Deputy Is Expected to Plead Guilty

A Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy accused of pointing a revolver at a hospital patient and punching him will plead guilty to one misdemeanor charge of violating federal civil rights laws, court officials said.

Deputy Henry Meyers, 30, has also agreed to resign his job within two weeks after entering the plea and will not seek or accept employment with any law enforcement or private security agency in the U.S., according to Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office.

Meyers, a seven-year deputy assigned to the department’s Antelope Valley substation, could still receive the maximum one year in jail and/or a $100,000 fine, although it’s highly unlikely because of his guilty plea, Mrozek said.

“It will be completely up to the judge,” he said. “Mr. Meyers will be pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge. Originally, it was a felony charge.”

Meyers is scheduled to enter the guilty plea Monday before a district court judge.

The deputy was relieved of duty after a Sheriff’s Department investigation into the March 20 incident.

Under a federal grand jury’s original indictment, Meyers, if convicted, could have received up to 10 years in federal prison.

The plea agreement, signed Sept. 26, said that Meyers, while on duty and in uniform, went to the Antelope Valley Hospital on his own. He entered the treatment room of Guillermo Soto, who at the time was being treated by members of the hospital staff.

Soto’s hands and legs were bound by leather restraints while a nurse was trying to draw blood from him, the agreement states. Meyers, without provocation, drew his service revolver and pointed it at Soto’s head.

Meyers then punched Soto “three to four times,” the agreement says, on the upper left thigh.

“Your striking Mr. Soto was both willful and unreasonable in light of the fact Mr. Soto did not present a bodily threat to anyone in the hospital,” the document says.

The document does not discuss why the deputy allegedly threatened and struck Soto.

Neither Soto nor Richard Hirsch, Meyers’ defense attorney, could be reached for comment. In a prepared statement last week, Hirsch said that it was Meyers’ “lifelong ambition to be a deputy sheriff. He is devastated by the charges against him.”