Daughter of Slain Robber Awarded $1 : Courts: Jury decides girl suffered no ‘real damages.’ LAPD unit killed her father six days before her birth.

Saying there were no “real damages,” a federal court jury Friday made the minimum award of $1 to a young girl whose father was killed by the Los Angeles Police Department’s elite SIS unit as he fled a 1990 robbery in Sunland, six days before she was born.

The verdict in the Johanna Trevino case came after a four-day trial. It climaxed almost three years of complicated litigation, including two mistrials and appeals all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in an unsuccessful effort to make Los Angeles City Council members pay damages from their own pockets.

However, the verdict does not end the legal saga that began when Special Investigations Section officers shot four robbers they saw holding up a McDonald’s restaurant, killing three of them. A federal grand jury is deciding whether the officers should stand trial on charges of violating the robbers’ civil rights.

The separate civil suit before U.S. District Judge J. Spencer Letts was unusual because it addressed a possible legal wrong committed against an unborn child and presented the tricky task of measuring the loss to a girl, now nearly 5, who never knew her father.

After deliberating for two days, the eight-member jury concluded that Johanna “has not and will not incur real damages” because of her father’s death.

“We just didn’t hear anything that said there was damage to the child,” said one juror, a 52-year-old woman.

The fact that Johanna’s father was killed while committing a crime did not influence their decision, said the jurors.

Nine members of the SIS killed Herbert Burgos, 27, Jesus Arango, 25, and Javier Trevino, 21, as they fled the restaurant holdup Feb. 12, 1990. The officers said the robbers brandished guns, later found to be air pistols.

A fourth man, Alfredo Olivas, was wounded and later convicted of robbery. He is serving a 17-year prison sentence.

The slain robbers’ survivors sued the city and the Police Department in federal court for wrongful deaths, winning $44,042 in punitive damages. The jury said it kept the amount relatively low because it wanted the nine officers and then-Police Chief Daryl F. Gates to pay the money out of their own pockets. The City Council commonly authorizes payment from the city treasury of court judgments against city employees for actions taken on the job.

In 1992, the City Council voted to indemnify the sued officers despite the jury’s wishes. Lawyer Stephen Yagman then filed suit on behalf of Johanna.

The Supreme Court let stand an appellate court ruling that under some circumstances, lawmakers could be held personally liable, a sizable victory for Yagman, but Letts dismissed the council members from the case last week.