Youth Describes Stun Gun Torture by Officers

A young man testified Tuesday that two Huntington Park police officers tortured him with a 50,000-volt stun gun in an unsuccessful attempt to get him to confess to stealing stereo parts.

Jaime Ramirez, 18, testified at the Superior Court trial of fired officers William Lustig, 32, and Robert Rodriguez, 26, that he was burned with the stun gun while he sat handcuffed in the back of a police car in November, 1986.

Lustig and Rodriguez have since been fired. They have pleaded innocent to one count of unnecessarily beating a person and causing great bodily injury, a felony, and one count of inhumanely treating a prisoner, a misdemeanor.

If convicted, they could be sentenced to state prison for up to six years.

Ramirez, a native of El Salvador, said he had been arrested by a third officer, Eric Ault, as he walked home with some stereo parts, which he testified he had just stolen from a car. Ramirez was never charged with the theft.

He said when Lustig and Rodriguez arrived at the arrest site, they began interrogating him, asking where he had gotten the parts. Ramirez said he lied to the officers and told them he had bought them from a man in an alley.

“I was scared,” Ramirez said, speaking through a Spanish interpreter. “I was very afraid.”

He said the officers hit him with a flashlight on his chest, and “then I saw like lightning before my eyes and it (the stun gun) was crackling.”

“He (Lustig) told me that if I didn’t tell the truth, he was going to burn me.”

Ramirez, however, refused to admit to the theft, and each time he told the officers he had bought the parts, first Rodriguez, then Lustig, applied the stun gun to his legs.

“I felt like I was being burned,” the slightly built Ramirez testified. “I could not keep my legs still. It was something very hard. I was feeling the pressure in my heart. I could not breathe freely. I was screaming for them to stop.

“He (Rodriguez) told me I could not lie to the law. They were the law and he put it (the stun gun) on me again. . . . I started screaming again.”

Ramirez testified that Rodriguez applied the stun gun to the inner and outer thigh of his left leg three times, then gave the weapon to Lustig, who applied it to his leg four more times.

“He (Lustig) laughed and asked me if it hurt,” he testified.

Ault testified last week the interrogation finally ended without a confession from Ramirez. Ault said he then heard Lustig remark, “ ‘Well, I guess the kid’s telling the truth.’ ”

Ault, granted immunity from prosecution, testified that he took Ramirez to the police station and booked him. He said he, Lustig and Rodriguez later conspired to cover up the incident.