Richmond P.D. Officer Wins Felony Excessive Force Trial

HARRY S. STERN
Managing Principal
Rains Lucia Stern St. Phalle & Silver, PC

Last month, the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office dismissed the case against Richmond Police Officer Eric Smith after a jury voted 11–1 to acquit him. The Honorable John W. Kennedy presided over the trial. The DA had filed felony assault with a deadly weapon and sentencing enhancements against Smith that could have sent him to prison for several years. The charges stemmed from a physical confrontation with a career criminal following a car chase.

Smith wanted to be a cop for all the right reasons. To that end, he studied criminal justice in college and played football as well. He chose Richmond P.D. because he had grown up in the area and knew it was a tough town. Smith has never been a person to shy away from a challenge.

Once on the street, his focus was guns. He had comforted the mothers who had lost their sons to gunfire. He had been to the homes of the grandmothers who had to cower under their beds because bullets crashed through their windows and walls. He also knew that the families of shooters were disrupted and devastated when their loved ones were inevitably arrested and locked up. Smith cared. He expressed that care through action. During his relatively short time on patrol, Smith had taken more than 50 illegal firearms off the streets of Richmond.

Smith had just wrapped up another gun arrest when he decided to take a swing down 23rd Street, one of Richmond’s main arteries. It is known for human trafficking, robberies, fights, public drunkenness and dope dealing.

As Smith drove north, he noticed a white Honda traveling south. The driver looked at Smith and then accelerated. Smith flipped around and began to tail the Honda. The car began to swerve slightly, and he saw the driver dip his shoulder down as if reaching under the seat. Given Smith’s nose for weapons and having found so many, he believed the driver had placed a pistol under the seat. Smith radioed that he was behind a vehicle and that the occupant was armed. The Honda sped off. Smith tried to keep up, but the car blew through a stale red light, made some sharp turns and disappeared.

He considered where a suspect in this situation might be headed. Smith thought about the freeway entrance in the neighboring city of San Pablo and drove there to search.

Meanwhile, career criminal Saul Mendoza was pretty sure he had gotten away from the marked car that had tried to pull him over. Mendoza was drunk, armed with a .45 and hadn’t had a valid driver’s license in years. He had been convicted of various felonies and been to prison. But in his haste, Mendoza lost control of the Honda and slammed into the side of a business. The airbags exploded, and Mendoza was momentarily dazed. He jumped out of the car, stumbled and faceplanted. But Mendoza pulled himself up. He had to get rid of the pistol, so he jogged to a corner of the business’s parking lot and tossed the gun over a fence into a junk pile. After meeting up with another man, Mendoza got back into his car to see if he could get it started.

Smith finally found the Honda. He figured the driver was long gone. He was shocked when Mendoza suddenly sprang out. Smith tried to arrest Mendoza, but Mendoza lied about driving the Honda, refused to follow orders to get down and otherwise tried to distract and delay. Smith was certain Mendoza was hiding a pistol in his waistband based on the way he was acting. He was also outnumbered because the “mystery man” Mendoza had met up with was still lurking next to the Honda. Smith radioed for his partners to “step up” their response, but he heard no sirens. He was alone with two suspects, one of whom he knew had a gun.

Suddenly, Mendoza leapt to his feet and ran. Smith was able to catch up to him, but Mendoza kept reaching toward his waistband. In response, Smith Tased him. Mendoza fell to the ground but executed a “Folsom roll” to dislodge the Taser darts. Smith recognized the maneuver, and it confirmed to him that he was dealing with a hardened felon.

Smith didn’t know Mendoza had already gotten rid of his gun. Based on the way Mendoza was acting, Smith was certain he was armed. The evidence at trial revealed that Mendoza had a strange habit of not only fighting with police trying to arrest him but also feigning that he had a gun even when he had already discarded one.

Smith decided his best chance to prevent Mendoza from pulling a gun from his waistband was to pounce on him. He didn’t want to shoot him but sensed that he was in a life-or-death struggle. Smith also didn’t want to chance holstering his Taser because that would cause him to momentarily lose control, so he used what was already in his hand — the Taser. He wound up hitting Mendoza more than 30 times in the head with it. Yet Mendoza suffered only moderate injuries that required some staples on his scalp to close three medium-sized gashes.

The incident was captured on body-worn and security cameras. After a quick and somewhat superficial criminal investigation by Richmond P.D., the DA’s office filed felony charges against Smith that included sentencing enhancements for causing great bodily injury and for using a deadly weapon.

The trial began in early December 2025 and lasted over a month, including motions, jury selection and jury deliberations. Smith took the stand and gave a compelling and credible account of his reasons for striking Mendoza. He was an excellent witness. We also called eight officers from different agencies who had been forced to fight with Mendoza when trying to arrest him. Several themes emerged from their testimony: in every incident, it had taken more than one officer to control him. He had spit on uniformed cops, bitten them, kicked them (despite being in handcuffs), charged at an officer who held him at gunpoint while demanding the officer put his gun down and regularly feigned having a pistol on him. On more than one occasion, it had taken the entire watch and outside agencies to corral Mendoza, even with the help of a K-9.

As always, there were some interesting surprises during the case. It turned out that the “mystery man” who met up with Mendoza after he crashed his car returned to the business and tried to set part of it on fire after the police had left — the implication being that he was working with Mendoza to try and destroy evidence, including the gun.

In our closing argument, my rationale for urging acquittal was twofold: first, under the facts presented at trial, the Taser was not a deadly weapon; and second, despite the somewhat shocking quality of the video evidence, Smith’s use of the Taser was reasonable in order to protect himself from potentially being shot. After three days of considering the evidence, the jury announced it was deadlocked 11–1 in favor of exonerating Smith. The jurors I spoke to let me know that they had spent almost the entire three days trying to convince the lone holdout that she was mistaken. Two weeks after the jury came back, the DA’s office informed me they would not pursue a second trial and were dropping the charges. Needless to say, Smith was ecstatic.

This was one of the most challenging cases I have ever tried (absent a dead body), given the very graphic video footage. The result of the trial was the product of some amazing teamwork. RLS partner and excellent trial lawyer Andrew Ganz was a major asset in terms of roundtabling strategies and arguments. Our colleague, Jason Campbell, who specializes in legal research and writing, helped draft a number of critical motions. As always, our San Franciso office manager Andrea McNamara (whose husband, father, grandfather, uncles, cousins, brother and aunt are all active or retired SFPD and Oakland P.D. officers) was the brains of our operation; she even ran the PowerPoint during my closing argument. One of our law clerks, Alex Aitchison, the son of labor law legend Will Aitchison of Public Safety Labor Group fame, wrangled all of our witnesses — a task he did so well that our great investigator, retired SFPD Lieutenant Joe Nannery, dubbed him the “superstar.”

Huge credit goes to the men and women of Richmond POA, led by their president and PORAC Vice President Ben Therriault. RPOA showed up for their brother Smith, both at the courthouse and in many other important ways. And, of course, none of this would have been possible without the full support of PORAC LDF.

Smith and I would also like to thank the following officers who testified via subpoena regarding their own encounters with the suspect: Menlo Park P.D. Sergeant Aaron Dixon, Sergeant Mary Ferguson, and Officers Frank Barrientos and Jose Alvarez; San Mateo Sheriff’s Office Sergeant Stephen Neumann; Redwood City P.D. Sergeant Albert Lopez; and Hayward CHP Officers Joshua Cardona and Randall Wong.

About the Author

Harry S. Stern is the managing principal of Rains Lucia Stern St. Phalle & Silver, PC. His practice is focused on civil litigation and criminal defense as well as complex administrative cases. Harry has successfully defended peace officers in a number of high-profile trials.