Sonoma Valley stun gun case goes to jury

An ex-sheriff’s deputy who kicked in a Sonoma Valley man’s bedroom door and shot him with a Taser as he lay in his own bed was cast Thursday as both a well-trained officer responding to an emergency and an impatient lawman whose poor decisions were captured on his own body camera.

The two views of Scott Thorne came in closing arguments of his more than weeklong trial to determine if his use of force was justified or amounted to felony assault by a police officer.

His lawyer, Chris Andrian, argued “exigent circumstances” allowed Thorne to enter the bedroom after he and two partners were summoned to the home in 2016 to check on a domestic dispute.

He encountered an uncooperative Fernando Del Valle who would not stand up and broke free of Thorne’s hand when he tried to grab him.

That’s when Thorne followed his own training about how to handle people who actively resist and shot Del Valle with a stun gun in his bare chest, Andrian said.

“There is no doubt and no evidence presented to you that these deputies had been trained in any other way,” Andrian told jurors. “If there had been, you would have seen it.”

Prosecutor Bob Waner offered a different take, one relying heavily on a neighbor’s 911 recording describing an intoxicated woman yelling at her husband. He also played video of the violent encounter showing Del Valle screaming in pain after being shot with a stun gun and falling to the ground under a barrage of baton blows.

Waner said it began when Thorne overreacted to a “garden variety 415” - the penal code number for disturbing the peace - and entered the Boyes Hot Springs house without evidence a crime had been committed. He rushed past the wife without questioning her and assaulted a man when he refused to come out of his own room, Waner said.

In this case, he suggested technology allowed jurors to examine the deputy’s conduct and answer the question, “Who will guard the guardians?”

“In a free society in which we are all governed by laws, we’ve got to constrain our police officers in reasonable ways,” Waner said.

Thorne, dressed in a crisp dark suit, listened from the defense table. He did not testify, instead putting on an expert witness who said Thorne acted correctly in handling a type of call that results in more police injuries and deaths than any other.

Other witnesses included Del Valle, his now-ex-wife, Kirsten Roberts, and the two deputies who both sided with Thorne. Sheriff’s Capt. Mark Essick, who oversaw patrol at the time, testified Thorne did not follow policy and may have broken the law. Essick is one of three candidates running for sheriff June 5.

Thorne, who has been dismissed from the department, faces up to three years in jail if convicted. Del Valle has sued him for damages in civil court.

The case fueled community debate over police force three years after a deputy shot and killed 13-year-old Andy Lopez on a Santa Rosa street after mistaking a replica assault rifle he was carrying for an AK-47. A one-minute, nine-second video of the incident posted on YouTube had nearly 30,000 views.

The video, made by Del Valle on his cellphone, shows Thorne standing in his bedroom, Taser drawn, and ordering him to get off his bed.

“I’m not standing up,” Del Valle said. “I’m in my house. I’m sleeping.”

As Thorne moves toward him with the stun gun, Del Valle warns he is recording him.

“Go ahead, tase me,” he says before Thorne fires a high-voltage electric probe into his chest.

You can reach Staff Writer Paul Payne at 707-568-5312 or paul.payne@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @ppayne.