A jury in San Diego state court found a former Border Patrol agent not guilty on one count of false imprisonment by violence or menace and one count of sexual battery by restraint Thursday afternoon for charges stemming from alleged on-duty incidents.
The jury deliberated for less than two hours before announcing the verdict from a courtroom inside the Central Courthouse downtown. Juan Angel Prishker, a former Border Patrol in San Diego’s east county, shook his attorney’s hand upon the reading of the final verdict while a handful of people supporting Prishker sat in the gallery.
The District Attorney’s Office failed to convince the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that Prishker groped a migrant woman who had been apprehended near the border in 2022. They also failed to secure a conviction for an alleged incident from a year later, in which a migrant aid worker said Prishker showed her unsolicited photos of male genitals and blocked her exit as they stood between their cars.
The weeklong trial was at times turbulent for the prosecution, led by Deputy District Attorney Vincent Chen. Speaking through a translator, the witness in the alleged groping incident testified that she hadn’t reviewed some of the case materials before later admitting she had, leading to concerns she wasn’t telling the truth.
The development extended the trial by a day and ultimately led to the recusal of the presiding judge, Lisa Rodriguez, who cited a potential conflict of interest. The case resumed under Judge Eugenia Eyherabide, who presided over the remainder of the case.
The defense dug into inconsistencies between the law enforcement reports and the alleged victims’ testimonies and argued that they lacked sufficient credibility. Kerry Armstrong, Prishker’s attorney, suggested that the migrant woman was lying to be able to stay in the U.S. and that Karen Parker, the aid worker, was lying to bolster her $6 million civil lawsuit against Prishker and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
On the final day of the trial, the jury found Prishker not guilty of the two charges, both of which are felonies, as well as the lesser included offenses for each charge. Jurors after the trial said the case came down to the credibility – or lack thereof – of the two main witnesses.
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In addition to the migrant woman and Parker, the prosecution called a current Border Patrol agent, an investigator with the District Attorney’s Office and a misconduct investigator with U.S. Customs and Border Protection to testify. The Border Patrol agent, Steve Lone, testified that he apprehended the migrant woman before transferring her to Prishker for transport and that he didn’t see anything suspicious happen.
The district attorney’s investigator, Robert Hopper, testified to finding several photos of male genitals on Prishker’s phone, two of which Parker later identified as the same photos she said Prishker showed her. The CBP misconduct investigator, Rafael Garcia, testified to interviewing the migrant woman about the alleged groping incident the day after she was apprehended.
The defense did not call any witnesses and Prishker did not take the stand.
The migrant woman, referred to as Jane Doe 1, testified that she had just crossed the border near Jacumba Hot Springs after walking for several hours when she was apprehended by Border Patrol. She and another woman were eventually transferred to Prishker to be transported to a facility. Doe testified that, during a pat down, Prishker touched her breasts skin-to-skin under her shirt and bra and that she saw Prishker put his hands under the other woman’s shirt.
The prosecution could not reach that woman however, referred to in court as Jane Doe 2, because she died in April 2023.
The prosecution’s case took a tumble on the second day of the trial when Doe was being questioned by the defense. After testifying that she did not review any materials before the trial, Doe said she only later remembered reviewing two photos and someone reading her part of the transcript from the preliminary hearing over a call. But after more questions, she also said she was worried that saying she did review materials would “compromise” the case.
Judge Rodriguez dismissed the jury that afternoon so that the court could appoint Doe her own counsel from the San Diego County Public Defender’s Office. Rodriguez, who is married to the San Diego County Public Defender, Paul Rodriguez, subsequently recused herself from the case.
After the trial resumed on Tuesday, Parker took the stand to testify that Prishker showed her photos of male genitals one evening in late 2023 and then blocked her from leaving when she “side stepped” away. But the defense attacked her credibility, saying she had failed to report in interviews with law enforcement that Prishker allegedly blocked her until months later.
inewsource reported on allegations that Prishker had shown photos of genitals to Parker and to a group of social media bloggers in two separate incidents.
Armstrong said in opening arguments that Prishker “made a mistake” by showing Parker the photo, but denied that he was guilty of false imprisonment, as well as the sexual battery charge. Earlier charges that the prosecution brought related to the showing of the images were tossed out by the judge in the preliminary trial.
Chen said the prosecution faced a number of challenges during the trial for a case he said was already going to be hard from the start. The allegations were from several years before and one alleged victim, the migrant woman who died, couldn’t testify.
“You never really know how the evidence is going to play out,” Chen said. He had hoped to bring justice for the alleged victims, but “fell short.”
“It was just too many allegations to ignore here,” Chen said.
Armstrong said after the trial that his client is going back to Texas where he now lives. Prishker resigned from the Border Patrol last year.
“As you might imagine, he’s extremely happy,” Armstrong said of Prishker, who declined to comment.
This story was updated at 10 a.m. Friday, Oct. 10.
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News: Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
