State rests case in Providence Police Videotaped 'Coma Beating' of Latino Man

From [HERE] PROVIDENCE, R.I. —A Providence police officer who was present on the night video caught a detective beating a handcuffed man unconscious testified Thursday that he had the man's blood on his pants, but didn't write up the man's injuries in his police report because the officer didn't know how he got them.

Providence police Detective Robert DeCarlo, a 16-year veteran, is on trial and faces assault charges stemming from the beating. Officer Frank Newton told jurors in Providence Superior Court that he was at the parking lot behind 306 Benefit St. on October 2009, the night surveillance video captured the beating of 22-year-old Luis Mendonca.

Mendonca was knocked unconscious and suffered a severe gash in his head that was closed with eight staples. Mendonca's attorney claimed his client was in a coma for two days following the incident. 

The video showed an officer, identified as Det. Robert DeCarlo, kicking Mendonca and striking him with a flashlight. The grainy, black-and-white video shows a group of police officers struggling with Mendonca in a parking lot off Benefit Street on the city’s East Side while he is lying on the ground near a parked car.

It shows the officers dragging Mendonca from under the car and into the center of the parking lot, after he has apparently been restrained. The video then shows another police officer entering the fray, kicking Mendonca and following up with a number of blows to the victim’s head with what his lawyer says is a flashlight.

The video, which has no sound, ends with a visibly limp Mendonca being dragged by police officers up a flight of stairs leading to Benefit Street.  A state prosecutor Wednesday rested her case against DeCarlo without having called Mendonca as a witness. 

If Mendonca was called, he would have to invoke his Fifth Amendment constitutional right against self-incrimination, according to his criminal defense lawyer, Alberto Aponte Cardona. Mendonca is appealing in Superior Court his conviction in District Court for simple assault on two Rhode Island School of Design security officers during the incident that brought DeCarlo and Mendonca together that night.

He was convicted of pushing RISD Sgt. William C. LaPierre and swatting away his extended arm and elbowing in the ribs RISD officer Justin M. Wall when they sought to question him on South Water Street about a trespassing incident that night and a previous theft at a RISD library and dormitory in the Financial District.

Although Mendonca has not been present in the courtroom of the downtown Licht Judicial Complex, he has been on trial, too. DeCarlo’s lawyers, for example, briefed the trial jury on his minor criminal record.

And it was Mendonca’s run from the incident at the RISD building downtown that prompted a police pursuit and his arrest, according to trial evidence. How active or passive he was in resisting detention has been a preoccupation in the case.

DeCarlo’s lawyers contend that their client thought Mendonca was a suspect in a violent crime and that he was fighting with the police, and that DeCarlo struck Mendonca in a lawful effort to subdue him.

Mendonca was convicted of shoplifting at a JCPenney store in early 2009 and, three months later, at a Macy’s. The first case was filed in court, meaning that the case would have been dismissed if he had stayed out of trouble. But after the second shoplifting conviction, a judge gave him probation in the second case and converted the original filing to more probation.

On Oct. 20, 2009, there was an outstanding arrest warrant that named Mendonca for failure to pay court costs related to those cases. Knowledge of that warrant caused him to run from RISD security and the police, according to Michael J. Colucci, DeCarlo’s lawyer.

Mendonca, last year, survived an attempt by the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to have him deported because one or both of the shoplifting convictions meant that he allegedly had violated the terms of his legal residency in the United States.

The attorney general’s office asked that he be allowed to stay in the country because he was a witness in the prosecution of DeCarlo.

Given that consideration, Mendonca’s long-standing residency and family ties in the United States and other factors, an immigration judge ruled there was insufficient cause for deportation.

Mendonca has filed a claim for financial damages with the City of Providence regarding the DeCarlo incident. The claim is unresolved.