New Trial for Westminster Officers : Civil rights: Federal judge reopens controversial case against 3 police officers involved in the 1988 shooting death of Frank Martinez, 18.

Reopening an explosive case that sparked an outcry in Westminster’s Latino community, a federal judge has ordered a new civil trial against three Westminster police officers in the 1988 shooting death of 18-year-old Frank Martinez.

Lawyers for both sides, citing an agreement with U.S. District Judge J. Spencer Letts in Los Angeles to limit public comment on the highly sensitive case, would not spell out the judge’s reasons for granting a new trial.

Court documents, however, show that the judge’s decision stemmed at least in part from a pretrial settlement among two of the police officers and several of Martinez’s relatives.

“All I can say about his reasoning is that he obviously has concluded that the trial did not go off fairly the first time,” said Christopher B. Mears, attorney for Martinez’s estate. “His reasons for concluding that may very well be different from mine.”

Mears said he did not know exactly how much he would ask for in damages in a new trial, but estimated it would be in the “low seven figures.”

Martinez was shot once in the chest by Westminster Police Officer Steven Phillips on July 15, 1988, during a scuffle at a birthday party behind Martinez’s house. Phillips and other police officers were in Martinez’s neighborhood investigating a report of a kidnaping involving the West Trece gang, the dominant gang in the area, according to court testimony.

Police claimed that they were set upon by an angry mob, and that Phillips acted in self-defense as Martinez came at him wielding a bottle.

Other witnesses, however, said Martinez was not holding a bottle.

Martinez’s family sued the city of Westminster, alleging that police used excessive force and violated the young man’s civil rights.

A four-man, four-woman jury exonerated Phillips after deliberating for three days last June. The jury also awarded $24 in punitive damages to Phillips, and ordered Martinez’s estate to pay Phillips’ personal legal costs. The punitive damages were thrown out in the judge’s latest ruling.

In his motion for a new trial, Mears argued that the jury was prejudiced by references the defendants’ attorney, Bruce Praet, made to membership in a Latino gang--even though, Mears said, Martinez was not a gang member.

“Race and the nationality of Martinez’s family were absolutely irrelevant to any issue in the case, yet they were constantly injected into the case as if they were,” Mears said.

But, he added, those were not the reasons that Letts cited last month when he ordered a new trial in the case.

Praet said that he would ask the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to order Letts to allow the pretrial agreement to stand, and, possibly, the jury verdict exonerating Phillips as well.

“Obviously, we don’t agree with the judge’s ruling,” Praet said.

The pretrial agreement called for the city of Westminster to pay $8,500 to one of Martinez’s relatives and all claims and cross-claims between the family members and the two police officers to be dropped. According to court papers, it was reached with the understanding that evidence and testimony in the trial against the remaining police officer, Steve Phillips, would be limited to the events immediately surrounding the shooting and focus on whether Phillips had reason to believe that Martinez posed a threat to him with a bottle--what came to be known as the “snapshot” approach to the case.

Mears wrote in his argument for a new trial that all lawyers in the case “were surprised” when additional evidence was admitted at the trial, and that he would “never have settled” the relatives’ cases had he known the trial’s scope would reach far beyond a “snapshot” of the shooting.

In September, Judge Letts suggested to both attorneys that they drop the settlement agreement and reopen the cases against the other police officers.