Sheriff’s deputy innocent on charges he knocked out handcuffed prisoner

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Updated: October 19, 2011 3:45AM

A Cook County sheriff’s deputy was acquitted earlier this month on charges that he knocked a handcuffed man unconscious by pulling on his leg shackles and sending him crashing face first into the concrete floor.

But although Rafael Munoz, 35, was cleared of the assault, the sheriff’s Office of Professional Review is still recommending he be terminated, sheriff’s spokesman Steve Patterson said, pointing to surveillance video he said shows Munoz attacking the man in police custody.

“We are surprised with the judge’s ruling given the frame by frame evidence on the videotape,” Patterson said Monday.

The man Cook County prosecutors said was beaten by Munoz suffered a fractured nose, broken teeth and lacerations to the face and nose as a result of last year’s incident, authorities said.

Munoz’s attorney Tom Needham said he never had to present his case since the Judge Thomas Tucker acquitted Munoz after prosecutors presented their case in Maywood during a one-day bench trial on Aug. 4.

“The judge ruled on a directive finding. My client was ready to testify that he [the man in police custody] fell because he was drunk or dizzy,” Needham said.

The then 40-year-old man was awaiting a bond hearing in Maywood for driving under the influence when prosecutors said Munoz viciously tripped him.

Needham said the man, fitted with handcuffs and leg shackles because he was resistant, started pounding his head in the jail cell over 200 times in an 11-minute span.

The man was apparently trying to complain that his handcuffs were “too tight and painful,” state’s attorney’s spokesman Andy Conklin said at the time.

That’s when authorities say Munoz went into the cell with another deputy and “lifted and pulled” on the man’s leg shackles, causing him to fall.

Munoz, of Norridge, has been a courthouse deputy since 2006. He has been suspended without pay and the recommendation to terminate him is pending.

“It would be a shame if his career were terminated over this incident,” Needham said.

Needham said the man who claims Munoz beat him was arrested for another DUI this year.