It took an hour for a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy to convict the aide for using excessive force after attacking and pepper spraying a woman outside a Lancaster supermarket in 2023.
Prosecutors filed a lawsuit in a three-day trial in February, and ultimately persuading the ju judge to have Trevor Kirk committed the charge of felony of disenfranchising him under the colour of the law. Kirk faced up to 10 years in prison.
However, on Monday, US District Judge Stephen V. Wilson sentenced Kirk to four months in prison last week after granting a request to dismiss the government’s felony charges. The firing led Kirk to face a year in prison.
Prior to the sentencing, the government had requested probation, including three months of home detention and 200 hours of community service. The defense team sought a two-month home confinement and a 300-hour community service term.
“In my view, the ju-search verdict was fully supported and the case was not unfairly discussed, as the government argued at some earlier times,” Wilson said after handing his sentence. “The job of a police officer is very difficult… but you have a responsibility to take appropriate action with those factors in mind.”
Kirk refused to speak at the sentencing hearing. Tom Yu, a lawyer representing Kirk, said he plans to appeal Wilson’s previous motion for innocence.
The verdict concludes a controversial case in which the federal government waived its conviction and took the very unusual legal action of offering Kirk a misdemeanor plea bargain after the ju-joiner spoke. The plea deal played a role in the resignation of several federal prosecutors last month, raising concerns about how the office will handle pending cases against law enforcement.
The post-trial judicial agreement landed the same week that it issued an executive order vowing to “unleash” American law enforcement, following other recent controversies that issued warnings about the US Department of Justice’s erosion independence under the Trump administration.
It was our atty who sat in the front row of the courtroom stuffed on Monday. For Los Angeles’ Bill Essayley, he is a solid Trump alliance and a solid conservative, appointed in April and whose felony sentence was lifted.
After the hearing, the essay declined to comment.
Appeal
The federal ju judge indicted Kirk last September, and in connection with the June 2023 incident, deputies responding to a robbery report threw a woman on the ground and sprayed pepper on his face while filming him outside Lancaster Winco.
The woman coincided with the suspect’s explanation that Kirk received from the dispatcher, but when he confronted her, she was not armed or committed a crime, court records show.
According to the allegations filed by ASST, before the case went to trial. Our atty. Robert J. Keenan, the government was willing to take on a petition agreement that would have allowed Kirk to sue misdemeanors. Instead, Kirk took a chance at the ju trial and lost.
In January, Nick Wilson was the founder of Los Angeles Sheriff’s professional assn’s first responder advocacy group, and a spokesman wrote to Trump urging him to step in before he goes to trial. In the letter, he said that leftist activists wanted to create an example for Kirk.
“This case is only one or more representatives and is about the survival of American law and order,” he wrote. “If the radical left can destroy the careers of peace officers simply because they are doing their jobs, then officers are not safe.”
Anyway, the trial went on.
In his opening statement on February 4th, Asst. Our atty. Brian R. Farstein told ju decree that Kirk used excessive force against victim Jay Houston by slamming her into the ground against victim Jay Houston and spraying her “when there was no need to do so.”
“At the end of this trial, the United States will ask the accused to hold him accountable for mistreating his power and authority,” says Faerstein.
Kirk’s lawyer Tom Yu told the ju judge that Kirk had relied on his training to deal with “resistant suspects.”
“There is a world of difference between the use of force and excessive force,” he said.
Two days later, the ju judge returned with conviction.
New US lawyer
The essay was sworn in as a new US lawyer on April 2nd. The following week, prosecutors in the Kirk case filed a motion to delay the hearing of the sentence, as the essay wanted to review the case.
When asked about the review, the US Lawyer’s office said that it was former US Atty. In March 2023, Martin Estrada established an executive position within the office to address ethics and post-conviction issues.
The office said it would receive a request to consider a post-conviction case, but declined to comment on the number of cases reviewed since 2023. Estrada did not respond to an email seeking comment last week about the Kirk incident.
District Attorney Mike Hestlin said the essay requested the Riverside County District Attorney’s office to “conduct an independent and impartial review of the cases and evidence regarding the Kirk issue.”
“I assigned a team of experienced investigators and prosecutors to thoroughly review the evidence and details of the case and assess the charges that we will consider for the prosecutor if the case is filed for a potential application,” Hestrin said in a statement.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment on why the essays were involved with the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office in the Lancaster federal case. Legal experts called this movement are very rare.
“I think it looks like he’s trying to reinforce the evidence to find the results he was looking for. The fact that he went outside the office shows that he didn’t get the support he wanted from the prosecutors in the office,” said Carrie Palmer, a former prosecutor in Los Angeles, now a partner at Halpern Ybarra Gelberg LLP.
Given allegations of partisanship swirling around the case, Palmer questioned why the essays had not asked the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office to lead the review. Atty. Nathan Hochman’s status as political independence.
“If you’re looking for an additional take on this case, it seems reasonable to go to a former federal prosecutor who currently works across the streets that manage the county where the crime occurred,” Palmer said.
A spokesman for the LA County District Attorney’s Office said the essay never contacted Hochman about the Kirk case.
In April, Wilson refused a complaint from Yu due to his acquittal. The judge found footage of the case to be sufficient evidence to find Kirk using “objectively unreasonable forces.”
On April 22, the judge rejected the government’s request to postpone Kirk’s ruling.
Two days later, Riverside County prosecutors and investigators presented their findings and recommendations to consider cases in which they attended a meeting in LA with US lawyers and his staff.
When asked what these findings and recommendations were, the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office referred the questions to the U.S. Lawyer’s Office.
On May 1, the government filed a “post trial” judicial agreement in which Kirk pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor violation of disenfranchising under the colour of the law. Dependence on misdemeanors is important as Kirk loses his right to become a law enforcement officer or possesses a gun after a felony conviction.
Robert J. Keenan, the only assistant US lawyer to sign a judicial contract, was not previously involved in the case. The next day, all the former prosecutors involved with him retreated from the case.
Last week, Wilson rejected a legal agreement. This recommended that Kirk be sentenced to probation. However, the judge granted the prosecutor’s motion to reduce charges against the adjutant’s charges against misdemeanors despite the conviction of the jury.
Judgment
More than 50 people packed the courtroom for a Monday ruling hearing, including former sheriff Alex Villanueva, who defended Kirk’s case online. The supporters accepted Kirk before the proceedings began. Kirk wore a cross-shaped pin with an American flag.
While the hearing was underway, Kirk’s attorney told the judge that both he and the government had recently been notified that Houston’s attorney Carrie Harper had filed a warrant to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals seeking a stay in the case.
Wilson temporarily resigned to determine whether it would affect the hearing, but ultimately decided to proceed.
Keenan told the judge that the government believes the prison sentence is “unnecessary” and “irrational.”
When handing over his sentence, Wilson said, in his views and the ju-degree views, that Kirk’s actions were “merely inexplicable.” He said that Kirk “knowed that he or anyone else had no danger.”
“This was pretty bad,” Wilson said. “Yes, it wasn’t as bad as many cases and most of the cases I’ve seen, but this is a previous case. In my view, it’s not punished… this is how the courts feel that the end of justice is achieved.”
Kirk agreed to surrender himself on August 28th.
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