Torres was only 21 when he framed by the LA County Sheriff’s Department for murder; County Board of Supervisors unanimously approves settlement.
LOS ANGELES — Alexander Torres, now 45 years old, lost more than two decades of his life when he was locked up for a crime he had nothing to do with. On Tuesday, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to approve a $14 million settlement to resolve his civil rights lawsuit against Los Angeles County, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD), and the individual officers he says framed him for murder.
“Alex lost the foundational years of his life, two decades he should have spent building a career and building a family,” says Elizabeth Wang of Loevy + Loevy, who represents Mr. Torres. “There is nothing that can make up for that, but this settlement is a long overdue acknowledgement of the injustice done to him, and a gesture of restitution that will help him move on with the rest of his life.”
On New Year’s Eve 2000, a man named Martin “Casper” Guitron was shot and killed on a street in Paramount, CA. A friend of his who witnessed the shooting, Enrique Valdovinos, said he could not identify the gunman.
Mr. Torres had nothing to do with the shooting, there was never any physical evidence tying him to it, and he had an alibi testified to by several family members. According to the lawsuit Mr. Torres filed in 2022, however, the detectives assigned to the case from the LASD—having so little information to work with—simply decided that Alexander Torres was “a good enough suspect,” and decided to manufacture evidence—including a phony identification from Valdovinos—to convict him of the murder and close the case. Supervisors in the LASD, also named in the complaint, allegedly joined the conspiracy and encouraged the misconduct, including the falsifying of reports and the suppression of exculpatory evidence and alternate suspects.
As a direct result of this misconduct, Mr. Torres was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Even as he spent his twenties and thirties wrongfully imprisoned, Mr. Torres never stopped fighting to prove his innocence. In October 2021, with the help of the California Innocence Project, and the support of the District Attorney’s Office’s Conviction Integrity Unit, his conviction was overturned by the Superior Court of California, Los Angeles County. In April 2022, the court found Mr. Torres factually innocent of the crime, clearing his record. In June of that year, standing beside Mr. Torres at a press conference, District Attorney George Gascón personally apologized to him, and to the family of Guitron for “a system that failed them as well as Mr. Torres.”
In 2022, Mr. Torres filed his lawsuit, charging L.A. County, the LASD, and more than a dozen individual officers with multiple violations of his civil rights, including malicious prosecution, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and conspiracy. Mr. Torres is represented by attorneys Elizabeth Wang, Steve Art, David B. Owens, and Jon Loevy of the civil rights law firm of Loevy + Loevy, and by San Diego attorney Jan Stiglitz, co-founder of the California Innocence Project.
In addition to the specific misconduct that resulted in Mr. Torres’s conviction, his complaint documents how the LASD “condoned and cultivated a culture of impunity” which contributed to his wrongful conviction. This includes how LASD, for decades, tolerated and encouraged the existence of the infamous “deputy gangs” that ran rampant in LASD stations involved in his case. These gangs, which prided themselves on closing cases by any means necessary, have been tied to dozens of legal claims going back to the early 1990s, resulting in at least $59 million in settlement payouts to date. Though such gangs were an open secret, tolerated within the department for decades, it was only in September of 2024 that the LASD announced new policy officially banning them, and requiring the LASD to investigate allegations of such groups and potentially refer them for prosecution.
“The corruption and abuses of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department are well documented and deeply troubling,” says attorney Steve Art of Loevy + Loevy. “Mr. Torres is proof of the human toll of a system that has tolerated and empowered police misconduct for far too long. This settlement is a welcome act of contrition on the part of L.A. County, a gesture of reparation for Alex, and a small step towards holding the system accountable.”
“For all those years, I just wanted to be heard, and I wanted acknowledgement of what was done to me,” says Mr. Torres. “This will never replace all the years I lost, but I’m looking forward to moving on from this nightmare.”
###
For a copy of the complaint in this case, click here.
