Jury Acquits SWAT Officers in Slaying, but Criticizes Judge

A federal court jury Wednesday acquitted two Los Angeles Police Department SWAT team officers of wrongfully killing a Los Angeles man, but jurors said afterward that they believed the officers’ superiors should have been held responsible and that they would have returned a verdict against them.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge A. Andrew Hauk dismissed eight of the original 10 defendants from the civil suit, including the two leaders of the SWAT squad. Hauk’s action meant that he believes that there was no basis for a jury to rule against them.

The SWAT team went to the Mar Vista home of Ruben Medrano in March, 1988, at the request of paramedics after Medrano had locked himself in a bathroom and threatened to kill himself.

During the 17-day trial, SWAT team members testified that they tried for an hour to get Medrano to voluntarily come out of the bathroom. They said that when they heard Medrano snoring, they broke down the door in an attempt to surprise him.

But Medrano, according to the officers, awoke and after a struggle, fired a .357 magnum handgun at Officers David Mowrey and Rodolfo Romero Jr. Romero fired back, hitting Medrano in the chest.

Medrano’s parents, Amparo and Guadalupe Medrano, subsequently filed suit in federal court seeking monetary damages, claiming that their son had been killed without reason.

The police said the shooting was justified to save the lives of officers doing their duty.

On Wednesday, the six jurors said the decision of the SWAT team to break down the bathroom door at a time when it was apparent that Medrano was asleep was unwise and hasty. They said that further negotiations should have been conducted.

“We all felt that what was done was wrong,” juror Patricia Lopez said. “But the judge pulled out the people who were directly responsible. That made (the deliberations) very difficult.

“If the ones who gave the order to break down the door” had still been on trial, Lopez said, “we would have given a verdict for the plaintiffs.”

The jurors criticized Hauk’s decision to remove SWAT team leaders Frank Hancock and Don Anderson from the lawsuit.

“The judge painted us into a corner,” juror Linda Duarte said.

She said she believed it would have been unfair to hold only Romero and Mowrey responsible because they were “following orders.”

Members of the four-man, two-woman panel told lawyers for Medrano’s family that they should appeal, and the lawyers, Donald Cook and Robert Mann, said they will.

Mann maintained that there were “numerous grounds for appeal.” He said Hauk’s decision was wrong. Mann also said the lawyers, in their appeal, would probably cite Hauk’s treatment of them during the trial.

On Nov. 2, Hauk had Cook arrested by U.S. marshals after he had failed to pay a $50 fine the judge levied after a verbal altercation in the courtroom. Cook was quickly bailed out after another lawyer who had a case on the same floor of the courthouse learned of his plight and provided the funds.

The jurors were also critical of Hauk’s conduct of the case.

“There was the general impression (among jurors) that he had pre-decided the case,” juror Thomas Lott said.

Hauk’s secretary said the judge does not comment to the news media on his cases.

Hauk, 76, has been a federal judge since 1966 and is considered one of the most outspoken judges in Los Angeles. He has been involved in several controversies during his lengthy term on the bench.

In 1980, he received considerable criticism after he deplored the immigration of “faggots from Cuba” during a trial. That same year, he denigrated a sex discrimination suit by saying women “have a monthly problem, which upsets them emotionally, and we all know that. . . . “

Last May, Hauk declined to use federal sentencing guidelines when he gave a woman a lenient term for robbing five banks, insisting that the woman was under her boyfriend’s influence.