Couple to get $1M in Sleepy Hollow cop beating

Mario Gomez, a retired corrections officer, and Jose Quinoy, a cop, were once friendly neighbors.

But after a violent confrontation seven years ago and years of legal wrangling since, the only thing they agree on now is that they're glad to be moving on with their lives.

A federal jury has awarded $1.05 million to Gomez and his ex-wife, who accused Quinoy of roughing them up at Sleepy Hollow police headquarters where Quinoy was a detective in 2008.

Gomez will also get an undisclosed amount in punitive damages from Quinoy, who was acquitted three years ago on federal criminal charges and now works as a Mount Vernon police officer.

"I went through complete hell for years and wish it never had happened," Gomez, 57, said Friday at his lawyer's office. "We can close the book and move on with our lives and for that I will always be grateful for the jury's decision."

The lawyer, Francis Young, and his co-counsel, Barry Strutt, said the punitive damages meant the jury was sending a message to Quinoy and other cops that what he did was wrong and shouldn't happen again. They said the couple was vindicated, particularly Mario, who was not called as a witness in the criminal case.

"Mario finally got to tell his story to a jury," said Young. "Jurors believed him. They did not believe Quinoy's testimony."

But Quinoy disagreed, saying that the jury was likely swayed by the current environment surrounding law enforcement and the televised images from Ferguson, Baltimore and elsewhere over the past year.

"They saw the (pictures of the) black eyes (Gomez had) and felt it was excessive," Quinoy, 42, said in a phone interview. "It didn't end the way I'd hoped but you can't get in the heads of jurors."

The May 22, 2008, incident started when Quinoy called Gomez, who suspected the married detective was having a relationship with Gomez' 22-year-old daughter. Quinoy wanted to deny that and claimed Gomez threatened to come to headquarters and beat him up. Gomez insisted that the detective taunted him that he did not have the courage to confront him about the matter in person.

Once Gomez showed up, the confrontation grew violent. Both men claimed the other struck first. At one point Gomez punched Quinoy in the face, but he claimed that, once he was handcuffed, the detective threw him against a car and hit and kicked him in the head.

The couple were arrested but charges against them were eventually dismissed.

The original lawsuits by the Gomezes also named the village and other officers but those claims were dismissed, leaving Quinoy as the only defendant.

After a two week trial in U.S. District Court in White Plains, the jury last week cleared Quinoy of a false arrest claim but found him liable for assault, battery and excessive force against Mario Gomez and awarded $600,000. Awilda Gomez was awarded $450,000 after the jury found Quinoy had assaulted her when she came to her husband's defense.

The village's insurance company will pay the $1.05 million. Rather than have the jury decide on punitive damages that Quinoy himself must pay — which could have been as high as $2 million — the two sides reached a settlement, agreeing to an undisclosed amount from Quinoy and that the defense would not appeal the verdict.

Quinoy was indicted on charges that he violated Gomez' civil rights and those of another man in an unrelated incident and that he tampered with a witness, Officer Michael Hayes. Hayes had worked with an FBI agent, Catherine Pena, and secretly recorded fellow officers in the wake of the Gomez case.

Before Quinoy's criminal trial in 2010, it was learned that Pena had destroyed evidence by erasing one of Hayes' tapes, covering it up by altering transcripts of other recordings and lying about her actions.

She invoked her 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination when subpoenaed as a defense witness. The judge told the jury what she had done, and that they could infer that what was on the erased tape would have been favorable to Quinoy. The jury acquitted the detective on two charges and could not reach a verdict related to the Gomez assault. Federal prosecutors opted not to retry Quinoy on that charge.

Quinoy left Sleepy Hollow in 2011 and joined the Mount Vernon Police Department a month later. In January, he became the PBA president there.

"They know who I am, what I do," said of his current colleagues, adding that he's glad to have gotten a chance to move on with his career.

Quinoy has a pending $17 million federal lawsuit against Pena and the federal government.

He said he regrets making the phone call that night years ago.

"I did it as a favor to the daughter ... Mario was a loose cannon," Quinoy said Friday. "No good deed goes unpunished I guess."

But Gomez and his lawyers contend there was a vindictive streak. Quinoy tried to forfeit the couple's car later that night, Young said, and a glitch in how Gomez' fingerprints were entered into the statewide system doomed him to a longer stay in the county jail than was necessary.

"It's disturbing that he was accepted with open arms by Mount Vernon," Young said.

Twitter: @jonbandler