A federal jury has found two Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies guilty of beating a mentally ill jail inmate and falsifying records to hide it.
The deputies were among the latest to be convicted of the more than 20 current or former sheriff's employees charged in connection with a probe of corruption and abuse in the Sheriff's Department.
The Los Angeles jury on Monday found Jason Branum and Bryan Brunsting guilty of three charges apiece, including conspiracy to violate civil rights. They could get up to 40 years in prison.
The Los Angeles Times summarizes the case:
The case revolved around allegations made by Joshua Sather, a former recruit who said he was only days on the job at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility when he was summoned by his training officer, Brunsting, and told that the inmate had left his cell without permission and mouthed off to jail staff.
“We’re going to teach him a lesson,” Sather recalled Brunsting telling him.
Sather, who had graduated from the academy at the top of his class, testified he tackled the inmate and punched him several times but then stopped because he wasn't resisting. Other deputies then set upon the inmate with a barrage of kicks and blows. The inmate, Sather said, lay curled up on the ground throughout the assault, screaming and crying.
When they were done, he said, the deputies gathered privately to concoct a justification for the beating that they gave sheriff’s officials in falsified reports.
Former Sheriff Lee Baca pleaded guilty in February to lying to federal investigators during the broad investigation into the jail system. He's awaiting sentencing.