Friday, June 5, 2026
Page 3
Ninth Circuit:
Case Accusing Garden Grove Officer of Fabrication Is Revived
Opinion Says Plaintiff, Who Claimed He Was Falsely Incarcerated Relating to Overturned Murder Conviction, Raised Genuine Dispute Over Whether Police Report Contains Significant Mischaracterizations, Drawing Dissent
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held yesterday that a party who asserts that he was wrongly incarcerated for murder, before his conviction was overturned for insufficient evidence, raised a genuine issue of material fact as to his claim that an investigating officer deliberately fabricated evidence, drawing a dissent saying that the detective’s actions did not meet the “stringent test” established for such a constitutional violation.
Circuit Judges Eric D. Miller and Anthony S. Johnstone signed yesterday’s memorandum decision, which reverses a judgment entered in favor of Detective Mark Lord of the Garden Grove Police Department and the city, as well as certain supervisory officers, after a District Court judge found that the investigator’s leaving out certain statements from his description of a prolonged and confusing witness interview did not rise to the level of a deliberate fabrication.
Agreeing with the trial court that the “harsh” interview tactics used on the witness, who was 17 years old at the time, were not so abusive that they raised constitutional concerns, the court disagreed that a reasonable jury could not find that the report contained serious mischaracterizations.
Dissenting, Circuit Judge Johnnie Rawlinson wrote:
“I respectfully dissent from the majority disposition on the deliberate fabrication of evidence claim for two reasons. The first is that Detective Lord’s actions in this case did not rise to the level of deliberate fabrication of evidence. The second is that Detective Lord is entitled to qualified immunity….”
Second-Degree Murder
The question arose after Aaron Nguyen was convicted of second-degree murder relating to a May 2011 gang-related shooting that resulted in the death of Scottie Bui. It was uncontested that Nguyen was not the shooter, and prosecutors proceeded on a felony murder theory based on allegations that he engaged in actions that amounted to disturbing the peace leading up to the incident.
On the night in question, members of the Tiny Rascals Gang allegedly set out to fight rivals outside the Phi Hong pool hall. After the targets of the attack, including Bui, fled the area by car, a chase ensued, and the fatal shots were fired.
Aaron Nguyen, who was 27 years old at the time, and his then-17-year-old girlfriend Nina Nguyen, were known to associate with members of both gangs. Lord interviewed the minor for nearly three hours.
During the interview, she repeatedly denied being at Phi Hong, and the interrogator falsely told her that they had evidence that showed that she and Aaron Nguyen were at the location just before the shooting. In a second interview, officers accused her of lying, showed her a photograph of the pool hall, and said that the department had video surveillance of her boyfriend’s car in the area that night.
She eventually said that she was there but insisted that she had no memory of it.
Lord had her draw a map indicating how the perpetrators blocked the victim’s car during the chase, telling her to write the name of the street on which the shooting occurred, and she complied but then denied observing any such “traps” when shown a photograph of the vehicle in question.
Report Drafted
Lord drafted an 18-page summary of the interview, saying that Nina Nguyen could not remember certain events, “may have gotten some of the incident jumbled,” and was “vague” in her responses.
However, he said that “[he] showed Nina a picture of the Phi Hong Billiards and she admitted she was there with Aaron” and that “[s]he told me she would draw a map [of the cars] and I had her do this.”
In 2020, Div. Three of the Fourth District Court of Appeal overturned his conviction for insufficient evidence. The following year, he filed a complaint against Lord, the City of Garden Grove, and certain other officers, asserting claims under 42 U.S.C. §1983.
He alleged that “he was wrongfully incarcerated for nine years” based on evidence that was “heavily contradicted and extracted using highly abusive and coercive interrogation methods that detectives knew or should have known would produce false and unreliable evidence, particularly when used against a vulnerable juvenile witness.”
Senior District Court Judge James Selna of the Central District of California granted defense motions for summary judgment in December 2023, saying:
“It is undisputed that Detective Lord’s report omits…that Detective Lord told Nina to ‘write Westminster’ [as the street name on the map]….Detective Lord does not write in his report that Nina denied being at the Phi Hong poolhall in the interviews….”
However, he opined that “while Detective Lord’s statement that…‘[Nina Nguyen] admitted she was there with Aaron’ may be inaccurate and careless, it fails to rise to the level of a deliberate fabrication of evidence.”
Deliberate Fabrication
Saying that “Plaintiffs raise a genuine dispute of material fact as to their deliberate fabrication claim…as to Detective Lord,” Miller and Johnstone wrote:
“A reasonable jury viewing Detective Lord’s police report could find that he deliberately fabricated evidence because the report contains at least two statements that it could find to be significant mischaracterizations. Lord’s report stated that (1) ‘[he] showed Nina a picture of the Phi Hong Billiards and she admitted she was there with Aaron,’ and (2) ‘[s]he told me she would draw a map, and I had her do this.’ These statements…significantly misrepresent her statements as to a critical issue in the case.”
However, they rejected the view that the interview was so coercive as to render all evidence obtained unreliable, commenting:
“[A] reasonable jury could not find that the Officers’ harsh interrogation tactics were ‘so coercive and abusive that they knew or should have known that those techniques would yield false information.’…We have held that ‘an allegation that an interviewer disbelieved an initial denial and continued with aggressive questioning of the child cannot, without more, support a deliberate fabrication-of-evidence claim, even if the allegation is amply supported by the evidence.’ ”
As to the remaining claims, they said:
“Each of these claims depends on a finding that Aaron’s due process rights were violated. Since there remains a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether Aaron’s due process rights were violated, we remand to the district court to consider these claims as well.”
Rawlinson’s View
Citing the 2001 en banc decision in Devereaux v. Abbey, Rawlinson wrote:
“In that case, we concluded that ‘there is a clearly established constitutional due process right not to be subjected to criminal charges on the basis of false evidence that was deliberately fabricated by the government.’…However, we went on to conclude that the plaintiff’s allegations of improper interview techniques did not rise to the level of deliberate fabrication of evidence.”
Saying that the majority found the case distinguishable because “Detective Lord had the witness draw a map that mischaracterized her testimony,” she asserted:
“But this argument is merely an amplification of the attack on the interviewing techniques used by Detective Lord, which under Devereaux is insufficient to establish a deliberate fabrication case….That the statements allegedly contradict the video and transcripts of the interview does not raise a material issue of fact regarding [the] ‘stringent test’ for deliberate fabrication of evidence.”
Saying that none of the facts found to be sufficient in other cases for such a due process claim—such as false reporting of quotations as attributable to a witness that contradicted her statements—were present in the case, she argued that “Detective Lord is entitled to qualified immunity” as no jurisprudence has clearly established that his actions violated the Constitution.
The case is Nguyen v. City of Garden Grove, 24-189.
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