Prosecutor: Ex-Cop Blinded Woman Because She Wouldn't 'Submit to His Will'

A former Beaumont cop blasted a woman in the face with a pepper spray pistol, permanently blinding her, because  he was "losing patience" with her refusal to obey his commands, a prosecutor said Thursday, while the defense countered that the lawman fired the weapon in the midst of "chaos" created by the woman and her family.

"Monique Hernandez is no angel. She was drunk, misbehaving that night and had a right to be arrested," Riverside County Deputy District Attorney Mike Carney said in his opening statement. "But where in that video do you see that the use of force that the officer applied was justified?"

Carney played the dash-cam videotape taken from Officer Enoch "Jeremy" Clark's patrol vehicle on the night of Feb. 21, 2012. The tape shows the officer struggling to restrain Hernandez, 32, who is obviously inebriated.

"Stop resisting. Stop resisting. Get your hands behind your back," Clark says repeatedly while attempting to handcuff the woman by himself. A fellow patrolman is nearby, facing a half-dozen members of Hernandez's family, who are shouting at the officers not to "rough up" Hernandez.

The drunken woman tells Clark that she is "not resisting" and asks to know why she's being arrested as he pushes her onto the hood of his patrol unit. The poorly illuminated, black-and-white video clip runs two to three minutes, at the end of which Clark reaches toward his duty belt and unholsters a device, firing it inches away from Hernandez's face.

"Officer Clark was not having to fight her off," Carney told jurors. "He was losing patience with her. He was getting annoyed with this woman because she would not submit to his will."

Carney scoffed at the statements Clark later made to sheriff's detectives, who handled the investigation.

"He tells them she was trying to get away from him, that he was afraid for his life, afraid that she might gouge his eyes out," Carney said. But the tape presented a stark contrast to what the defendant later claimed, according to the prosecutor.

Carney said the officer's decision to fire the JPX pepper spray gun into Hernandez's eyes, approximately 10 inches away from her, went against everything the lawman had been trained to do.

The individual who instructed Clark and other Beaumont policemen on how to properly use the weapon, Riverside police Officer Matthew Shepherd, testified that the minimum safe distance to fire the JPX -- which resembles a Star Trek Phaser and ejects propellant at 400 mph -- is three feet.

Defense attorney Steve Sanchez told jurors that his client's use of force was "proper and correct."

Sanchez played the tape from the patrol unit, but also from the pocket tape recorders that both Clark and his partner had on them while taking Hernandez into custody. The audio mix presented a picture of "confusion, chaos and tension" that the two officers experienced while attempting to make a "simple DUI arrest," the attorney said.

Sanchez dismissed Clark's training on the JPX pistol as "terrible, deplorable," noting that the non-lethal weapon is manufactured in Switzerland, and the instruction manual and video are fraught with misspellings and obscure directions.

"There are abstract, idiotic warnings on the device that, unless you have a Ph.D., you're not going to know what they mean," Sanchez said.

The attorney described Clark's training as spanning a half-hour to an hour -- a point unsupported by Shepherd, who testified that he spent "four to five hours" instructing Clark and his fellow officers how to use the device.

"Officer Clark gave 17 commands for the suspect to stop resisting," Sanchez said. "At what point does he have to put his safety at risk? He's dealing with a suspect who outweighs him by 50 pounds. His partner is dealing with hostile family members. He's having a difficult time."

Sanchez argued that his client's conduct did not "rise to the level of criminal liability."

Clark, 38, could face more than 20 years in prison if convicted of assault resulting in great bodily injury, as well as assault by a peace officer, unnecessary force causing injury and other charges. He's free on $50,000 bail.

According to the prosecution, Clark went to arrest Hernandez after she had gotten into a scuffle with her sister's boyfriend at another location and drove back to her family's residence.

The pepper spray propellant split a cornea in one of her eyes and severely damaged her optical nerve, leaving her blind, according to Los Angeles attorney Milton Grimes, who is representing Hernandez in a lawsuit against Clark and Beaumont.

— By Paul J. Young, City News Service.