Officers Not Charged in Hogtied Suspect’s Death : County: D.A.’s office cites insufficient evidence to determine whether police from three departments caused 1993 fatality.

Citing insufficient evidence, the district attorney’s office declined to file charges Wednesday against police officers from three local departments in the 1993 death of a Pasadena man who collapsed after he was allegedly hogtied and placed face-down in a police car.

The decision comes less than a week after the Los Angeles City Council agreed to pay $885,000 to the family of Michael James Bryant, who led officers on a chase that began in San Marino and ended in Highland Park, where the 37-year-old barber evaded police on foot until he fell into a back-yard swimming pool.

Before the incident was over, the officers had struck the 6-foot-1, 320-pound man with batons and shot him at least three times with a Taser.

The district attorney’s office said it was unclear whether Bryant--who tests showed was under the influence of cocaine at the time of his arrest--died from the drug or from treatment at the hands of officers from the Pasadena, San Marino and Los Angeles police departments.

“In order to act in such a case, all elements have to be proven within reasonable doubt and that didn’t happen here,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Joseph Shidler. “The man could have died from a number of reasons, including the cocaine, the hogtying or a couple of other reasons. There was just nothing conclusive.”

A lawsuit filed on behalf of the family by attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. contended that Bryant died March 8, 1993, because he was improperly placed on his stomach while hogtied in violation of an LAPD policy handed down only months earlier after the death of another man who was hogtied--a procedure in which a suspect’s arms and legs are handcuffed behind his back.

According to a 61-page report from the district attorney released Wednesday, several of the arresting officers stated that Bryant was placed into the patrol car face-down because of his size. One other officer said he saw Bryant “occasionally rocking onto his belly then back on his side.”

An initial autopsy determined the cause of Bryant’s death was cocaine intoxication and “asphyxia from restraint procedures.” Coroners found that Bryant’s heart did not display damage consistent with cocaine use, but the red color of the blood “was consistent with either cocaine overdose or from asphyxia.” The district attorney’s report stipulated that the autopsy did not find petechial hemorrhages--pinpoint areas of bleeding usually found in asphyxiation deaths.

A second autopsy conducted at the request of Bryant’s family produced similar findings but doctors that time offered no conclusions as to the cause of death.

“It is a rare case after coming out of an autopsy procedure that doctors can conclusively say ‘This person died because of this or that,’ ” Shidler said.

“It’s easy if you open up a person and find a gunshot wound that pierces the heart,” the prosecutor said. “But here, we were told by the coroner’s office and people we consulted that there were no physical manifestations, or very little, that normally occur in the body in the case of a hogtie death. The one you expect to see, the petechial hemorrhages, were not there.”

On the night of the incident, Bryant had flagged down San Marino Officer Mark Fried, saying his nephew had been kidnaped. The officer tried to detain Bryant after noticing that he appeared to be intoxicated, but the suspect fled in his car.

In the ensuing chase, Bryant abandoned the vehicle and ran away, finally stumbling into a residential swimming pool. Before the officers pulled him from the pool, the district attorney’s report stated, Bryant refused to surrender, saying, “No. You are going to beat me.”

The report concludes, in part: “We cannot say beyond a reasonable doubt that the actions or inactions of any officer were a legal cause of his death.”