Judge Voids Civil Suit Against Deputies Accused in Killing

A federal judge said Monday that she will dismiss a $10-million lawsuit that accused three Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies of killing a Van Nuys woman after an evening of drinking.

However, U.S. District Judge Mariana R. Pfaelzer said a wrongful death claim also contained in the lawsuit may be refiled against the deputies in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Pfaelzer said that because the deputies had not acted in their official capacity as law enforcement officers while with Catherine Braley, the deputies’ request to dismiss a civil rights claim filed by Braley’s mother, Mary Postma of Van Nuys, would be granted.

Braley’s beaten and strangled body was found the morning of Jan. 15, 1988, in a parking lot in the 8100 block of Sepulveda Boulevard.

The evening before, Braley, 26, had been drinking for several hours in a nearby bar called The Hunter and had left at the same time as Robert Mallon, Robert Waters and Mike Turner, who were among several off-duty deputies at the bar after the funeral of another deputy.

All three deputies denied involvement in Braley’s death, and Los Angeles police, who are investigating the unsolved killing, have said no deputy is a suspect in the case.

Waters and Turner said in court depositions that they went their separate ways after leaving the bar. Mallon said in a deposition that he and Braley left in his unmarked county car and drove to a nearby spot where they had consensual sex in the car. He said Braley then got out of the car and drunkenly walked away. The spot where they had stopped is about one block from where she was found dead the next morning.

In her lawsuit, which was filed two months after the murder, Mary Postma accused the deputies of using their authority as law officers to force Braley to leave the bar with them. The suit alleges that Braley was killed when she refused to have sex with them.

To keep the case under federal court jurisdiction, Postma needed to present evidence that the deputies had acted “under color of law” thereby depriving Braley of her civil rights.

In Monday’s hearing in U.S. District Court, Postma’s attorney, Marion R. Yagman, argued that the deputies had identified themselves in the bar as law officers and that Mallon had taken Braley in his county-owned undercover car.

“Braley went with the defendants after she was told they were all police officers,” Yagman said. “Police officers never really cease to be police officers.”

Braley, who was intoxicated, “thought it was safe,” Yagman said.

But Pfaelzer, without addressing whether the deputies were responsible for Braley’s death, said the lawsuit’s allegations did not contain evidence that the off-duty deputies attempted to exercise their law enforcement authority.

However, Pfaelzer said she would refer the wrongful death claim contained in the lawsuit to Superior Court, indicating that she believed that it was an issue a jury should decide.

An identical $10-million lawsuit filed against the deputies by Braley’s father, Edward Postma of Iowa, is pending in federal court.

Pfaelzer said she will conduct a hearing Monday on whether Edward Postma’s lawsuit, which was filed against the deputies a month after Mary Postma’s case was filed, will proceed. Under federal statutes, a lawsuit filed by a resident of one state against a citizen of another is routinely heard in federal court. Mary and Edward Postma are divorced.

After the hearing, the deputies’ attorney, Anthony P. Serritella, said he believed that the deputies will ultimately be successful in defending themselves in either federal or Superior Court.

“I think we will prevail,” he said. “There is a complete absence of evidence. They have asked the court to build inference on inference on inference.”