San Francisco prosecutors say they had to dismiss charges because sheriff’s department destroyed evidence in investigation

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The San Francisco district attorney’s office on Friday dropped all charges against three San Francisco sheriff’s deputies accused of forcing inmates to fight for their entertainment.

The San Francisco district attorney, George Gascón, filed charges against deputies Scott Neu, Eugene Jones, and Clifford Chiba in March 2016, a year after the city’s public defender brought forth allegations of an inmate “fight club”.

But prosecutors claim they were forced to dismiss the charges this week because the same sheriff’s department that employed the accused mishandled the investigation and destroyed evidence, including by smashing a lead investigator’s laptop with a hammer because it had gotten a virus.

The dismissal of charges against the deputies once again raised questions over the effectiveness of investigations when law enforcement agencies investigate their own.

“This case illustrates why agencies shouldn’t be tasked with investigating themselves,” said Alex Bastian, a spokesman for the district attorney.

Adante Pointer, a civil rights attorney whose office represented some of the inmates involved, said: “This is an all-too familiar story where law enforcement is not held accountable, and it begs the question whether or not the people who are supposed to hold them accountable have the integrity to do so.

San Francisco deputies charged with forcing inmates into 'fight club' Read more

“Once again, it is shown that there are two different criminal justice systems in this country,” Pointer added.

Three former inmates at a San Francisco county jail alleged that Neu, Jones, and Chiba arranged “gladiator-style” battles in the jail in 2015, threatening physical abuse, sexual abuse, transfers to more dangerous jails, and the loss of lucrative jail job assignments if the inmates refused to fight.

The deputies organized the fights in areas in the jail where there were no cameras, and they told the inmates to lie if they needed medical attention, the inmates alleged.

The three inmates, Ricardo Palikiko-Garcia, Stanley Harris and Keith Richardson, sued the sheriff’s department and the city in federal civil court in 2016and settled their lawsuit with the city later that year for $90,000.

Meanwhile, the criminal case proceeded. Last month, Neu alleged in a court filing that investigators had violated his constitutional rights by using a “compelled statement” to build their case against him. Law enforcement officers are required to give such a statement to administrative investigators during internal affairs investigations, but the statement cannot legally be used in criminal investigations because that would violate a defendant’s fifth amendment right against self-incrimination.

Internal affairs inquiries and criminal investigations are typically kept separate for this reason, and compelled statements are kept from the prosecution. But lead investigators in both inquiries testified that they conducted witness interviews and developed questions together, assistant chief district attorney Evan Ackiron wrote in the motion to dismiss the charges.

The legal counsel for the sheriff’s department also sent a 2017 email to a prosecutor containing “all of the compelled statements of the defendants”, the motion notes.

Separately, Neu’s attorneys discovered that the lead administrative investigator in the case had a practice of “double deleting” emails, according to the motion. When Neu’s attorneys sought to search his laptop, they were informed that “the laptop had been destroyed sometime in October 2016 because it had gotten a virus”.

Nancy Crowley, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco sheriff, Vicki Hennessy, said the California attorney general’s office instructed the sheriff’s department to smash hard drives containing sensitive information with a hammer when disposing of them.

Since taking office in 2016, Hennessy has worked to “update and reaffirm the department’s criminal and administrative procedures and institute training to ensure the integrity of all investigations and ensure accountability”, Crowley said.

The district attorney’s office plans to forward the case to its own independent investigations bureau, prosecutors said on Friday. But an attorney for Neu does not believe prosecutors will be able to successfully refile charges.

“I’m very familiar with the evidence in this case and I think it’s impossible for them to divorce themselves from the constitutional violations,” Harry Stern told the Guardian.

Stern admitted shortly after the allegations emerged in 2015 that the fights had taken place, but he has maintained over the years they were mischaracterized. “It was really just people being allowed to blow off some steam, engage in horseplay,” Stern said. “It wasn’t a fight club, it wasn’t gladiator games, it wasn’t anything like that.”

Neu has faced other allegations of misconduct in the past.

He was accused a decade prior to sexually assaulting three inmates. They alleged that Neu groped them, and forced them to kiss him, show him their genitals and perform oral sex on him. They say he threatened to beat them or send them to a jail with harsher conditions if they reported him. All three cases were settled out of court in 2009 for $97,500.