Police Cleared in Fatal Beating on Tape : Massachusetts: Judge cites excessive force but finds no criminal wrongdoing. He terms the suspect violent and irrational. The family vows to sue.

Comparisons to the Rodney King case are inevitable: White police officers are accused of using excessive force in arresting a dark-skinned man; they say he was fighting them. Part of the arrest is videotaped.

But the differences are also compelling. The arrest of Cristino Hernandez, a 38-year-old Salvadoran immigrant, prompted no national outcry and no charges against the two arresting officers.

And while the Hernandez video lacks the jolting images of the King tape, it depicts more severe injuries: King recovered, Hernandez died 10 days later.

“King was able to live and tell about his brutal beating and Hernandez was not,” said Hector Pineiro, attorney for Hernandez’s family.

After an inquest, a judge blamed excessive force by police for the death, but found no criminal wrongdoing. Hernandez himself was violent and irrational, Superior Court Judge Patrick Fox concluded in his December report.

Police Chief Edward Gardella said that the officers, who had been on paid leave, would be reinstated.

The case isn’t over. A federal investigation continues and Hernandez’s family plans a lawsuit.

“All sorts of legal minds will review for hours what decision the officer had to make in a split second,” said Joseph Monahan III, the attorney for Officer David Reidy.

Reidy and Officer Christopher McInnes, both 5 1/2-year veterans, didn’t know Hernandez before July 6, a warm morning in this central Massachusetts city of 170,000.

Hernandez, who emigrated in 1989, was “a person who never bothered no one,” said his sister, Noelia Chafoya.

But there were previous run-ins with police. He had been arrested for kidnaping and assaulting a police officer, and had been committed to Bridgewater State Hospital, where he was described as “psychotic, incoherent, regressive and lacking in behavioral control.”

That morning, police received their second call in two days that Hernandez was harassing his neighbors. Reidy and McInnes responded. They didn’t arrest Hernandez, although they said he pretended to shoot them with a toy pistol.

Minutes after they left, they were called back.

Reidy found Hernandez outside his home, carrying a golf bag. Reidy said Hernandez hit him with a hollow plastic tube and ran inside.

What ensued is in dispute. The officers said Hernandez was wild and incoherent. They said he kicked them in their groins and was unfazed when Reidy fired pepper spray.

But Hernandez’s mother, Elisa Quintanilla, and sister, Paula Rolon, who witnessed--and videotaped--part of the arrest, said police beat Hernandez, who didn’t fight back.

The 4 1/2-minute videotape begins after the scuffle moved outside. It shows Reidy, 6-foot-2 and 225 pounds, kneeling on the back of Hernandez, who was 5-foot-4 and weighed 145 pounds.

As Reidy lifts Hernandez’s cuffed hands upright behind his back, McInnes sits on Hernandez’s kicking legs and cuffs them. Off camera, Hernandez’s sisters and mother cough and yell.

Some time into the video, Hernandez stops moving. Reidy appears dazed and is spitting. About 90 seconds later the camera changes angles, and Reidy is seen pushing Hernandez’s hands backward above Hernandez’s head.

“Something happens to him, you guys are going to jail,” one of the women says.

Paramedics called to the scene couldn’t find a pulse.

Hernandez never regained consciousness and died of a brain injury due to a lack of oxygen, the state medical examiner’s office said. Worcester County Dist. Atty. John Conte ordered an inquest.

A subsequent internal police investigation concluded that the officers used reasonable force and that other factors could have killed Hernandez. Investigators said the pathologist’s findings were based largely on the videotape, which “takes what it shows out of context.”

Attorney Pineiro said the internal investigation demonstrates “contempt of undeniable facts.”

Chief Gardella defended the report but acknowledged that some may remain skeptical.

“A very unfortunate part to all this is anything we say seems very, very defensive, very protective,” he said.