SAN DIEGO — A jury reached a verdict Friday in a lawsuit involving the death of former San Diego Police Department crime lab worker, Kevin Brown.
After one day of deliberation, the jury awarded Rebecca Brown $6 million dollars in damages, agreeing that SDPD detectives violated Brown's constitutional rights, leading to his suicide.
The jury verdict targeted now-retired SDPD homicide detective Michael Lambert, one of two police department defendants in the case.
Plaintiffs alleged Lambert abused his authority when he lied in a search warrant affidavit and seized property outside the scope of the warrant.
The jury awarded $3 million in damages related to illegal search and seizure of property. Another $3 million in damages was related to the widow’s loss of her husband, due to abuse of power during the police investigation.
Kevin Brown committed suicide in October 2014, ten months after officers served a search warrant on his home in Chula Vista.
Brown, 62, was suspected in the murder of Claire Hough, who was strangled and found dead at Torrey Pines State Beach in 1984.
Brown hanged himself at Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, which his lawyers said was a result of the homicide investigation, as well as the seizure of numerous items of sentimental value from his Chula Vista home.
Rebecca Brown's attorneys alleged detective Lambert misled a judge when securing an affidavit for a warrant to search and seize property at Brown's home.
The affidavit was secured on the basis of Brown's sperm cells, which were found on a vaginal swab of Hough, though Rebecca Brown's attorney, Eugene Iredale, said those cells were most likely transferred onto the swab via accidental cross-contamination.
Iredale told jurors that lab techs at the SDPD crime lab often used their own semen as reference samples when conducting testing for the presence of semen.
Other DNA evidence found on Hough's clothing pointed to another
suspect, Ronald Tatro, who was previously convicted in other rapes and
assaults on women. Tatro, who died in 2011, was matched to several blood stains and a pubic hair found on the girl's clothing, Iredale said.
Despite Tatro's DNA being far more prominent on the evidence, Iredale said
Lambert used Brown's sperm cells and statements that Brown had frequented strip clubs in the 1980s to suggest he worked in concert with Tatro in the killing.
However, no such connection between the men was ever discovered, nor
was Brown ever connected to the murder.
Brown, who suffered from anxiety and depression, was "obsessed with
getting his property back," Iredale said, yet was unable to secure its
return over the course of several months.
Iredale said the prospect of spending time in jail while fighting to clear his name and the property seizure was enough to push Brown to suicide.
The attorney said Lambert was aware Brown was suicidal and held onto
his property "because he knew it would cause pain and hurt, because he felt he was going to break him down, he was going to crack the case."
Deputy City Attorney Catherine Richardson argued at trial that Lambert
relied upon DNA experts when he wrote the affidavit and was not given all
the information he needed.
The attorney said Lambert asked about contamination when presented with the evidence of Brown's DNA, but was told by his sergeant that contamination was not possible. She also said Lambert was not informed that SDPD lab techs sometimes used their own semen for testing until after the search warrant was secured.
Richardson said the items from Brown's home had to be seized in order
to prove or disprove a possible connection between Tatro and Brown, which would have dated back more than three decades, and that a rigid investigation was needed to prove there was no favoritism toward an SDPD employee.
"If he hadn't investigated (Brown), then the police would have been accused of covering up for one of their own," Richardson told the jury in her opening statement.
On Friday, the court released to News 8 videos of the police interrogations of Kevin Brown. The shaky, hidden camera video was recorded by San Diego Police cold-case detectives during the course of their 2014 investigation. It's exclusive video you'll only see on News 8.
Officers can be heard on the video questioning Brown about how his sperm DNA could have been found on vaginal swabs taken from the teenage murder victim at Torrey Pines.
“What other explanation [is there] as to how your semen could have gotten in that girl?” detective Lambert asked Brown on the tape.
“I don’t know. Obviously, I must have had sex with her. I don't know,” responded Brown.
The first time detectives interviewed Brown on Jan. 9, 2014, he was taken by surprise. He didn't mention that during the 1980s crime lab workers kept their own semen samples in the lab to use as control samples.
Instead, Brown told the two officers he did, indeed, know a girl named Claire back in the 1980s.
“The name Claire, that's the name of the girl right? It kept popping up in my memory,” Brown stated.
Brown remembered he and a friend, named Mike, met two girls during that time.
“Mike met these two girls and I believe one of them was Claire,” Brown said.
“I feel that we went back to the place they were staying at, which was the Holiday Inn and I believe I had sex with her,” Brown said.
The officers then showed Brown a photo of murder victim, Claire Hough.
“She kind of looks like that, but her hair was a little curlier,” Brown said.
As it turned out, she was not the same Claire and during police interviews, Brown repeatedly denied an involvement in the Torrey Pines murder.
Later, in a different police interview, Brown finally brings up contamination in the lab as a possible explanation for his semen DNA being found on evidence.
“How could that happen? How could someone plant that? How?,” asked SDPD detective Lori Adam on the videotape dated Jan. 10, 2014.
“Contamination,” replied Brown.
Contamination of evidence later became the focus of the lawsuit filed by Brown's widow.
The jury’s $6 million dollar verdict could be dramatically increased when the panel returns to court on Tuesday to determine possible punitive damages.
San Diego federal judge Dana Sabraw issued a gag order in the case following Friday’s verdict, insiders said, so attorneys associated with the case were unable to comment until the punitive damages phase of the trial is complete.