San Jose cops to face trial on falsifying evidence claims

SAN JOSE, Calif. (CN) — A man who was incarcerated for 17 years before being exonerated of an attempted murder will see three San Jose police officers face a federal trial for using flimsy witness identifications to wrongfully convict him in a drive-by shooting.

U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman ruled Thursday that three San Jose Police Department officers must face multiple civil rights claims of faking evidence to wrongfully convict Lionel Rubalcava for involvement in a drive-by shooting that paralyzed Raymond Rodriguez in 2002 in San Jose.

While the city and several other officers involved in the report that helped convict Rubalcava are shielded by qualified immunity, Freeman said that immunity does not protect San Jose police officers Joseph Perez, Topui Fonua and Steven Spillman from individual civil liability.

“I’m grateful the court has ruled that the police officers who put me behind bars for 17 years have to answer to a jury,” Rubalcava said in a statement Thursday. “The state declared my actual innocence in 2019, and now there’s no one but the officers whose actions led to my wrongful conviction that are still trying to justify their misconduct.”

After the Santa Clara County Superior Court made an express finding of innocence and vacated Rubalcava’s conviction in 2019, Rubalcava filed his misconduct claims against the officers and the city of San Jose in 2020.

He said that San Jose Police Department officers and Santa Clara County investigators fabricated evidence and committed other misconduct to help convict him, and that officers Perez, Fonua and Spillman deliberately fabricated their police reports to make it appear that three eyewitnesses identified him in 2005. He said the county prosecutor used those reports to pursue attempted murder charges against him.

In a 39-page order, Freeman found there is a factual dispute over whether there was probable cause to prosecute Rubalcava — and whether officers Perez, Fonua, and Spillman ignored initial witness statements from Rodriguez, his brother and his neighbor that indicated Rubalcava was not the 2002 shooter.

The judge also advanced claims of withholding evidence and malicious prosecution against the three officers.

She disagreed with the city's argument that the police officers bore no ill will toward Rubalcava and that it didn't ignore evidence of the reportedly falsified witness identifications.

“A reasonable jury, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Rubalcava, could draw an inference that Perez, Fonua and Spillman falsified their police reports for an improper purpose — to arrest Rubalcava without any substantial evidence of his guilt — and thus could find that the malice element is satisfied,” Freeman wrote. 

The judge allowed Rubalcava to pursue his claim that the officers did not disclose that their witnesses either could not make an identification or made an unreliable identification. She also advanced claims that the trio deprived Rubalcava of his Fourteenth Amendment rights.

“Here, where the government’s entire case turned on eyewitness testimony, and the prosecutor emphasized how unlikely it was that multiple eyewitnesses would have identified Rubalcava by happenstance, the withheld evidence reasonably could have ‘put the whole case in such a different light as to undermine confidence in the verdict,’” Freeman wrote. 

The judge also advanced the claim of a conspiracy between the officers, citing evidence that showed the trio worked in tandem for the witness identifications. The officers also must face claims of malicious prosecution.

However, Freeman dismissed claims the city violated state laws pertaining to liability for injury proximately caused by an act or omission of an employee and city employees omitting information from records.

The author of the report used to prosecute Rubalcava, officer Rafael Nieves, was granted qualified immunity, and was dismissed from claims of withholding evidence and malicious prosecution against him since his report “was separate from and different in nature from the reports of the other officers.”

Claims against the three officers will now proceed to trial. A jury could potentially find that the trio worked as a team to make up the witness identifications used against the plaintiff. 

San Jose’s city attorney Nora Frimann said in a statement: “We will proceed to defend the remaining officers, all of whom are adamant that they acted properly when investigating the underlying crime and have consistently testified to that effect.”

Rubalcava’s attorney Anna Benvenutti Hoffmann said that San Jose continues to deny evidence of its police officers’ misconduct. 

“It should have been obvious from the beginning that the police had the wrong person in custody, but instead they fabricated evidence and got witnesses to falsely identify our client, who spent 17 years behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit,” Benvenutti Hoffmann said. 

Follow @nhanson_reports

Subscribe to Closing Arguments

Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.

Email *

Submit