source: OCR News
published: 5 June 2015

Jurors on Friday convicted a female Los Angeles police officer of felony assault for repeatedly kicking a handcuffed woman who later died.

The jury of 11 women and one man reached its verdict after about two days of deliberations in the trial of Officer Mary O’Callaghan, 50. She pleaded not guilty to assaulting a civilian in the 2012 arrest of Alesia Thomas, 35.

Dressed in a black pantsuit, O’Callaghan wiped her face, appearing to cry after the verdict was read.

Robert Rico, O’Callaghan’s attorney, said he plans to appeal and ask for a new trial. “I firmly believe the evidence presented by the prosecution did not show her force was unreasonable or unnecessary,” he said, adding that he felt the jury’s verdict was “based on emotion” rather than the necessary legal standard for conviction.

Officers went to arrest Thomas at her home after she left her two children outside a police station.

A dashboard camera in a police cruiser captured O’Callaghan kicking the handcuffed Thomas in the back seat seven times in the groin, abdomen and upper thigh, prosecutors said. Thomas lost consciousness and was pronounced dead at a hospital.

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