A federal judge ruled Wednesday that a Valencia man convicted of deprivation of rights under the color of law will face sentencing for a misdemeanor at his hearing next week, dismissing a rare post-trial deal but agreeing to a motion by the government to lessen his crime.
Deputy Trevor Kirk, 32, was working at the Lancaster Sheriff’s Station in June 2023 when he broadcast that he was in a fight with Jacy Houseton, a 58-year-old woman he identified as a suspect in a grocery-store theft.
In February, a jury convicted Kirk of a felony count of deprivation of rights under the color of law over the confrontation, agreeing with federal prosecutors’ assertion that Kirk lied about being in a fight with Houseton on his broadcast and then used excessive force in arresting her.
Leadership of the U.S. Attorney’s Office changed hands in April, and in May, the government asked for more time and filed a motion to reduce Kirk’s potential sentence:
“The government explained that, upon further review of the facts of the case, it believed that defendant’s conduct fell on the lower end of the excessive force spectrum,” Wilson wrote this week. “Not only that, but that the government believed that it prosecuted the case in an improper way — it emphasized potentially misleading evidence and made arguments not fully supported by evidence.”
In a phone conversation Thursday, Kirk’s attorney, Tom Yu, called the ruling “a right step in the right direction,” with respect to his client’s sentencing, which was scheduled for 11 a.m. Monday.
The decision drastically changes the applicable sentencing guidelines under consideration for Kirk.
Initially, the sentencing guidelines recommended in the U.S. Probation Office’s report called for Kirk to receive a more than seven-year prison sentence based on the conviction and the initial position of the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“In the last hearing, (Wilson) did mention that on the spectrum of severity, this is definitely the lower end and that he didn’t have to follow the guidelines,” Yu said, referring to the original 87-month sentencing recommendation.
“The court will, as explained above, dismiss the felony allegations in the indictment pursuant to the government’s Rule 48(a) motion. Without the felony allegations, all that remains in the indictment is a misdemeanor charge, which the court will include in its judgment, per the jury’s verdict,” Judge Stephen Wilson wrote in his order.
Yu said Thursday that Wilson had initially broached probation as a potential sentence when the case was considered as a felony. In light of the ruling and Wilson’s statement, Yu said he was hopeful the judge would consider a sentence of probation with a potential combination of other penalties, including potential home confinement and a previously mentioned fine.
Critics of the USAO’s recent changeabout in the case, which include Cancel the Contract Antelope Valley, called the assistant U.S. attorney’s move a “racist, sweetheart deal,” which represents the problems the community has in getting its policing issues address.
A filing by Houseton’s attorney in response to the post-trial deal stated there was “not a shred of good cause” to set aside the lawful verdict. Houseton also filed records from her post-incident evaluation at the Antelope Valley Medical Center that indicated she suffered a fractured bone in her wrist from the confrontation.
The case has prompted a number of unusual situations, in addition to a rare attempt to set aside a jury conviction, an authority that Wilson ultimately did not find he had the authority to do, based on the evidence.
In response to claims made from both sides, Sheriff Robert Luna also filed a letter putting blame on his two predecessors for the department’s failures to address use-of-force policy concerns in a letter to Wilson. He noted federal monitors have had oversight of policing in the Antelope Valley, but its recommendations have not been properly acknowledged.
“In August 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Civil Rights Division, initiated an investigation into the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s (LASD) Palmdale and Lancaster Stations in response to community complaints about potential Fair Housing Act violations and other general policing issues in the Antelope Valley,” according to the LASD website.
The federal agreement from a yearslong investigation calls for training updates that Luna said had not been implemented as of Kirk’s incident, despite the federal monitoring agreement being in its eighth year in 2023.
“It is obvious from the Monitoring Team’s report that the need to reform from past practices had not been a priority within the department,” Luna wrote in a May 14 letter. He said the monitoring team’s complaints were made clear to him the first day he took office. “It was also clear that these failures were the result of poor management and failed leadership.”
