Sacramento-area woman found not guilty of assault of deputies who opened fire on her fleeing car
SACRAMENTO -- Thursday came a long-awaited not guilty verdict for Kyrieanna Liles, the Sacramento-area woman now acquitted on a charge of felony assault with great bodily injury on a peace officer.
The charge stemmed from an encounter with deputies that led to them firing ten shots at her fleeing car in November in Rancho Cordova.
"My client burst into happy tears. I hugged her. I almost cried myself it was such a good feeling and relief that finally for once in this case we got the right thing done," said Carrie Claremon, public defender for Liles, on the verdict.
"I feel that she was the victim and they were the ones that should have been prosecuted," Claremon said.
CBS13 reporter Ashley Sharp first reported last week that the judge during Liles' trial ruled the seconds of bodycam video showing the officers actually firing those shots at her was not allowed to be shown to the jury. The only video permitted into evidence were the moments before and after deputies opened fire.
Court documents show the judge reasoned that the shooting was not relevant to the alleged assault when Liles drove her car toward the deputies.
Claremon tried to fight the judge's ruling, arguing it violated Liles' right to due process to not show the video in its entirety to the jury.
"The jury was missing a lot of that key evidence because of where it was clipped," Claremon said.
She ended up winning the case without it, convincing the jury that Liles never had any desire to hit those officers with her car.
What matters, Claremon argued, is the intent behind the action.
"The second that she looks up and sees Deputy Bollinger, she is applying her brakes. That shows she is not intending to hit this officer. She doesn't realize he is going to run in front of her car," she said.
The bodycam video shows that when the deputy first approached Liles in her driveway, he asked her to get out of her car, saying that he needed to talk to her.
He did not identify himself as an officer, say that she had committed a crime or say that she was under arrest. Liles' defense team calls this an unlawful detention.
The officer is seen on video opening Liles' driver's side door after she closes it and he then tries to physically pull her from her car.
"If you really look at the video, he basically starts talking to her and pulls her out in one minute. That's not de-escalating that's complete escalation," Claremon said.
Liles is seen in the bodycam video reversing her car down the driveway and then fleeing through her front yard.
The deputy who was at her driver's side door is seen on the video running forward, he eventually is in the path of Liles' car.
"As she goes forward and sees Deputy Bollinger she brakes. She curves around the tree and straightens out her wheels," Claremon said.
The officers, claiming self-defense, fired ten shots at Liles' car. They testified during her trial that they felt they were in danger in those moments.
The prosecution argued that when Liles drove her vehicle at the deputy, her car became a deadly weapon.
Liles was struck in the arm, the deputies were not hurt.
"At best, this is some sort of negligent discharge of a firearm. They are shooting in a residential neighborhood, 11 a.m., Thanksgiving week, kids are out of school. Luckily, no one else was injured. It's incredibly dangerous. My client was obviously shot. I don't know what their intention was shooting at the moving vehicle. It looked like they were trying to kill her. I don't know why they were doing that as she was driving away," Claremon said.
Before all of this, deputies were in the neighborhood because Liles had called 911 herself trying to find her missing dog.
Believing it was in a neighbor's yard, she went to the neighbor's home with a kitchen knife and is accused of trying to break into their backyard.
That neighbor called 911 on her, but chose not to press charges.
Officers were trying to follow up with Liles about the calls that afternoon when they approached her in her driveway but did not make that clear when they approached her driver's side window.
"She spent six months of her life behind bars for something she didn't do. If someone just really looked at that video, saw her braking, and then saw these men trying to kill her, I think it would be an easy decision to file charges against the people that actually did the crime," Claremon said.
The officers are not charged with a crime and are still on the job, a spokesperson for the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office confirmed Thursday.
However, the deputies, the sheriff's office and Sacramento County are all named in a federal lawsuit that claims this entire encounter, start to finish, violated Liles' civil and constitutional rights.
"No crime had been committed, she was just sitting in her driveway not committing a crime. He didn't have any reason to be pulling her out of the car. He was not in lawful performance of his duties when he did that," Claremon said.
Liles' mother Jamie Kristen told CBS13 that with this lawsuit she hopes to inspire change.
"It's a whole pattern of behavior of just making the choice to exert force where it is not called for and not even beneficial," Kristen said. "It feels like they're all rubbing elbows and watching each other's backs, and at what point are they hurting the actual people they are here to represent?"
Claremon also called attention today to what she calls another injustice: that Liles, even after being found not guilty, was taken back into custody in handcuffs and held for six more hours in jail Thursday. She feels that is wrong and is a part of the justice system that should change.
CBS13 asked the Sacramento County Sheriff's office Thursday if its internal investigation into whether or not these deputies followed protocol has concluded and if they faced any discipline.
An agency spokesperson said they could not comment as the civil lawsuit is pending.