Judge Upholds Officer’s Indictment

Rejecting defense claims that prosecutors withheld crucial evidence from the grand jury, a judge Tuesday refused to dismiss an indictment against an Inglewood police officer charged in connection with the alleged beating of a youth during a videotaped arrest in July.

A lawyer for Officer Bijan Darvish, who has been charged with filing a false police report about how his partner, former Officer Jeremy J. Morse, allegedly manhandled the teenager, has said the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office failed to tell the grand jury that Darvish’s statement was “literally true.”

The defense attorney, Mark Fredrick, argued that if prosecutors had provided that information and other evidence, the grand jury may not have indicted Darvish.

Judge William Hollingsworth said he will let the jury decide whether Darvish was telling the truth, and rejected Fredrick’s motion to dismiss the indictment.

Darvish, 25, and Morse, 24, were indicted in August. Morse is accused of assault under color of law, and was recently fired after the police chief reviewed the incident.

Videotapes, one recorded by surveillance cameras at a gas station where the incident occurred and another by an amateur cameraman nearby, showed police struggling with 16-year-old Donovan Jackson before handcuffing him.

After Jackson was cuffed, Morse is seen lifting him by the back of the collar and his beltline, carrying him over to a squad car, slamming him down on the trunk and then hitting him in the jaw.

Morse has said that Jackson grabbed his testicles and that he had to hit him to make him let go. Morse’s lawyers also have argued that the officer had to lift Jackson up and place the youth on the car because Jackson had continued resisting arrest by going limp.

Darvish is accused of lying in a police report about the incident when he wrote that, after Jackson was handcuffed, “we then assisted Jackson to his feet and had him stand facing the police vehicle.” Fredrick argued that the videotape does not dispute that statement.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Max Huntsman sharply disagreed.

He said the tape showed Morse slamming Jackson against the car, not having “him stand facing” it. He said Jackson was bent over across the trunk -- not standing up -- and Darvish had his arm across the teenager’s back, pinning him against the car. The prosecutor said Darvish “created that statement out of whole cloth to cover up” for his partner.

Huntsman also rejected Fredrick’s argument that the indictment should be thrown out because he failed to provide the grand jury with Darvish’s explanation for not reporting that Morse had slammed Jackson on the squad car.

Darvish has said that he did not see it happen, that he heard a thud, but was looking in another direction.

Fredrick said prosecutors were well aware that Darvish provided that explanation to Inglewood Police Department internal affairs investigators, because they had a transcript of the officer’s tape-recorded interview. Huntsman said a jury will never believe that Darvish failed to see Morse’s treatment of Jackson.

Moreover, he said he did not know about Darvish’s explanation to internal affairs investigators during the administrative interview.

Hollingsworth also reviewed the gas station surveillance tapes before rejecting Fredrick’s claim that the district attorney’s office erred in not showing them to the grand jury. Those tapes show police officers struggling with Jackson and then handcuffing him.

Prosecutors only provided the grand jury with the tape recorded by an amateur cameraman showing what happened to Jackson after he was handcuffed.

Hollingsworth will continue hearing defense motions on Dec. 20. At that time, lawyers for Morse are expected to argue that the indictment against him should be dismissed because prosecutors failed to present two use-of-force trainers who have said Morse did not use excessive force against Jackson.

One of those trainers is an investigator for the district attorney’s office who once was a use-of-force instructor for the Inglewood Police Department.