Former Bernalilo County Corrections Officer Sentenced to Prison for Obstructing Justice | WPN World People News

The Justice Department announced that Kevin Casaus, 24, a former corrections officer at the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was sentenced this morning to serve 15 months in federal prison, followed by one year of supervised release, for his conviction on obstruction of justice and falsification of records charges.

Casaus and fellow former MDC corrections officers Demetrio Juan Gonzales, 41, and Matthew Pendley, 26, were indicted in June 2012 and charged with various crimes related to the December 21, 2011 assault of an inmate housed at MDC and subsequent attempts to cover up and impede the investigation of the assault.

On March 6, 2013, a federal jury convicted Casaus on obstruction of justice and falsification of records charges and acquitted him on a related assault charge. According to the evidence at trial, during the early morning hours of December 21, 2011, Gonzales was assigned to the Receiving-Discharge-Transfer (RDT) Unit at MDC, where individuals are brought to be booked soon after they are arrested. His job was to photograph and fingerprint those who are brought to RDT for booking. The victim, who had been arrested for driving while intoxicated, was verbally uncooperative during the booking process but was not a physical threat to anyone. Gonzales, who had previously pleaded guilty, testified that he became angry at the victim and walked him to the shower room where he knew there were no surveillance cameras. Several other corrections officers, including Casaus, followed Gonzales to the shower room. There, Gonzales physically assaulted the victim, striking him multiple times and choking him. Gonzales testified that he beat the victim “in a blind rage” and then had to wash the victim’s blood off his hands. He further testified that the victim did not do anything to justify the beating.

According to the testimony, Casaus and two other corrections officers were present in the shower room during the beating. Additionally, a former inmate who was in the hallway outside the shower room at the time of the beating overheard groans and sounds consistent with the assault coming from the shower room. The former inmate was then tasked with cleaning the blood that was on the floors and walls of the shower room. Casaus falsely stated during a recorded interview with a Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office investigator that the victim was not assaulted in the shower room, that the victim was not bleeding, and that they only brought the victim to the shower room to ask him to change out of his clothes. Casaus falsified his report when he wrote that he saw blood on the victim’s clothes but did not know where the blood came from.

In October 2012, Gonzales pleaded guilty to violating the civil rights of an individual in his custody when he struck and choked the victim in the shower room/dress out area of MDC and subsequently was sentenced to 33 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release. Pendley pleaded guilty in February 2012 to obstructing justice by making false statements to law enforcement during their investigation of the assault on an inmate and was sentenced to a five year term of probation.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice