Officer Faces up to 30 Years. Bonds, suffered bruises, a broken left hand, a fractured right arm and a head gash that required eight staples to close. [MORE] From [HERE] U.S. District Court jurors have found a former Des Moines police officer guilty of using excessive force on a man who was severely beaten during a traffic stop in 2008. Mersed Dautovic, 26, was convicted on two felony charges involving violating the civil rights of Octavius Bond and then obstructing justice by lying about it later on police reports. He faces up to 30 years in federal prison.
Dautovic, who joined the Des Moines police force in early 2008, is accused of striking Bonds in the back of the head with a baton during a September 2008 traffic stop, and of needlessly striking Bonds’ back as he lay on the ground. Police struck the 25-year-old Bonds with batons 14 times in the head, back, arms and legs. Witnesses stopped along Southeast 14th Street that night saw Bonds splayed out over the roof of his girlfriend’s car as Dautovic and former partner John Mailander struck him with ASP batons, a telescoping metal weapon that federal prosecutor John Courter described in court Tuesday as “essentially a mini-crowbar with a handle on it.”
“Those blows were intended merely to punish, not for any legitimate law enforcement purpose,” Courter told jurors during the trial’s closing arguments. “Because at that time, Octavius Bonds was not resisting arrest.”
Authorities said Dautovic and Mailander were working off-duty security watching a south-side Des Moines apartment building when they decided to respond to a radio call about a man with a gun in his yard. Their response was slowed by Erin Evans and Bonds, who were traveling in the northbound left lane of Southeast 14th Street in Des Moines and failed to immediately get out of the patrol car’s way. When other officers responded to the emergency call, Dautovic decided to pull Evans over, according to court papers in two criminal cases and a civil lawsuit that Des Moines eventually settled for $500,000
Jurors last week were told how a flustered Evans failed to respond to the officers’ commands, turned the car’s ignition off, then on again, then reached for her cellphone to call her mother. Evans eventually was threatened with pepper spray, pulled from the car by Mailander and “kind of tossed” across the hood of the police car before being handcuffed. Documents say Bonds, who is 6 feet 8 inches tall, was sprayed with pepper spray after he partially climbed out of the car and failed to comply with commands to get back in.
Bonds at some point grabbed Dautovic’s hands while asking him to stop the pepper spray. Both officers then hit Bonds with batons, including roughly 14 blows while he was on the ground curled in a fetal position, according to court documents.
Witness Marie Grove, who saw part of the attack from her Jeep on Southeast 14th, told jurors last week that Evans’ screams were “horrific” and that the officers’ baton blows looked “like they were chopping wood.” (In photo, Erin Evans throws her hands up in thanks as she reacts to the not-guilty verdict in criminal case in March 2009 . She and Octavius Bonds, left, were charged with interference after an altercation with police officers.)
For Dautovic to be found not guilty, jurors would have had to find that “a reasonable officer, without the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, would have used such force under similar circumstances,” according to juror instructions.
Dautovic’s attorney argued throughout the week that the former officer’s actions were reasonable, given his perceptions of an unknown threat coming from the Evans’ fogged-up vehicle.
Defense witness W. Ken Katsaris, a former Florida sheriff who directed the investigation that led to the jailing of serial killer Ted Bundy, testified Tuesday morning that officers’ goal in the use of force should be to gain control via submission and/or handcuffs as soon as possible.
Katsaris testified that suspects “are not under control if they are still trying to deflect blows.”
“It’s not a question of whether he was fighting,” defense attorney Rigg told jurors Tuesday. “That’s not the standard. … His hands were free.”
“We’re not here to decide whether
this was done in the best practice of police officers,” Rigg said. “We’re here to decide whether this committed a crime.”
Afterwards the officer's family started tripping. Hard. “This is racism against the Bosnian people,” an emotional female relative of Dautovic’s yelled later at a reporter outside the empty courtroom. “This is war between the U.S. and the Bosnian people,” another woman said.
Family members declined subsequent comment but said they might issue a statement later through defense attorney J. Keith Rigg.