6 Deputies Target of S.D. Probe - Jail Death: U.S. grand jury could issue indictments against Sheriff’s Department guards involved in fatal choking of inmate.

A federal grand jury here has identified six San Diego County deputy sheriffs as targets of its nearly completed investigation into the choking death of a County Jail inmate two years ago.

In letters mailed to the deputy sheriffs last month, the U.S. attorney’s office, which is presenting the case to the grand jury for possible indictments later this month, invited the deputies to appear before the grand jury to testify about the January, 1988, strangulation of Albert Varela.

The death of the 28-year-old man, who was subdued and choked by a group of deputies in the downtown jail, touched off an emotional outcry from the public, particularly in San Diego’s Latino community, where some rights activists charged that Latinos were being unduly abused by law enforcement officers.

The incident also was among the first of a flood of complaints in 1988 about beatings and abuses by sheriff’s deputies in all six county jails.

The grand jury letters, sent last month, advised the “target deputies” that any testimony they might give the grand jury “could be used against you if any criminal charges were filed against you.”

“This investigation may result in a federal criminal charge that the civil rights of Mr. Varela were violated,” the letters said. “You are a target of this investigation.”

Sources said Tuesday that none of the six deputies has agreed to appear before the grand jury. And apparently no decisions have been made on when, or if, the grand jury might consider issuing indictments.

“We’ve been waiting, and they told us that we might hear something soon,” Rose Varela, the victim’s mother, said Tuesday. “We’re hoping there’s some action; we’d like to get it over with. But we haven’t heard anything. We don’t know anything yet.”

The federal investigation follows two earlier, separate reviews by the Sheriff’s Department and the county district attorney that cleared the deputies of any criminal wrongdoing. Last year, the U.S. attorney’s office and the FBI decided not to pursue alleged civil rights violations in 70 individual complaints of inmates being abused by deputies but continued to investigate the Varela death.

The federal grand jury investigation has shut down action in a civil lawsuit filed by the Varela family against the deputies, Sheriff John Duffy and the county.

Court records show that the deputies were invoking their 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination in the civil lawsuit by refusing to provide information about Varela’s death until after the federal grand jury makes a decision on issuing indictments.

The lawsuit and other public records identify the six sheriff’s deputies as Roy DeVault (who has since left the Sheriff’s Department to attend college), Carlos Rodriguez, Jon Ellis, Ronald K. Brown, J. J. Rodi and S. T. Riley.

Varela, who was 6 feet, 1 inch tall and weighed 286 pounds, was arrested after he allegedly violated a court order to stay away from his family because of past temper tantrums and fights. When police arrived, he asked to be taken to the downtown jail, and was driven there.

According to the county district attorney’s investigation, a fight broke out while Varela was being processed in the jail. The fight was started, the district attorney said, when Rodriguez “threw Varela’s clothes to him, and Varela, in turn, threw them at Deputy Rodriguez.”

During the struggle, the other five deputies tried to help Rodriguez subdue the large man. DeVault applied a carotid restraint hold on Varela’s neck while the other deputies kept him off balance, the district attorney said, and the inmate eventually fell face-down on the floor.

He was handcuffed and, with blood coming out of his nose, dragged by his legs with his chin scraping the floor and placed inside a padded safety cell, the district attorney said. He later was taken to the UC San Diego Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

Although the district attorney declined to hold any of the deputies criminally liable for the man’s death, the state prosecutors did chastise the deputies for dragging the dying man across the floor, describing it as “inconsistent with basic humane treatment.”

The coroner’s office, in its own investigation, ruled that the neck restraint was not the direct cause of Varela’s death. Instead, the coroner concluded that Varela died of cardiorespiratory arrest.

The coroner also found nine scrapes or bruises around Varela’s head and neck, including a 3-by-2-inch abrasion near his chin, and 14 scratches and scrapes on the rest of his body.

The Varela family in October, 1988, filed the $8-million civil lawsuit, alleging that the deputies were engaged in “ultra-hazardous and dangerous activity” when they used the carotid hold on Varela’s throat to control the inmate.

The lawsuit was working its way through Superior Court last year when attorneys abruptly advised the court that the deputies did not want to participate in the pretrial discovery process. They said the deputies indicated that they feared any information they provided in the lawsuit could be used against them in the federal grand jury investigation.

Court records from last July say, “The defendant deputies involved in this case are under investigation by the FBI and the United States attorney’s office for possible criminal charges related to the causes of action stated in the complaint. Any discovery conducted with respect to said deputies would be futile at this stage because of their 5th Amendment privileges.”

In November of last year, the deputies were still asserting their 5th Amendment privileges “until the possibility of criminal prosecution has been resolved,” court records show.

The records add: “After meeting with Stephen P. Clark, assistant U.S. attorney, plaintiffs’ counsel has been informed that the United States attorney’s office is still investigating the matter and that their investigation and grand jury involvement will not be completed, at the earliest, until late March, 1990.”

Finally, on March 29, the court records carry this explanation of the matter:

“The United States attorney’s office is in the process of presenting evidence to the United States grand jury for possible prosecution on criminal charges (of) the individual defendant deputy sheriffs in this case.

“Plaintiff’s counsel has been informed that submission of the evidence will be completed near the end of April, 1990, and that decision on indictments will probably be made the end of April, 1990.”

Nathan Northup, a deputy county attorney who is helping to defend the deputies in the civil lawsuit, said Tuesday that the deputies are using the 5th Amendment to shield themselves from the purview of the federal grand jury.

“If they are the subject or even potentially the subject of a criminal investigation, it only makes sense for them to take advantage of the protection of the 5th Amendment,” Northup said. “Once the criminal matters are out of the way, then they would be free to testify (in the civil lawsuit) without any fear that what they said could be held against them.”

The civil lawsuit also contains a May 2 court ruling in which Judge Michael I. Greer ordered the county to turn over to the U.S. attorney’s office “the original videotape of the cell area” where the struggle and chokehold occurred. The tape was made from a camera monitor inside the jail.

Several sources on both sides of the case said that the grand jury did not complete its investigation by the end of March or April because the videotape is of poor quality and difficult to enhance.

Clark, the federal prosecutor who specializes in civil rights cases and is handling the grand jury’s investigation in the Varela death, declined Tuesday to discuss the case and when it might be completed.

“The investigation is still ongoing,” he said.

But a conclusion of the federal probe is expected by the end of this month, sources told The Times.

“It’s been my impression that the grand jury has been looking at a lot of different things for a long time,” Northup said. “Whether its related just to the Varela case, I don’t know. But I think probably everybody is waiting to see what the grand jury is going to do.”

William Chopak, an attorney who was hired by the county to represent Deputy DeVault in the civil lawsuit, said, “The only thing I really know is that some determination should be made really soon.”

But, citing the past investigations that showed no criminal wrongdoing, Chopak said he does not think that the federal grand jury will indict his client.

“I have no reason to believe the grand jury would find anything different than everybody else who investigated the case,” Chopak said. “And all of the investigations that have been tendered so far simply said he acted properly at all times in what he did. There’s simply no basis for believing he did anything wrong.