The county has agreed to pay $1 million to settle a lawsuit with a Vista man with Down syndrome who said he was beaten and pepper-sprayed by a sheriff’s deputy in 2012, the man’s lawyer said Friday.

As part of the settlement terms, Sheriff Bill Gore has agreed to meet with the man, who was 21 at the time but has the mental capacity of a 7-year-old, according to his attorneys.

The payment was agreed to by the county Board of Supervisors, according to a June 23 email from county counsel to attorneys Jude Basile and Ed Switzer.

Attempts to reach county representatives Friday, a government holiday, were unsuccessful.


The lawsuit, filed in May 2014, alleged that Deputy Jeffrey Guy beat Antonio “Tony” Martinez with a metal baton, sprayed him with pepper spray, then handcuffed him and held him at the Vista Sheriff’s Station for five hours without letting his father see him.

“This case exposed little or no training, policies and procedures for the Department to deal with mentally disabled people, hopefully some good will come of this with how the officers recognize and treat Disabled People,” Basile said in a statement.

The encounter started on Dec. 18, 2012, when Guy was on Postal Way in Vista to investigate a report of a domestic violence. A man walked past Guy, looked at him, flipped his sweatshirt hood up and kept walking, according to court documents.

Guy thought the action suspicious and told him to stop. Guy confronted him, believing the man’s failure to halt gave the deputy probable cause to make him stop, court filings said.


The documents said the deputy used his baton and pepper spray on the man, drawing a crowd that included other deputies and the man’s sister, who yelled that her brother has Down syndrome. In a deposition, Guy testified that after he got Martinez into his patrol car, cuffed, he realized the 4-foot 11-inch man had a developmental disability and “felt sick to my stomach.”

Martinez was cited for obstruction of justice, but the charge was dropped the next day.

Martinez had been walking to his family’s bakery, where he worked.

Basile said in a statement that Martinez and his family asked the Sheriff’s Department to admit it was wrong, and apologize and that Guy would volunteer for 100 hours with Special Olympics or the Down Syndrome Society. Basile said that had those requests been met, “financial considerations would be easily agreed upon.”


The department responded that Guy would no do such volunteer work and that it had no policies in place on dealing with the mentally disabled.

The subsequent lawsuit for battery, false arrest and civil rights violations alleged the deputy had no reasonable suspicion that Martinez had committed a crime. Guy said in his later deposition that in hindsight he had no facts to connect Martinez to a crime, court documents said.

Guy had been a deputy for about four months at the time of the incident, after serving as a San Jose police officer for about eight years.

Gore is to meet with Martinez and his attorneys within 45 days of the settlement, Basile said Friday.


He did not say how much of the settlement goes to his client and how much to legal fees.