No charges to be filed against Sonoma County deputy in 2022 fatal shooting

Fifteen months after a sheriff’s deputy shot and killed migrant worker David Peláez-Chavez in a rural corner of the Knights Valley, the Sonoma County District Attorney announced Tuesday she will not file charges against Deputy Michael Dietrick.

After reviewing the evidence gathered by the Santa Rosa Police Department, including interviews with the deputies involved, DA Carla Rodriguez concluded they did not have sufficient evidence to charge Dietrick in connection with firing three times at Peláez-Chavez on July 29, 2022, she told reporters at a Tuesday afternoon press conference.

Dietrick told investigators he feared for his safety at the time he pulled the trigger because Peláez-Chavez was reaching for a rock he could have thrown. Dietrick was standing 10 to 15 feet away when he shot.

Rodriguez concluded there was not enough evidence to demonstrate to a jury that Dietrick’s decision-making in that split second was not “objectively reasonable,” the legal standard by which officers must justify the use of deadly force.

That standard has proven almost insurmountable when prosecutors do choose to press charges against officers, including two previous instances in Sonoma County.

“They were dealing with a man that was being aggressive, and we can’t overcome this legal defense,” Rodriguez said.

Deputies were called to the area after Peláez-Chavez broke the window of a rural home and stole a truck, dragging a gardener who tried to intervene down a driveway, according to police. Dietrick shot Peláez-Chavez after a 45-minute pursuit in which Peláez-Chavez ran barefoot through creek beds and over ridges.

Rodriguez, who has faced criticism for taking 10 months to reach a ruling, said the delay was largely attributable to her search for an outside expert to review the use of force.

And the delay, in part, also seemed attributable to a new district attorney weighing one of her most high-profile decisions so far.

“I’m very sympathetic to everyone in our community,” she said, “and it just took me a while to reach my conclusions in this case.”

Body camera footage from the Peláez-Chavez shooting drew considerable public scrutiny, and Rodriguez’s decision drew immediate condemnation from the family, who has sued the county in federal court.

Jose Peláez, the brother of Peláez-Chavez, said that until he met with a representative from the DA’s victim services office Tuesday morning, he still expected Rodriguez would charge Dietrick.

“There wasn’t justice. It wasn’t what we expected,” Peláez told The Press Democrat in an interview Tuesday afternoon ahead of Rodriguez’s press conference.

How far do the words ‘self defense, self defense’ go for them?” Peláez added. “Our word is ‘justice.’ When is there going to be justice?”

Throughout the chase Peláez-Chavez — who according to posthumous toxicology testing had methamphetamine in his system — behaved erratically, called for aid and shouted in Spanish that he feared deputies would kill him.

Jose Peláez believes his brother was asking for help and was afraid of the officers. When he raised that suggestion with the DA official who met with him, he said, she told him her brother’s facial expressions during the pursuit reflected anger and rage.

“Everything she said was said in favor of (the deputies),” he said.

In the press conference, Rodriguez also cited facial expressions, among other factors, when asked why she concluded Dietrick believed Peláez-Chavez had the “apparent intent to cause seriously bodily injury or death to the deputies.”

Peláez-Chavez’s erratic and criminal behavior at nearby residences before deputies arrived, his behavior during the pursuit, and “his face, looking at them,” while he held the tools and at times, the rock, all supported Dietrick’s belief that the man intended to harm him, Rodriguez said.

She also described delusional, angry and at times threatening text messages Peláez-Chavez sent to his girlfriend, with whom he lived in Lake County, in the days before the shooting.

But despite time spent in the press conference and the report on those text messages and on past felony convictions in Pelaez-Chavez’s background, that information was ultimately irrelevant to whether Dietrick’s stated fear for his life was legally defensible. The deputies, Dietrick and Anthony Powers, did not know who they were chasing the day of the shooting.

“It’s just what Dietrick and Deputy Powers knew at the time,” Rodriguez said when asked about whether the text messages were a factor in her decision.

By the time deputies cornered Peláez-Chavez, body camera footage shows both he and Dietrick were exhausted by the long pursuit. Peláez-Chavez, who had held a rock and gardening tools, was bent over when Dietrick shot him.

The second deputy, Powers, fired a stun-gun at roughly the same time that Dietrick fired his pistol — though during the chase the two deputies discussed Dietrick providing “lethal cover” while Powers’ would use a stun gun.

The two deputies’ testimony and her own review of the body-camera footage led Rodriguez to conclude Peláez-Chavez was picking up a rock when he was shot, she said.

Family members and advocates dispute the notion that it’s clear he was picking up a rock and say the video does not show him making an obvious throwing motion.

Izaak Schwaiger, the family’s attorney and one with a history of successfully challenging the sheriff deputies’ use of force in civil courts, said Tuesday he did not believe that Dietrick could have reasonably feared for his life.

“Go talk to a bunch of fifth graders about when somebody threw a rock at them last time,” Schwaiger said, “has nobody ever thrown a rock at you before?”

On the body camera footage, the deputy pulls the trigger almost simultaneously with the movement officials interpret a Peláez-Chavez picking up a rock, Schwaiger said. He does not believe Dietrick had time to calculate a threat.

“I think the deputy was exhausted, he was frustrated and he was too quick on the trigger,” Schwaiger said.

It was the second time Dietrick killed a suspect in the course of his duties as a law enforcement officer. The first came in 2016, when Dietrick was an officer for the Clearlake Police Department. The Lake County District Attorney cleared him in that shooting, which came after a man attacked Dietrick with a long steel flashlight when the officer responded to a burglary call, in 2017.

Schwaiger believes the Peláez-Chavez family has a strong case in civil court, he said, but he did not believe that would soften the emotional blow of a lack of criminal prosecution.

“When you hear from a high ranking official that ‘this isn’t a case’ and you’re looking for justice, that can be a deep blow,” he said, but, he added, “justice has not left the building.”

In July, Rodriguez told The Press Democrat she was using an expert in use of force cases from outside the office to review the shooting.

At the press conference, Rodriguez emphasized the considerable time and weight spent on the decision. “I did not want to hire someone who I would call a rubber stamp for police use of force,” she said. “I wanted to find someone whose record and history demonstrates fairness, impartiality and no favoritism.”

In the end, she chose Jeffrey Noble, a use of force expert, licensed attorney and former deputy chief of police who has served as a consultant and expert witness for cities and police departments across the US for almost 20 years.

He started a three-decade law enforcement career as a police officer in 1984, eventually rising to the rank of deputy chief for the Irvine Police Department and another Southern California police department.

In the critical incident report, the District Attorney’s Office noted Noble had consulted on or acted as an expert witness in more than 100 use of force cases in the last five years. Among them were high-profile police killing cases, including Philando Castile in Minnesota and Tamir Rice in Ohio. He served as a use of force expert for prosecutors bringing second-degree manslaughter charges against the officer who shot and killed Castile during a traffic stop in a suburb outside St. Paul, Minnesota, in 2016.

Attorneys for the family of Rice, the 12-year-old shot by Cleveland police in 2014, retained Noble and another former high-ranking police official whose assessments countered Cleveland prosecutors’ conclusion the shooting was justified.

Rodriguez said her office’s decision was ultimately based on legal standards as well as Noble’s independent evaluation of Dietrick’s actions.

In a report sent to the district attorney’s office in September, Noble concluded that “a reasonable police officer, knowing all of the facts and circumstances known to Deputy Dietrick, would have believed that Mr. Pelaez’s actions by picking up the rock that they were at imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury.”

“A reasonable police officer would believe that the size of the rock allowed it to be thrown and was large enough that if struck they could suffer a seriously bodily injury or death,” he said.

The charging decision fell to Rodriguez after California Attorney General Rob Bonta declined to pick up the case. While state law requires the California Department of Justice to investigate police killings of unarmed civilians, Bonta ruled that the rock Peláez-Chavez held when he was killed met the definition of a deadly weapon. That decision drew criticism from Rodriguez’s predecessor, Jill Ravitch.

Rodriguez, by contrast, said Tuesday that the Attorney General was correct in his assessment. “He was armed with a rock, the hammer and the till,” she said. Whether such items are considered deadly depends on how they’re used or brandished, she continued, a threshold she deemed was reached.

Two administrative investigations, one by the sheriff’s office and the other by the Sonoma County Independent Office of Law Enforcement Review and Oversight, are ongoing. Investigators in those cases are reviewing if Dietrick or Powers violated any department policies, not criminal statutes.

In a statement Tuesday, Engram said declined to comment on his office’s internal investigation other than to confirm it remained ongoing. “I respect the District Attorney’s decision,” he said.

For his part, John Alden, the director of IOLERO, said his independent investigation could differ in its findings, but declined to say when that work might wrap up.

“We have the opportunity to gather different evidence, and apply different standards than the DA does,” he said, “and we ask different questions.”

The Peláez-Chavez family filed a federal civil suit against Sonoma County last October. That case proceeds in the discovery stage, Schwaiger told The Press Democrat last week. He has conducted depositions with the two deputies involved, he said.

To defend itself in civil court, the county hired Bruce Praet, an attorney whose trainings for officers and efforts to write policy manuals for wide swathes of law enforcement agencies in the state have drawn controversy.

You can reach Staff Writer Andrew Graham at 707-526-8667 or andrew.graham@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @AndrewGraham88.

you can reach “In Your Corner” Columnist Marisa Endicott at 707-521-5470 or marisa.endicott@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @InYourCornerTPD and Facebook @InYourCornerTPD.