Family Gets $4.9M After Cops Beat Mentally Ill Son to Death on Video and Walked Free
Ron Thomas accepts $4.9M to settle civil case with Fullerton for son's beating
— 89.3 KPCC (@KPCC) November 23, 2015
Thomas, a homeless man who suffered from schizophrenia, was beaten into a coma by a thugscrum of six police officers on the evening of July 5, 2011. Video recordings of the assault captured the anguished screams of the helpless, unarmed, 160-pound man as he was slugged, kicked, tasered, and clubbed as the attackers bellowed, “Stop resisting!” With his last words Kelly pleaded for his father Ron Thomas, a retired sheriff’s deputy. Left brain-dead by the gang beating, Kelly was removed from life support a few days later.
*Addressing the defense argument that Thomas had precipitated the beating by putting up resistance, Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas acknowledged in a remarkable closing presentation to the jury that Thomas had the legal right to defend himself against a criminal assault by the police.
“There is no legal authority for a police officer to use force to punish someone,” Rackauckas told the jury. “There’s no authority to use force for `street justice.’ A police officer cannot get mad at somebody and start punching him around, or use any kind of force on him at all.”
When a police officer uses “unreasonable or excessive force, he is not lawfully performing his duties,” the prosecutor continued. Section 2670 in California’s Criminal Jury Instructions explains that defendants accused of resisting arrest cannot be convicted if the arrest was unlawful, and that “a person may lawfully use reasonable force to defend himself or herself.”
*There was no ambiguity regarding the identity of the killers, and the law was on the side of the victim. But Karch’s “expert” assessment, combined with numerous appeals to authority, provided the conservative Orange County jury with an excuse to acquit the officers. By doing so they validated the privilege of police to kill without cause or consequences – except to the taxpayers who are compelled to pay for such “services,” and then indemnify the resulting victims."
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/family-4-9m-cops-beat-mentally-ill-son-death-video-walked-free/