D.A. Drops Prosecution in San Diego Officer Death

The remaining charges against Sagon Penn were dismissed Friday, putting an end to legal proceedings in one of the most controversial and divisive cases in San Diego history.

Penn was acquitted Thursday of manslaughter and the other most serious charges stemming from the 1985 shooting death of Police Officer Thomas Riggs and the wounding of Officer Donovan Jacobs and civilian Sarah Pina-Ruiz, who was a passenger in Riggs’ police car. Jurors concluded that Penn acted in self-defense. Witnesses testified that Penn, who is black, was beaten and racially taunted by Jacobs, who is white.

On Friday, San Diego County Superior Court Judge David M. Gill agreed to drop three lesser charges on which the jury in Penn’s trial had deadlocked. The request for dismissal came from Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Brian Michaels.

Neither Penn, 25, nor his attorney, Milton J. Silverman, was in court.

Ends Proceedings

After consulting with Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Carpenter, the lead prosecutor in Penn’s trial, Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller followed through on the statement he had made after the jury’s verdict and declared an end to the proceedings against Penn.

“Although I disagree with the result of the jury deliberations in this case, all the issues have been fully litigated,” Miller said in a written statement. “Sagon Penn got a fair trial and so did we.”

Riggs’ widow, Pina-Ruiz and Jacobs could not be reached for comment.

A racially diverse jury found Penn innocent of voluntary manslaughter in the killing of Riggs; of attempted voluntary manslaughter in the wounding of Jacobs, and of attempted murder and attempted voluntary manslaughter in the wounding of Pina-Ruiz.

The jurors deadlocked 7 to 5 in favor of convicting Penn on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon in the shooting of Pina-Ruiz. But they strongly favored acquittal on the other unresolved charges, voting 11 to 1 to clear Penn of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Riggs and 10 to 2 to find him innocent of assault with a deadly weapon in the wounding of Jacobs.

March, 1985, Incident

Penn shot and killed Thomas Riggs during a struggle on Brooklyn Avenue in Encanto on March 31, 1985.

Jacobs had stopped Penn’s pickup truck to question him, but got into a fight with Penn when he refused a request from the officer to remove his driver’s license from his wallet.

Although Jacobs insisted that Penn, a martial arts expert, was the instigator of the confrontation, eyewitnesses testified that Jacobs struck first and escalated the conflict by beating Penn and showering him with abusive racial epithets. Jacobs also denied using abusive language.

According to witnesses, Penn grabbed Jacobs’ gun as the officer was trying to subdue him. He shot Jacobs once in the neck, then fired three times at Riggs, who was helping Jacobs control Penn and a crowd of onlookers. Penn then turned to Riggs’ patrol car, where Pina-Ruiz was watching in terror from the front seat, and emptied the service revolver by firing at her through the closed driver’s window.

All the shots were fired within six seconds.

After first fleeing the scene in Jacobs’ patrol car, Penn turned himself in to police and gave a series of statements in which he said he was acting in self-defense. That contention became the theme of Silverman’s successful defense.