Former Red Bank Police Department patrolman Mark Kaylor will have to wait at least one more day to learn whether members of a Criminal Court jury believe he used improper and/or excessive force in 2014 while trying to subdue a suspect and take him into custody.
Late Thursday afternoon, Judge Tom Greenholtz reported that the six woman-six man jury had not reached a verdict in the case, dismissed its members for the night and told them to return to court early Friday morning to resume deliberations.
The case went to the jury around 10:30 a.m. Thursday, immediately after prosecution and defense attorneys presented impassioned arguments supporting their respective positions on whether Kaylor’s decision to punch suspect Candido Medina-Resendiz seven times in the face with his closed fist violated established law enforcement protocol on when and how to use force.
Almost all the actions that Kaylor and his fellow officers used to try to subdue and arrest Medina-Resendiz during an early morning traffic/DUI stop were proper, prosecutor Kevin Brown told the jury.
But there was no justification for Kaylor’s ultimate action – punching the struggling man repeatedly in the face with his closed fist – the prosecutor continued, contending that both of the suspect’s hands were already behind his back before the repeated blows were struck.
“And that matters,” the prosecutor said.
It’s true that Medina-Resendiz is a Mexican who is in the country illegally and has been arrested more that once for trying to sneak back into the United States after being deported back to his native country by immigration officials. But that does not give police or anyone else the right to use improper, unlawful methods to subdue and take him into custody, he said.
Defense attorney Lee Davis, however, told jurors that Medina-Resendiz’s illegal immigrant status did not influence Kaylor’s actions in 2014; “he didn’t even know about it.”
On the other hand, he said, it may have played a role in the suspect’s determined, protracted struggle to avoid being taken into custody.
Medina-Resendiz had enough experience with law enforcement to know that the arrest probably would lead immigration and custom officials to return him to Mexico once again, Mr. Davis said.
Further, the defense attorney reminded jurors, the seven strikes to the face which prosecutors contend were improper were all inflicted during a period of three seconds, and occurred because Kaylor believed the suspect was trying to bite him.
The Red Bank patrolman simply didn’t have the time to weigh all the various options available to him during those three seconds, he argued, and the one he used was justified and is allowed under “use of force” protocols.