LOS ANGELES (AP) - A bank executive suing police for $20 million testified Tuesday that a horrifying 2012 beating at the hands of officers sent him into a decline from which he has yet to recover.
Brian Mulligan, the 54-year-old one-time Deutsche Bank official testifying at the start of his case, recounted for jurors what he called “a very long night, a nightmare night, a very scary night that continues today.”
He alleges that he was beaten in May 2012 by two officers after they stopped him and gave him a field-sobriety test that he passed.
Officers found about $3,000 in cash in Mulligan’s car, and they decided to drive him to a nearby motel, where he was told to stay until morning, according to the lawsuit.
Mulligan said that when he tried to leave the room, two police officers attacked him without provocation, shattering parts of his face and breaking his shoulder.
When it was over, he had 15 broken bones in his nose and required 54 stitches, has had several other surgeries and will require more, Mulligan said.
Before Mulligan’s description, his lawyer played a 911 tape of his agonized screams.
“The pain was so excruciating, and I thought I was being jabbed with a needle,” Mulligan said. “I thought: ’I can’t believe I’m going to die at the hand of these two guys.’ “
He acknowledged fleeing from the police and said “I was running for my life.”
Mulligan held up for jurors the blood-stained shirt he was wearing that night.
He said that the confrontation ensued after he went out that night in search of a drug that would lull him into sleep on a redeye flight he had planned to New York. He went to a medical marijuana dispensary with a prescription for pills, Mulligan said, but they were not in stock. When he left, he said he was walking back to his car when a police vehicle drove up and he was handcuffed.
Asked for his state of mind he said, “complete fear. There’s no way to make sense of any of this.”
Officers contend that Mulligan told them he had ingested a type of “bath salts” drug mixture known as White Lightning, which when ingested can give users a high similar to those of cocaine or methamphetamine.
Denise Zimmerman, an attorney for one of the police officers, told jurors during opening statements earlier Tuesday that a partially used can of “bath salts” was found in Mulligan’s car along with wadded-up $100 bills, and that he was “writhing, bucking, kicking” and fighting with officers during the encounter.
The conservative-looking, sandy-haired executive said he normally logged about 1 million air miles a year, flying around the globe making financial deals.
After the incident, he lost his job with Deutsche Bank and went into a decline, he said.
“I used to be smart,” Mulligan said at one point as he hesitated in his testimony.
Mulligan was arrested on suspicion of resisting arrest, but prosecutors declined to file charges.
A civilian oversight board found the officers’ use of force to be appropriate. U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner dismissed Mulligan’s retaliation claim against the city for losing his bank job.
Mulligan, who has no prior criminal record, once served as co-chairman of Universal Studios and chief financial officer of Seagram Co.
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