SAN JOSE — A Santa Clara County counselor has been discovered responsible of assault after he repeatedly punched a teen whereas breaking apart a battle at juvenile corridor final 12 months, in keeping with a jury verdict reached Wednesday.
Robert Joseph Medellin, 47, of Tracy, was charged final fall with assault underneath coloration of authority following an investigation into an April 14, 2021 encounter on the youth custody facility on Guadalupe Parkway in San Jose. The jury deliberated for someday earlier than handing down its judgment.
Medellin stays out of custody pending his Aug. 19 sentencing. He faces a minimal sentence of probation, as much as a most three-year jail time period.
“This individual’s job was to guard these youths when, as a substitute, he beat a youth in his care — our job was to prosecute him,” Santa Clara County District Legal professional Jeff Rosen mentioned in an announcement Thursday. “He ought to have completed his job. We did ours.”
In response to sheriff’s workplace investigators and prosecutors, Medellin was working as a senior juvenile probation counselor on the facility when two teenagers he was supervising attacked a 3rd teen utilizing a payphone in a standard space. The battle spilled right into a hallway; as Medellin approached, one of many teenagers — recognized in courtroom data as Gabriel Doe — threw a punch on the counselor and made “glancing contact” with Medellin’s arm.
Medellin then reportedly grabbed Gabriel and threw him to the bottom, whereas the opposite two teenagers continued combating. From there, prosecutors cited video surveillance footage in asserting that Medellin proceeded to punch Gabriel 11 instances within the head and as soon as within the physique as the teenager “was susceptible on the bottom on his abdomen and defensively overlaying his head together with his arms.”
Then, in an allegation disputed by his lawyer at trial, Medellin lifted Gabriel’s head off the bottom and slammed it into the cement flooring, inflicting a deep bruise on the teenager’s brow.
Medellin’s lawyer, Joe Wall, mentioned on the time his consumer was charged that Medellin “sprang to the protection of a child who was sitting unsuspectingly in a chair speaking on the telephone when viciously attacked by two rival gang members,” and that the power he used “was moderately vital to forestall additional assault and to remove the hazard posed to the sufferer, Robert’s fellow counselors, and himself.”
Moreover, Wall argued to jurors that the 17-year-old’s bodily stature at 6-foot-1 and 210 kilos, and the crime for which he was later convicted — an assault that left a person in a vegetative state — had been mitigating elements in Medellin’s response.
Wall didn't instantly reply to a request for remark Thursday.
Deputy District Legal professional Jason Malinsky, who prosecuted the case, mentioned after the decision that jurors appropriately interpreted the proof introduced to them.
“The group seemed on the info, and judged it was extreme, it was unacceptable, and that it was against the law,” he mentioned. “He went too far.”
The county probation division, which employed Medellin since 2000 and put him on administrative depart following his felony cost, mentioned in an announcement that the actions that led to Wednesday’s conviction “are opposite to the probation division’s dedication to offering secure and exemplary care to these we serve.”
“The probation division has no tolerance for any abuse of energy or extreme power towards youth by its workers,” the assertion reads. “Whereas this incident was fully unacceptable, it doesn't replicate the superb and compassionate work our workers do day-after-day with youth and adults in custody and locally.”