Ex-guards acquitted of beating inmate
Jury’s verdict rcached in less than a day after five-week trial; Sheriff’s Office declines to comment on possibility of reinstatement
SAN JOSE >> In a case that tested the limits of public sympathy toward inmates, a jury Wednesday acquitted two former Santa Clara County jail guards of beating an inmate whose history of lying and lengthy criminal record — including armed robbery and child molestation — made him a less-than-sympathetic figure.
The jury took less than a day after a five-week trial to find former correctional officers Phillip Abecendario, 28, and Tuan Le, 33, not guilty of assaulting chronic offender Ruben Garcia in July 2015.
The alleged assault took place about a month before mentally ill inmate Michael Tyree was beaten to death by three guards in a case that sparked outrage and widespread review of jail policies.
Abecendario and Le pleaded not guilty, saying they didn’t use any force against Garcia.
If they had been convicted, they would have faced a maximum of three years in county jail.
Both guards were fired from the Sheriff’s Office, which declined to comment Wednesday on whether the former guards
can ask an arbitrator to reinstate them. Abecendario’s lawyer, Judith Odbert, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Le’s attorney could not be reached.
District Attorney Jeff Rosen’s office has won only one case out of three in its attempts to hold correctional officers accountable since Tyree was killed in late August, 2015.
Nearly a year ago, three officers were convicted of murder in Tyree’s beating death and are now serving 15 years to life in prison.
But a few weeks later, in late July of last year, a South County jury deadlocked 11-1 in favor of acquitting former guard Thanh Hung Tri of kicking an inmate in the head in 2013. Rosen’s office had initially declined to file charges against Tri in 2014, but resurrected the case after Tyree’s death. Prosecutors have decided not to retry him.
The current case was far from a slam dunk for prosecutor John Chase, who also tried Tri.
“I’m disappointed, but I’m not discouraged,” Chase said Wednesday.
Referring to any new reports of excessive force by correctional deputies, he
“There was sufficient evidence to convict the guards. I just think the jury didn’t because of his bad criminal history.” — Jaime Leanos, attorney
added, “I’m going to continue to review cases.”
Garcia didn’t report his alleged beating for more than a month, after he witnessed convicted guards Jereh Lubrin, Rafael Rodriguez and Matt Farris beat Tyree to death. He said he hadn’t planned on complaining, but his case came to light after a homicide detective investigating Tyree’s death asked him what had happened to his face, which was swaddled in white gauze from his head to his chin.
But he had trouble recalling whether the alleged attack occurred before or after he got in a fight with another inmate, according to court records. He now says it was before.
Garcia also gave various statements about which officers assaulted him, at one point blaming two of the guards in the Tyree case. Neither were involved.
According to Garcia, the attack occurred after he’d been put in an attorney interview room at Main Jail North that was being used as a temporary holding cell and yelled insults at the guards, including calling them “bitches.’’
Garcia said he fell asleep on the floor and awoke to Le grabbing him by the ankles and pulling him to the door. He said he was thrown against the wall and beaten, then put in painful wristlocks, brought to a cell and beaten up again. The attack stopped, he alleges, after Le pulled his head up by the hair and asked, “Who’s the bitch now?’’
Several inmates who saw the guards dragging Garcia with his pants down to his cell or heard the sounds of him being beaten, testified during the trial in Judge Shelyna V. Brown’s courtroom.
Shortly before the jury of four women and eight men announced their verdict, they asked the judge whether pulling down an inmate’s pants constituted assault. It does not, she told them.
The prosecutor also contended unsuccessfully that Abecendario “confessed,” in a text to a friend. Chase also argued that Abecendario made the “demonstrably false statement’’ that inmates are not held in interview rooms, even though he put Garcia in one, according to court documents.
But Odbert told the jury in her opening statement that the men were not interviewed until weeks after the alleged incident, during which they dealt with hundreds of inmates.
“Do you remember what happened when a customer came in three months ago?” she asked the jury. “No, one day blends into another.”
The defense had its own challenges to overcome. Abecendario, for instance, told investigators he did not leave his post on the 6th floor of Main Jail North that night. But log books and surveillance videos show that both he and Le escorted Garcia from the interview room to his cell.
Despite the verdict, Garcia does not plan to drop a lawsuit he filed against the county. His attorney, Jaime Leanos, pointed out Wednesday that the standard of proof in civil court — preponderance of the evidence — is lower than in criminal court, where the prosecution must prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.
“There was sufficient evidence to convict the guards,” Leanos said. “I just think the jury didn’t because of his bad criminal history.”