This much is clear: Jose Bernal had barely a scratch when he arrived in handcuffs at the Maywood police station escorted by two officers on a May evening in 2004.
But within 10 minutes, the 30-year-old was receiving treatment from paramedics and slipping in and out of consciousness. His nose was broken. His face was partially paralyzed. And blood trickled down his cheeks and chin.
In a rare criminal case accusing an on-duty cop of assault, prosecutors told jurors Monday that Michael Joseph Singleton, then a Maywood police officer, beat Bernal in retaliation for a stream of insults and then lied about the attack in a police report.
The trial marks a test case for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office, which has struggled in trials involving police brutality allegations. Earlier this year, a jury deadlocked on the charges against Singleton, with nine jurors in favor of an acquittal.
Key to the case is the testimony of a former Maywood trainee officer who said he watched Singleton punch the prisoner several times and smash his head into a wall. Prosecutors contend that footage from a surveillance camera that caught a small portion of the incident contradicts the version of events Singleton gave his supervisors.
"He basically put Mr. Bernal's head into a wall because he disrespected him," Deputy Dist. Atty. Margo Baxter told jurors during opening arguments.
But Singleton, 43, denies using excessive force and insists Bernal kicked him and tried to head-butt and bite him as he walked the prisoner to jail. As the two men tussled, Singleton's defense attorney said, the officer grabbed the prisoner around the neck and both men lost their balance and fell into the wall, Bernal head-first.
"There was no gratuitous ramming of Mr. Bernal's head into the wall in an effort to injure him," attorney Michael P. Stone told jurors. "This was not a crime."
Winning police brutality trials has long proved a challenge for the L.A. County district attorney's office.
In 1992, a Simi Valley jury acquitted four Los Angeles police officers charged in the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King, touching off days of rioting. A decade later, two separate juries deadlocked on assault charges against a former Inglewood police officer who was videotaped punching a 16-year-old boy and slamming him onto the hood of a patrol car.
