.”

Sometimes judges will think money verdicts too excessive and order less money to be awarded.

Tafoya didn’t think that would be a fair solution: “A $5 million compensatory damages award in a case where no injuries whatsoever were proven to have been incurred as a result of the defendant’s actions, and the evidence of liability was decidedly thin. … As such the court is convinced that its duty is to require a new trial,” she wrote.

Tafoya noted that despite testimony from Oslund’s cellmate that Mullen had slammed the inmate to a wall, straddled him and demanded he stop resisting, there was no evidence he suffered any injuries consistent with that type of beating.

In fact, the doctor at the Sterling Correctional Facility where Oslund was housed testified that the inmate’s injuries were from an earlier seizure he suffered, in which he fell and slammed his head on a concrete floor, causing a cut that required stitches.

“The jury awarded $1 million in punitive damages on a record which was bereft of any evidence of wrongdoing except that based solely on the testimony of an agitated convicted felon …” who shared a prison cell with Oslund, Tafoya wrote. That inmate, Charles Garlick, had been put into solitary confinement after the incident and complained it was retaliation for refusing to remain quiet about what he saw. Garlick has been serving a 40-year prison term for second-degree murder since 2011, records show.

Tafoya ultimately called the award “extremely excessive and unwarranted.”

University of Colorado law professor Scott Moss said he was troubled that Tafoya offered her opinion without actually reviewing the transcript of the case, which is typically normal for any judge.

“Judges aren’t supposed to wing it inattentively without carefully reviewing the evidence. It’s irregular to the point of impropriety,” Moss said in an interview. “She took the rulefirst, think-later approach and it’s highly troubling, a violation of basic due-process. I’m honestly bewildered why a judge would toss a verdict without giving either side the chance to address the point, which is a basic rule of litigation.”

Oslund is serving a life term for felony murder from a September 2009 incident in Pueblo in which Matt Maez, 18, was beaten and later died of his injuries. The two had scuffled after a party. Maez was accused of stealing items from a car.

Oslund, who had a history of run-ins with police, and his brother Kelly were captured in Nebraska a month after Maez’s death and returned to Colorado for trial.

Kelly Oslund, now 35, was sentenced to 28 years in prison for reckless manslaughter and aggravated robbery in connection with the incident, records show. He has since been paroled.