Articles

Wronged Man Wouldn't Back Down

After Rejecting $1,500 Offer, He Gets $300,000 in Arrest Case

By Anne Marie Ruff Daily Journal Staff Writer

City officials didn't think much of Jorge Hernandez's claim that Los Angeles police officers falsely arrested and imprisoned him on a firearms charge.

They originally offered just $1,500 to settle a civil rights violation claim.

Hernandez refused. His tenacity and the work of his attorney, Robert Berke paid off 200-fold last week.

Hernandez was awarded a $300,000 settlement De. 14 by the City Council in his case against the Los Angeles Police Department and the city.

A jury found Hernandez not guilty of a charge of possession of a firearm, but only after he had served nearly a year and a half in jail for two charges of possession of a firearm.

Hernandez claimed the officers framed him, "probably because I looked homeless and they thought they could get away with it, and that I couldn't afford counsel."

Hernandez, 43, is glad for his good fortune. But it came only after a long spell of bad luck.

In 2003, Hernandez was working as an electrician. But he fell into a depression and lost his job after his wife of 16 years left him and took their two sons, then 11 and 13, to Reno.

His life spiraled downward. He started receiving general relief. He moved to Reno to be near his sons and lived in a homeless shelter there. But he came back to Los Angeles to continue receiving medication associated with his liver disease. He lived occasionally with his sister, but mostly out of his car.

On July 20, 2003, Hernandez claims he was waiting for a friend in the Rampart area of Los Angeles when two LAPD officers approached him and asked for his ID. Outstanding traffic warrants showed up, compelling the officers to place him in the back seat of the police car.

Hernandez thought he was just going to the police station to clear up the warrants.

But when he arrived, he was charged with possession of a rifle, which he claimed he had never seen before.

Thus began a two-year odyssey through the L.A. prison and court systems trying to prove his innocence.

"I screamed so much, my throat hurt for two days," Hernandez said. "I got a public defender and immediately demanded that the rifle be fingerprinted. I was sure the results [of the fingerprint analysis] would be my ticket home.

In fact, the analysis showed nothing. No partial or full fingerprints not even any smudges on a gun he had supposedly handled with his bare hands.

Hernandez was offered a deal of two years, instead of a maximum eight-year sentence, if he pleaded guilty. He refused.

On Sept. 11, 2003 Hernandez got a taste of prison life could be. He gave a cup of coffee and a hug t an African-American inmate after a prayer call. A group of young men took him aside and beat him, breaking his nose and causing pain in his liver. Hernandez said they called the beating "regulation" because he had crossed racial lines.

After that incident, his mother and brother-in-law decided they needed to do something. They pooled some money and contacted Robert Berke, a sole practitioner in Santa Monica.

"It was either get an attorney or post bail," Hernandez said.

So he stayed in prison while Berke assembled a defense.

Berke said he believed in Hernandez's version of events.

"With some clients you can tell from the look in their eyes, their willingness to go to trial," he said. "He always maintained his innocence."

The results from the fingerprint analysis became critical in the pretrial hearing, held in March 2004. The two LAPD officers gave different versions of how the rifle was handled.

One officer claimed he had handled the rifle with gloves and tagged it and that it was subsequently placed in a sealed box designated fro printing. The other officer claimed his partner had not worn gloves and never designated the rifle for printing.

The officers' testimony also differed as to how and where Hernandez was arrested.

Traumatized by prison life, Hernandez decided to take the two-year deal he had been offered and was released from jail. He went back to the scene of his arrest. He claims he was looking for a witness in the neighborhood who could corroborate his version of events.

But he was picked up by two different LAPD officers and again charged with possession of a firearm. Again a fingerprint analysis turned up no prints.

Hernandez went back to jail.

Berke found additional information that led to a reopening of the first case and a withdrawal of Hernandez's no contest plea.

The criminal trial began Dec. 6, 2004. Berke called in Dell Freeman, the fingerprint expert who had written the fingerprint analysis report, to testify for the defense. Freeman testified that the wooden surface of the gun was printable surface that normally would show prints if handled.

The officers testified Hernandez had put the rifle in a trash can immediately before he was arrested.

The jury deliberated for 20 minutes and returned a not guilty verdict for Hernandez.

He was released form jail a year ago this week, on Dec. 13, 2004. At that time, he pleaded no contest to the second charge, and the judge accepted time already served as his sentence.

He was fee. But by that time, his wife had divorced him and received full custody of their two sons.

"We probably could have worked it out," said Hernandez, "but by that time, she had lost hope and found another guy."

Berke said he would press on with the civil trial but asked Hernandez to agree to get a job and stay away from the Rampart area.

After 2 ½ months of searching, and explaining his situation. Hernandez did land an electrician job in February which he still holds.

By June, the civil case went to mediation under Judge Carla Woehrle, and the city offered $1,500 in damages.

Geoffrey Plowden at the city attorney's office represented the city and the officers in the first case.

"We generally win these cases," Plowden said. "I can't recall the last time we had a 'he said, he said' type of case and the jury decided against the police."

Michael Gennaco, the chief attorney at the Office of Independent Review for the Sheriff's Department, said, "In my experience, civilians want to believe and have confidence in the veracity of police officers."

Berke acknowledged these are difficult cases. But he was willing to take the odds and refused the city's $1,500.00 offer.

The civil trial began Oct. 23, and a week later, the jury returned an 8-0 verdict that Hernandez had been falsely arrested and that the officers had filed false police reports.

"The foreman was very serious," Berke said. "The jury essentially said two police officers submitted false reports, and that was a heavy responsibility. But they listened to Hernandez, who had been semihomeless and receiving general relief, as a human being and believed him against the officers."

Plowden asserted that there was no misconduct on the part of the police and that the jury was "confused" on a specific issue regarding constructive possession of a rifle and "the court refused to instruct the jury on this."

Notwithstanding this, the city attorney's office recommended to the City Council that Hernandez be awarded $300,000 in damages. On Wednesday, the City Council approved the recommendation and the settlement.

"I can finally breathe," Hernandez said. "I can eat with real human beings, when I could have had nothing for the next seven years. I would have lost my boys in that time."

He is planning a trip to Reno this weekend, since his ex-wife has agreed to let Hernandez see his sons for the first time in almost two years. He is thrilled.

But Plowden is not.

"This is a situation where a defendant got an underserved break in the criminal justice system," he said, "and the plaintiff's attorney amplified it in the civil system by playing up the word Rampart several times."

During the trials, the police officers were not connected with the 1999 Rampart scandal, but they were working out of the Rampart Station.

Plowden said the situation was "a defendant trying to make a buck off the backs of two hardworking police officers. This idea of rifle planting of gun throw downs is absurd, it's a fiction."

But he conceded that the $300,000 settlement was "in the best interest of the city and the plaintiff," considering the time and cost involved in any potential appeals.

The district attorney's office had no comment about either the criminal verdict or the civil settlement.

The two police officers are still on duty. Lt. Paul Vernon, and LAPD spokesman said any time the LAPD is sued, the officers involved are investigated, "but any investigation or disciplinary action is not public information."

That is a sticking point for Berke.

"Anyone can find out if there have been any disciplinary actions against me or any other lawyer or if there are complaints about doctors or car repairmen," Berke said.

"But the public cannot find out if police officers, who have guns, have any prior complaints filed against them. I think accountability is really an important thing."

Hernandez would have liked to see the police officers taken off the street. He said every day he thinks about something that happened in jail.

"I still hear the howling and screaming. It's scary in there," he said.

But he is satisfied with looking forward to "the best Christmas in a long time."