Settlement in False Conviction Case Urged

A man who was falsely convicted of rape in part because a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy withheld evidence in his case should be paid $875,000, the county claims board recommended Monday.

Mark Bravo, a psychiatric nurse who was among several men named by a mental patient as her assailant after she was raped at Metropolitan State Hospital, served three years of an eight-year sentence for rape before the state Court of Appeal overturned his conviction in 1994.

County lawyers said in their report on the case that a sheriff’s deputy did not tell the district attorney or Bravo’s defense lawyer that another man, also named by the woman as an assailant, had committed a sexual assault under similar circumstances two weeks earlier at the Norwalk hospital. DNA tests ordered after Bravo’s conviction showed the he was not the rapist.

The claim is expected to be heard by the Board of Supervisors, which must give final approval to the settlement.