Man Wrongly Jailed Could Get Settlement

A man who spent more than three years in jail for a rape that he did not commit should be paid $875,000 to settle his false imprisonment suit, lawyers for Los Angeles County said Friday.

Mark Bravo, a psychiatric nurse at Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk was sent to prison for the February 1990 rape of a mental patient.

The county is liable, according to a report by Assistant County Counsel S. Robert Ambrose, because the sheriff’s deputy who arrested Bravo did not disclose that the victim had previously identified another man as her assailant. That man, who is referred to in a county report on the suit as “Tony,” had committed a sexual assault at the hospital two weeks earlier, the document.

That incident, the report said, was investigated by the same detective who was assigned to Bravo’s case.

“Even though the incidents were very similar and Mark Bravo’s accuser had initially identified various individuals, including a man named Tony as her assailant, sheriff’s detectives did not disclose the information to the district attorney,” Ambrose wrote in his report. “Further, this information was never disclosed to Mark Bravo’s criminal defense attorney.”

Had the district attorney known about the other assault, further investigation into Bravo’s case might have been conducted, clearing him of the charge, Ambrose said in his report.

Ambrose’s report also detailed potential problems with the role that physical evidence played in the case.

Before his arrest, Bravo was found to be among 3% of the population whose body fluids might have been found on a blanket and sheet found at the location of the rape. But DNA testing was not done.

His attorney tried repeatedly to win the right to perform DNA tests, and eventually prevailed on appeal. The tests showed that Bravo was not the assailant, and the state Court of Appeal threw out the conviction.

Bravo was released from prison in 1994. He sued the county for $5 million.

The county spent about $351,000 in attorneys fees and court costs defending itself against Bravo’s suit. The recommendation to settle his claim, rather than proceed to trial, will be heard by the county claims board on Monday.

If approved, the settlement will go before the Board of Supervisors.