After one week of trial, we know one thing that did not happen during Kelly Thomas' confrontation with Fullerton police. We know from the video that cops didn't just randomly start pummeling Thomas because they didn't like the way he looked.
During an encounter with police – he was suspected of attempted auto burglary and mail theft – Thomas appears to have disobeyed a lawful order to remain seated, and it was only when he stood up that police took out their batons and started wailing on him. Thomas ultimately went down and then disappeared under a mass of blue uniforms.
As trial resumes today, we move to a key prosecution witness: a use-of-force expert. He or she is presumably going to tell us whether going right to the batons was proper policy, or even lawful, and whether the threat posed by Thomas escalated in a manner that warranted increasing levels of force.
Here's an area I hope this witness or another expert can soon enlighten us on: The cops are heard yelling at Thomas over and over, “Relax! Relax!” Question: If someone is getting Tasered or beaten with a Taser, is it even physically possible to relax? Or does your body immediately curl into a ball or otherwise tense up? Once cops commenced a physical assault, did they give Thomas adequate time to “relax” and submit to being handcuffed?
The trial's first significant impeachment of a witness came Thursday, and it slightly bolstered the defense's theory that Thomas died of a heart attack – not from injuries caused by police.
Under direct examination by prosecutor Jim Tanizaki, paramedic John Zillgitt seemed to indicate that when Thomas was loaded into the ambulance after being beaten unconscious, he had stopped breathing altogether and an EMT broke out an artificial respiration device called an ambu bag to breathe for him. Then, Zillgitt saw on his monitor that Thomas' heart had stopped.
On cross, however, defense attorney Michael Schwartz pulled out an earlier statement in which Zillgitt had said that the bag was pulled out to “assist” Thomas in breathing. That choice of words would indicate that Thomas was still breathing, albeit poorly.
The defense wants to show Thomas had not stopped breathing before the heart monitor showed a flat line. If that is true, it is easier to make the case that he died of a heart attack and not, as the prosecution contends, from a lack of oxygen to the brain caused by officers compressing his chest and beating him about the head.
Still, I don't see how the defense can plausibly argue against the notion that even if was a heart attack, it was caused by what the police did.