Jury Orders Sheriff to Pay $18 Million

In the largest single plaintiff verdict against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, a federal court jury on Wednesday awarded $18 million to a middle school teacher who said a detective falsely accused him of assaulting a teenage girl and hid evidence that would have cleared him.

Raul Ramirez, 29, of Bellflower was charged by prosecutors with assault and kidnapping of a 16-year-old girl but was found not guilty. A judge later ruled that Ramirez was “factually innocent,” a rare finding in the criminal justice system.

Ramirez then sued the Sheriff’s Department, alleging that a detective withheld key evidence, including automated teller machine transactions and cellphone transmissions that placed him miles from the site of the assault, and a composite drawing of a suspect who did not look like Ramirez.

County officials said the jury could order the sheriff’s detective to pay Ramirez more money today when the trial enters the punitive phase -- though the judge can reduce the award. Wednesday’s award covers compensatory damages.

The verdict eclipses the previous record in civil cases against the department. In 1995 a jury ordered the county to pay $15.9 million to 36 people who had been arrested at a Cerritos bridal shower six years earlier. The jury awarded between $35,000 and $3.8 million to party-goers in the case. By the time the county paid the verdict, the judgment had grown to $25 million, including accrued interest, attorneys’ fees and other costs.

The latest award is more than four times the $3.9-million settlement paid by the city of Los Angeles to Rodney G. King. King’s 1991 videotaped beating by Los Angeles police sparked a national outcry and helped trigger the 1992 riots.

The county is not insured, but pays its own legal judgments and settlements. That means that the award, if upheld, will have to be paid by the Sheriff’s Department at a time when Sheriff Lee Baca is complaining that he lacks the funds to keep inmates in jail long enough to serve their full sentences or to provide enough deputies and cells to improve jailhouse security.

Assistant County Counsel Roger Granbo said sheriff’s officials believed that they should have been freed from liability because prosecutors had reviewed the case against Ramirez and decided that there was enough evidence to file criminal charges against him.

“We are very disappointed by the verdict,” he said. “The district attorney knew the problems with the case and the positive aspects and made an independent decision to prosecute.”

The federal civil trial centered on allegations that a sheriff’s detective built a false case against Ramirez and that the department did nothing to stop him.

The detective, Frank Bravo, “arrested Mr. Ramirez and basically shattered his life based on the unreliable eyewitness identification of a teenage girl who was mistaken,” said plaintiff’s attorney Michael Artan. “Then he hid evidence that would have exonerated Mr. Ramirez.”

But sheriff’s officials disputed that contention, saying they and prosecutors had relied on the word of the victim, who consistently identified Ramirez as her attacker.

“This was a 16-year-old girl who said she was kidnapped and duct-taped by Mr. Ramirez,” said Sheriff’s Chief Bill McSweeney, who oversees litigation involving the department. “When two deputy [district attorneys] and a 16-year-old kidnapping victim believe in our case, so do we.”

Bravo, a 20-year veteran assigned to the Century Station in Lynwood, could not be reached for comment.

Ramirez would not comment until the penalty phase was completed, Artan said.

The alleged kidnapping occurred May 16, 2002, as the girl waited for a school bus near Charles R. Drew Middle School in Compton.

Authorities said a suspect abducted her at gunpoint about 5:45 a.m., drove to another location and demanded that she perform a sex act. She managed to escape despite the suspect’s use of pepper spray against her.

Months later, the girl and her mother saw a car they thought looked like the suspect’s car, according to Ramirez’s lawsuit. They saw it several times and eventually gave Bravo the license plate number. The information led to Ramirez, a teacher at Drew Middle School.

Ramirez was arrested and held on $5-million bail. But according to his federal complaint, Bravo had information that could have cleared the teacher.

This included information that the girl said the man who attacked her had a scar on his right cheek and a crease on his chin. Ramirez had neither. Bravo allegedly withheld that information until just before the trial, nearly a year later.

Ramirez’s attorneys alleged that Bravo also kept hidden the existence of a backpack the girl left behind, which was found minutes later at 52nd Place and Central Avenue. Ramirez’s fingerprints were not found on the backpack, the complaint said.

Artan, who also was Ramirez’s criminal defense attorney, said the defense was eventually able to provide bank and cellphone records that showed that Ramirez was far from the crime scene. The backpack was found about 16 miles from the location where Ramirez apparently made an ATM transaction about the same time, according to the lawsuit.

The girl eventually picked Ramirez’s picture out of a group of photographs as “the person she thought looked most like the perpetrator,” the lawsuit said. The complaint said the detective promptly told her she “selected the right man,” but sheriff’s officials said he actually told her that she had selected the car’s owner.

One prominent defense attorney said she was surprised by the verdict’s size.

“That’s a tremendous result,” said Gigi Gordon, a lawyer who represents alleged victims of police misconduct.