Article Author:
Associated Press
SAN DIEGO (AP) — A federal judge has closed an $85 million lawsuit in the 2015 death of a Southern California man who was beaten, truck-tied, and shocked with a stun gun by a sheriff's deputy. made a ruling.
U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hough said Wednesday that the March ruling by a federal jury in a civil rights case filed against San Diego County by Lucky Poonsy's family is evidence of the trial. It said it was not backed by the San Diego Union, the Tribune reported.
"The jury's manslaughter award was disproportionate to the evidence, and the jury could not accept in its award a measure of the plaintiff's emotional distress, or an amount intended to punish the defendant." ,” the judge wrote in his judgment on page 75.
At the time, this was the nation's largest civil rights award for custody death.
In Wednesday's ruling, Huff declined to order a new trial, upholding a finding of excessive force and negligence. is required. The
county declined to comment on the decision, he said, Union-Tribune.
Phounsy, 32, died after a clash with nearly a dozen San Diego County sheriff's deputies. Among them was a sheriff who later served time for assaulting a woman while on duty.
His family said he was suffering from a mental health crisis.
Phounsy said he was held at a relative's home in Santee on April 13, 2015, shocked and detained with a stun gun. Phounsy's heart stopped en route to his hospital. He was resuscitated but died a few days later.
County Coroners concluded that his death was an accident, the result of a long struggle with lawmakers, combined with the effects of the ecstasy he had taken days earlier. Did.
But the family's lawyers disputed that conclusion, claiming that the agent's actions had suffocated him.
They failed to monitor his vitals for his signature when one deputy forcibly held his head while riding in an ambulance, causing him to die. Agents who continued to restrain him noted that Phounsy's hands and ankles were being restrained.
This case has seen him tried twice in federal court. In September 2021, the jury stalled and was unable to reach a verdict. In his second trial in March, after just one day of deliberation, a jury found the county responsible and awarded Phounsy's family his $85 million.
