A federal decide will resolve later this week whether or not to permit an L.A. County sheriff’s deputy to take a plea deal that may spare him from jail time months after he was convicted of pepper-spraying an unarmed lady who filmed him throughout a 2023 arrest.
In a Monday courtroom listening to, Decide Stephen V. Wilson and Assistant U.S. Atty. Rob Keenan sparred for greater than two hours over the federal authorities’s extremely uncommon authorized maneuver to supply L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy Trevor Kirk a misdemeanor plea deal simply two months after he was convicted of a felony within the extreme drive case.
Kirk was convicted in February of 1 depend of deprivation of rights beneath coloration of legislation after he was caught on digital camera speeding on the sufferer, hurling her to the bottom after which pepper-spraying her within the face whereas planting a knee on her neck throughout a 2023 incident outdoors a Lancaster grocery store.
Wilson stated he would rule on the movement to simply accept the plea within the subsequent “three or 4 days.”
Kirk confronted as much as a decade in jail at sentencing.
However that was upended after the Trump administration final month appointed Invoice Essayli, a former California Meeting member, as U.S. lawyer for Los Angeles. On Could 1, prosecutors reached a uncommon post-trial plea settlement with Kirk.
The federal government beneficial a one-year time period of probation for Kirk and moved to strike the jury’s discovering that Kirk had injured the sufferer, which made the crime a felony. Kirk agreed to plead responsible to a lesser-included misdemeanor violation of deprivation of rights beneath coloration of legislation.
The settlement precipitated turmoil within the U.S. lawyer’s workplace, with assistant U.S. attorneys Eli A. Alcaraz, Brian R. Faerstein, Michael J. Morse and Cassie Palmer, chief of the Public Corruption and Civil Rights Part, all withdrawing from the case. Keenan, the one assistant U.S. lawyer who signed off on the plea settlement, was not beforehand concerned within the case.
Alcaraz, Faerstein and Palmer submitted their resignations after the post-trial plea settlement supply, sources beforehand confirmed to The Instances. A submitting submitted within the case final week additionally confirmed that Palmer is departing the federal prosecutor’s workplace.
The incident mirrored turmoil on the U.S. lawyer’s workplace in Manhattan that adopted stress by Trump administration officers to drop a corruption case in opposition to New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams.
Essayli is a staunch Trump ally and hard-line conservative appointed at a time when the president has sought to weaken the independence of the Division of Justice. Essayli made the post-conviction plea supply to Kirk the identical week Trump issued an government order vowing to “unleash” American legislation enforcement.
In courtroom Monday, Wilson grilled Keenan, showing more and more perplexed on the authorities’s logic in providing Kirk a deal. He questioned whether or not prosecutors had a “severe and vital doubt” as to the deputy’s guilt and regularly pushed Keenan to justify the deal.
“If the federal government hasn’t provided any clarification for its change in fact, the courtroom should grant the movement?” Wilson requested.
Keenan stated he believed the courtroom was legally obligated to take action, claiming the deal was “a pure train of prosecutorial discretion.”
In June 2023, Kirk was responding to a reported theft when he threw a lady to the bottom and pepper-sprayed her within the face whereas she filmed him outdoors a Lancaster WinCo. The girl — who’s recognized in federal courtroom filings solely as J.H. however is called as Jacey Houseton in a separate civil go well with — matched a dispatcher’s description of a feminine suspect, however she was not armed or committing a criminal offense on the time Kirk first confronted her, courtroom data present.
“He stored telling me to cease resisting although I couldn’t transfer, and I couldn’t breathe. I believed he was attempting to kill me,” Houseton informed the courtroom Monday. She in contrast Kirk putting a knee on her neck to the maneuver a white Minneapolis police officer utilized in 2020 that killed George Floyd, a Black man being arrested on suspicion of attempting to cross a counterfeit $20 invoice.
However in a 31-page place assertion filed Could 13, Keenan dissected the sufferer’s actions main as much as and through the confrontation with Kirk. Keenan stated Kirk solely used the pepper spray after “continued resistance by J.H.”
“In distinction to different excessive-force circumstances, defendant didn’t use pepper spray after J.H. was cuffed or in any other case secured,” Keenan wrote.
Keenan stated the proof didn’t present that Kirk sprayed Houseton within the face with an intent to trigger bodily harm. He additionally described her accidents as “restricted in period and severity” and stated they didn’t represent “severe bodily harm.”
Within the submitting, Keenan appeared to query the federal government’s proof regarding a reported “blunt head harm,” calling it “imprecise and ill-defined even at trial.”
In courtroom Monday, Keenan described Kirk’s use of drive as extreme, however simply “barely so,” at one level attacking the credibility of the sufferer within the case, suggesting she exaggerated her accidents in a sufferer impression assertion she made earlier than the courtroom.
Wilson didn’t settle for that evaluation.
“The jury was utterly justified find he used extreme drive in taking her to the bottom and pepper-spraying her,” the decide stated. “Had he ordered her to be handcuffed … that may be a distinct case.”
Keenan additionally argued his colleagues had been unfair to Kirk at trial, claiming they relied too closely on the L.A. County Sheriff’s Division’s use-of-force guide as proof and reached an inaccurate conclusion that Kirk attacked Houseton as a result of she was filming him. Though the video reveals Kirk reaching for Houseton’s telephone, Keenan insisted the deputy had each proper to detain Houseton as a theft suspect and was merely grabbing for the arm closest to him.
“I suppose I’m writing their appellate temporary for them,” Keenan stated, nodding to Kirk’s protection workforce.
Wilson had beforehand denied a movement from Kirk’s protection lawyer, Tom Yu, looking for an acquittal. The decide discovered that footage of the incident was ample proof for a jury to search out Kirk had used “objectively unreasonable drive.”
“J.H. didn’t have a weapon, didn’t assault Defendant, was not trying to flee, and was not actively committing a criminal offense,” Wilson wrote in his ruling final month.
The decide additionally famous that, whereas Kirk acted aggressively towards Houseton from the outset, his companion managed to steer the arrest of the opposite theft suspect with out utilizing drive.
Keenan painted the concessions Kirk made within the post-trial settlement as “vital.” He stated Kirk was agreeing to confess that he “used pointless drive” whereas trying to detain Houseton and that he did so “willfully.”
In early 2024, shortly after the WinCo incident, Kirk was arrested by his personal division on suspicion of home violence in opposition to his spouse. His lawyer dismissed it as a nonissue, noting that the sufferer didn’t need Kirk to be prosecuted, contending the alleged abuse was reported by a 3rd get together. A spokesman for the Los Angeles County district lawyer’s workplace stated the case was rejected as a consequence of inadequate proof.
Houseton’s lawyer, Caree Harper, additionally stated in a courtroom submitting final week that in that incident Kirk “threatened to bury [his wife] within the desert,” data present.
A Sheriff’s Division spokeswoman didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Help for Kirk started gaining steam on social media after his indictment final September. In January, Nick Wilson, founding father of a primary responder advocacy group and spokesperson for the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Skilled Assn., wrote a letter to Trump urging him to intervene earlier than the case went to trial.
Former Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who has turn into more and more well-liked in right-wing circles on-line, has additionally championed Kirk’s case, posting an Instagram video of himself and Wilson consoling the deputy on the courthouse after trial. Each Villanueva and Wilson have insisted Kirk did nothing mistaken.
Villanueva, Wilson and Essayli had been all current in courtroom Monday. At one level Harper approached Essayli instantly and requested in regards to the legality of the plea deal he was providing.
Essayli, seated in a plastic chair as a result of the entire benches within the courtroom had been stuffed, threatened to have Harper faraway from the courtroom after a quick back-and-forth. Harper famous that solely judges and federal marshals have the precise to take away somebody from a courtroom. A U.S. lawyer’s workplace spokesperson declined to remark.
Some deputies have additionally blamed present Sheriff Robert Luna for pushing federal prosecutors to go after Kirk, an accusation Luna has denied. Some deputy teams have staged types of protest in opposition to Luna in consequence.
However in a sentencing advice obtained by The Instances, Luna requested Wilson to condemn Kirk to probation, blaming his actions that day on poor coaching.
He stated that prior division leaders had in impact ignored a monitoring settlement with the U.S. Division of Justice that was meant to mandate reform insurance policies on use-of-force points on the Lancaster and Palmdale stations. Luna’s letter didn’t deal with whether or not Wilson ought to act on Essayli’s request to vacate the jury verdict.
“I’m not suggesting that the failures of the Division ought to immunize Deputy Kirk or some other deputy taking accountability for his or her actions,” Luna wrote. “No deputy who’s discovered by a jury to have used extreme drive or who has agreed to a plea deal ought to have such immunity.”
