Man arrested by mistake may sue city

(This article is reprinted from the February 15, 2001 issue of the San Gabriel Valley News. Thanks to Dale Falicon, LASD.)

CITY NEWS SERVICE

LOS ANGELES � A mentally ill man mistakenly identified as an escaped convict from New York, arrested by Los Angeles police and jailed for two years has a right to sue the city, a federal appeals panel ruled today.

Kerry Sanders, a Los Angeles man who suffers from hallucinations and chronic schizophrenia, was arrested in October 1993 by Los Angeles Police.

 They identified him as Robert Sanders, a convicted embezzler who escaped from a state prison facility in New York.

Sanders was extradited to New York and imprisoned at the Greenhaven Correctional Center for two years, where he allegedly was sexually molested by other inmates, court papers show. Prison officials did not realize their mistake until the real Robert Sanders was arrested.

U.S. District Judge Lourdes G. Baird dismissed a lawsuit filed by Sander's mother against New York state prison officials, the city of Los Angeles, the county, four LAPD officers and the Los Angeles County public defender who represented Sanders in extradition proceedings.

The lawsuit alleges that law enforcement officials "recklessly and with deliberate indifference" identified Sanders as the escaped convict, even though he was obviously mentally disabled, and his fingerprints and physical characteristics did not match those of the fugitive.

Baird dismissed the complaint after considering evidence that Sanders told arresting officers he was Robert Sanders, because "he thought they were arresting him for shooting a hole through his cousin's house in Arizona and he was trying `to avoid getting in trouble for the shooting incident.,'" according to court documents.

The 9^th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled that Baird should not have considered Sanders' alleged statements to police because they were "subject to reasonable dispute," according to the ruling.

This article was printed in �THE PRINT�
Volume 17 (3) May / June 2001, pg 3
and has been obtained from the online library provided by the
Southern California Association of Fingerprint Officers
www.scafo.org