Jury Denies Damages on Man’s Claim of Jail Mistreatment

After 3 1/2 days of tearful and fierce debate, a federal jury decided Monday that a 40-year-old Oceanside man did not prove he was injured in County Jail by San Diego County sheriff’s deputies nearly five years ago.

Attorneys for Chuck Castro had asked the jury to award him $2.4 million for severe spinal injuries he suffered after his arrest and temporary incarceration at County Jail in Vista. They also asked that his wife, Maria, be awarded $150,000 for clothing, bathing and feeding her husband since his injury in November, 1987.

Jurors said they were struck by the tragedy of Castro being admitted to the jail as a relatively healthy man and needing two surgeries on his spine by the time he was released.

“He walked in and he was carried out,” said Karen Parker, who was the jury foreman until an hour before the verdict, when she decided she could not read the jury’s decision. “That was the tough part. We yelled and we screamed, and we lost a lot of sleep.”

But, although something terrible seemed to happen during his stay, jurors said, attorneys for Castro did not prove that someone else caused his injuries.

“We had to decide whether there was sufficient proof that the two deputies were negligent,” said juror Richard Allmann. “We weighed the proof and evidence, and it just wasn’t there.”

The verdict came as a great relief to the county of San Diego, which has paid out nearly $3 million since 1985 in jury verdicts and claims over allegations of excessive force involving deputies.

Members of the Sheriff’s Department also said they were satisfied that the deputies did no wrong.

Deputy County Counsel Morris Hill, who represented deputies Tom Vrabel and Pat O’Brien, said he was gratified by the jury’s decision.

“I’m happy for my clients,” Hill said. “From our point of view, it looked really bad. This guy came in walking and left crippled, and it looked like the cops did it. It was a terrible set of facts that turned out not be that terrible at all.”

Castro, who walks with a cane and has his right arm in a sling, sat impassively as the jury read its verdict. Throughout the eight-day trial, he clutched a copy of the New Testament.

“Praise God,” he said. “What happened today is the Lord’s will.”

Jurors had been asked to decide if the deputies had been negligent when Castro was admitted to jail on Nov. 24, 1987, hours after the Oceanside man was found banging on cars in downtown Vista. In testimony, Castro, who is half-Indian, said deputies beat him after he remarked, “You took our land away. What more do you want?”

He said he was shoved into the wall of a padded cell, fell to one knee, was picked back up and had his neck rammed against the cell. The next morning, Castro said, he had lost feeling in his arms and legs and was awash in sewage, which he alleged deputies caused.

Vrabel and O’Brien said they could not recall Castro even being in the jail because nothing out of the ordinary happened that night.

The four-man, four-woman U.S. District Court jury declined even to grant Castro any of his $81,524 in medical fees.

Foreman Gary Strite said he and the seven others “tore apart every bit of the evidence” before making their decision.

Parker decided that both sides--Castro and the deputies--had been untruthful in some of their testimony.

“They both had credibility problems, they both lied. Only the doctors who testified were credible,” she said. “But we had to go on the proof.”

One of Castro’s attorneys, Eugene Hooser, who listened as the verdict came in, turned to his client and whispered, “Sorry.”