Thomas MacMillan Photo
Luis Luna (left) and attorney Max Simmons.
A day after an internal affairs investigation found that a top New Haven cop had trampled his rights, Luis Luna scored another legal victory and set his sights on the next battle — forcing that cop to answer to a civil lawsuit.
Luna, a 27-year-old from Wallingford, appeared in Superior Court on Elm Street on Friday morning to vacate a guilty plea he entered after his arrest on Sept. 25, 2010. That’s when then-Assistant Chief Ariel Melendez arrested him on Crown Street, allegedly for interfering with police.
Luna had been filming police with this iPhone at the time. Police were breaking up a fight. Melendez had Luna’s phone confiscated and video erased and ordered Luna arrested and thrown in jail, according to an internal affairs report released last Thursday. The report concluded that Melendez violated police rules by doing so. (Read the report here.)
Despite his innocence, Luna made the mistake of pleading guilty to the charge of creating a public disturbance when he appeared in court on Oct. 8. At the time had the impression that was his best option to have the case go away.
On Friday, he and his lawyer succeeded in having that guilty plea vacated.
A vacated plea essentially means a re-set, and the interfering charge against Luna has been re-docketed for Monday. Max Simmons, Luna’s attorney, said he has the prosecutor’s assurance that the case will be nolled on Monday.
Once the case is disposed of, it will pave the way for a civil suit against Melendez and maybe the city, too.
“Once that’s the case, then we’ll certainly start pursuing it,” Simmons said.
Luna’s case is one of several recent cops-and-cameras controversies in New Haven. The cases prompted New Haven State Sen. Martin Looney to introduce legislation that would make it easier for people to sue police when they are arrested for filming them.
Luna appeared before Judge Karen Sequino just after noon on Friday. The vacation of the plea took only a moment.
Supervisory Assistant State’s Attorney David Strollo told the judge that the state has no objection to the motion to vacate. He predicted that the matter could be disposed of on Monday “without actually hearing it.”
As he left the courthouse with Luna, Simmons said his client can pursue legal action against Melendez on two fronts. He can make a false arrest claim or a federal First Amendment claim. That would have been difficult to do with a guilty plea on the record, but now “we’ll no longer face that challenge,” Simmons said.
Simmons said Melendez will be the target of future legal action, and so will the city.
“Certainly Melendez is the bad actor here,” he said. But the former assistant chief is “not an ordinary beat cop. … This is a person who’s in a position to set policy.”
“The frightening thing here,” is that Melendez falsely arrested Luna in the presence of police officers who look to the assistant chief to lead by example, Simmons said.
Cops at that level of leadership “de facto are the city,” he said.
If Luna pursues a civil claim against the city, it likely won’t go to trial, Simmons predicted. With Thursday’s internal affairs report and the admissions by the department that there were training failures, “it would be in their interest to settle this case,” Simmons said. “It’s not even a close call.”
Simmons declined to say how much money Luna would ask for in a civil suit.
“I feel great,” Luna said about the outcome of Friday’s hearing. “I think the judge did the right thing.”