O.C. Sheriff Scolded in Probe of Jail Beating

Already under FBI investigation for suspected jailhouse brutality, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department has now been accused by prosecutors of conducting a “fatally flawed” probe into the 1999 beating of an inmate.

The Orange County district attorney’s office, in a March 14 letter, criticized the Sheriff’s Department for, among other things, letting one of the accused deputies help with the internal investigation in its early stages.

The stinging rebuke, rarely seen because of the district attorney’s congenial relations with the department, also suggested that there may be merit to accusations by inmate Leonel Vega that four deputies attacked him.

The letter, obtained under the California Public Records Act, noted that deputies failed to interview possible witnesses. Jail staffers also hampered the probe by giving conflicting statements about the incident, then refusing to cooperate with prosecutors, the letter said.

The beating triggered a grand jury investigation and marked the closest that prosecutors have come in years to charging jailhouse deputies accused of brutality. In March, prosecutors announced that they would not charge the officers.

“You should not conclude from our filing decision that we necessarily believe that Mr. Vega’s allegations are without merit,” wrote Supervising Assistant Dist. Atty. Douglas Woodsmall in the March 14 letter. “The initial investigation of this incident by sheriff personnel was fatally flawed.”

The criticism comes as county officials fight more than a dozen lawsuits alleging mistreatment of inmates, two of which are under investigation by the FBI. In recent months, sheriff’s officials have responded to the claims by insisting that they thoroughly review every jailhouse incident.

But since receiving the letter, sheriff’s officials said they have launched an internal inquiry into the Vega case. Officials conceded there were mistakes made in the initial investigation and vowed to make sure those are not repeated.

“We take this very, very serious, and we want to do the right thing,” Assistant Sheriff Rocky Hewitt said. “If the district attorney is right, we want to . . . change policies to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Vega’s defense attorney, Deputy Public Defender Dennis Gaughan, welcomed the prosecutors’ findings, saying he had always harbored doubts about whether deputies would seriously investigate his client’s allegations of abuse.

“They made it look like they were doing something about it, but they obviously weren’t,” Gaughan said Thursday. “It’s refreshing to know that [prosecutors] weren’t pleased with it as well.”

Vega, now 21, suffered bruises and cuts to his groin in a Dec. 29, 1999, beating while he was housed in the Men’s Central Jail in Santa Ana. His injuries were so severe that they required hospital treatment, Gaughan said.

But who exactly inflicted the injuries remains unclear. In his letter, Woodsmall acknowledged that prosecutors were unable to “prove or disprove” Vega’s allegation that deputies were responsible.

Nevertheless, the letter drew fire from supporters of the accused deputies, who called the criticism misdirected.

Officials with the Assn. of Orange County Sheriff’s Deputies said the deputies cooperated fully with grand jurors, and they maintained that Vega was beaten by fellow inmates, not guards.

In fact, two deputies were even able to prove they were in different areas of the jail during the assault, said Robert MacLeod, general manager of the deputies’ association.

In the letter, the district attorney’s office accused union officials of advising deputies not to talk to them, which MacLeod said unfairly implied that the association organized a cover-up.

“I resent the implication that there is a code of silence,” MacLeod said. “The claims of this inmate were preposterous and not supported by the evidence.”

Prosecutors routinely send official notification letters to law enforcement agencies detailing their findings in investigations that involve officers.

But the harsh tone and pointed criticism in the letter about the Vega case makes it stand out among all the correspondence the district attorney’s office has sent to the Sheriff’s Department over the past two years.

Since 1999, the Sheriff’s Department has forwarded 26 cases involving allegations of excessive force in the jail to the district attorney for review.

Prosecutors have either cleared the deputies of wrongdoing or rejected the cases for lack of evidence, in all but one instance.

In that case, prosecutors last year noted the “inappropriateness and suspicious nature” of a deputy’s conduct. No other details were provided about the incident. Prosecutors decided not to file charges after concluding that the inmate would not make a convincing witness, the letter stated.

The inmate, James Dean Jones, has since sued the county, alleging that he was kicked, punched and pepper-sprayed in an unprovoked beating by deputies.

Critics of the Sheriff’s Department contend that the problems prosecutors singled out in the Vega investigation are not unique, and raise serious questions about the department’s ability to investigate its own role in jail incidents.

“Obviously, this isn’t the first one and this isn’t the last one,” said R. Samuel Paz, a Los Angeles civil rights attorney who is suing the county alleging a “pattern or practice” of brutality in the jails.

Vega was booked into County Jail on Aug. 4, 1999, after he was arrested during a police raid at a friend’s Mission Viejo home. A unit of sheriff’s and probation deputies said they saw Vega in the house trying to hide 10 grams of heroin--a charge the inmate denied. He was later convicted of drug possession, however.

Then 19, Vega had already spent time behind bars as a juvenile and was known to some local deputies. Three years earlier, he had accused one of the arresting deputies of using excessive force during a previous arrest, according to court records.

While Vega awaited trial, his attorney filed a court motion seeking access to complaints filed against the arresting deputies. Gaughan wrote in court documents that he planned to prove that the deputies lied about finding drugs on Vega.

The evening before a court hearing on the motion, Vega phoned Gaughan’s investigator and said he’d been beaten. Four deputies, Vega insisted, had taken him to a secluded area of the jail. There, two held him down while the others kicked and punched him in the groin.

Gaughan phoned the jail’s watch commander. A sheriff’s sergeant, he said, told him nothing had happened. Worried, Gaughan rushed to the jail with a court order allowing photographs to be taken of his client’s injuries. He arrived to hear that Vega had been rushed to a hospital, the attorney said.

The incident was investigated by jail deputies, and Vega was interviewed by one of the guards he had accused of beating him.

Eventually, jail officials called in the sheriff’s homicide unit, which investigates all allegations of criminal misconduct by deputies.

By that point, however, prosecutors say the integrity of the investigation had been compromised.

“What was done initially impacted the entire investigation,” Woodsmall said in a recent interview, “and you couldn’t undo what had already been done.”

Still, the district attorney’s office has not ruled out filing criminal charges if new evidence surfaces.

Sheriff’s officials said they are taking the criticism to heart. The department will probably change policies to make sure inmates are no longer interviewed by deputies they accuse of misconduct, Hewitt said.

Meanwhile, the department’s internal affairs division is conducting its own investigation into the beating.

“This particular case is far from over,” Hewitt said.

The prosecutor’s letter identified the four deputies involved in the 1999 incident. Three of them--Ehrin Weidenkeller, Harrison Manhart and Jason Perez--remain on active duty.

The fourth, Kevin Thomason, resigned in March, more than a year after he pleaded guilty to being drunk in public and disturbing the peace in Riverside County. Riverside prosecutors said Thomason was later sentenced to 30 days in jail for violating a three-year probation sentence in the case.

Weidenkeller, reached through a police union official, declined to discuss the case. Manhart, Perez and Thomason could not be reached for comment.