Following a mistrial last month after a federal jury was unable to agree on a verdict, a second jury on Friday convicted a San Diego County sheriff’s deputy of violating a detainee’s civil rights by forcefully shoving the heavily restrained man headfirst into a wall, resulting in a head wound an d serious spinal injury to the victim. The jury deliberated just two hours Friday afternoon before finding Jeremiah Manuyag Flores, 45, guilty on charges of deprivation of rights under the color of law and falsifying a record in a federal investigation. After Flores’ first trial last month, the jury deliberated for parts of three days before announcing they were deadlocked. U.S. District Judge Linda Lopez subsequently declared a mistrial. Prosecutors retried Flores beginning Monday in San Diego federal court. “Today’s verdict makes one thing unmistakably clear: the badge does not excuse brutality,” San Diego-area U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon said in a statement. “When an officer abuses power and inflicts harm on someone in their custody, it is a crime — and this office will hold them accountable.” Attorneys representing Flores, a La Jolla resident, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment Friday afternoon. The Sheriff’s Office also did not immediately respond Friday to questions about the case. When Flores was indicted in January, Sheriff Kelly Martinez described his actions as “unacceptable” and said that when those actions had been uncovered, he’d been placed on administrative leave while an investigation was launched. “The investigation led us to believe criminal actions occurred, and we presented the case to state and federal authorities,” Martinez said in the January statement. According to prosecutors, the crime occurred Aug. 29, 2024, in the bowels of the downtown San Diego Central Courthouse, where Flores had been working for about 18 months. He was assigned to escort restrained inmates from a basement detention area to holding cells on different floors of the building. Prosecutors said that after one hearing, Flores became increasingly agitated with a slow-moving inmate. In part because of the man’s mental health issues, he was heavily restrained with his ankles chained together, his wrists folded across his front and chained to his waist, and a chain connecting the wrist restraints and ankle restraints. Prosecutors alleged that while mocking and bickering with the 57-year-old detainee, Flores forcefully shoved him into a holding cell, where the man stumbled forward, slammed headfirst into a wall, and then fell and struck his head against a bench. Prosecutors said he ultimately ended up slumped on the floor, where he remained for two hours without moving. He was later taken to a hospital, where doctors determined he had a spinal fracture that eventually required surgery and months of hospitalization. “He was defenseless,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Seth Askins told the jury Friday morning during closing arguments, saying the victim was at increased risk of injury because he “couldn’t use his hands to stop himself.” Askins showed the jury several different video angles of the incident. In a video from Flores’ body-worn camera, he can be heard immediately addressing two nearby colleagues, saying, “What? Nothing happened.” In other footage, Flores can be seen walking away with an apparent grin on his face. “He walked away smiling proudly,” Askins told the jury. “He was grinning from ear to ear, the self-satisfaction all over his face.” But Askins told the jurors that while Flores was “proud of himself for what he’d done, he also tried to hide it” by filing a false report about the incident. In the report, Flores wrote that he had “nudged (the detainee) lightly” into the cell and that “no force was used.” Defense attorney Miguel Peñalosa told the jury during the first trial that Flores used what he believed at the time was a reasonable amount of force. The defense attorney told the jurors they must decide the case on what Flores perceived in the moment without the benefit of hindsight, and that the main question of law was not whether Flores shoved the inmate too aggressively, but whether he had “specific intent” to violate his constitutional rights. ...read more read less