Mark Horwitz recently had the privilege of representing William Escobar who was a member of the Orlando Police Department. Last year he was accused of brutalizing a person he had just arrested. After the release of a video showing the incident Mr. Escobar was charged with 2 counts of battery and 2 counts of perjury for his police report.
This video depicted only a few seconds of the entire incident and looks like Mr. Escobar is striking and kicking this person for no reason. At this time there was a lot of news about police brutality and they would often show this video. As a result Mr Escobar was brutalized by the press. After a long conversation Mark Horwitz felt confident Mr. Escobar did not do anything wrong and just wanted to clear his name.
The fact that Mr. Holloway, the person being arrested, was trying to roll to his side and get up is not very clear in the short video. He claimed that he was approached by the officers, never grabbed officer Williams foot and was perfectly compliant. The video in question was played frame by frame for the jury during the trial. When watched frame by frame it is clear that Mr. Holloway was trying to lift his head and roll to his side.
During the trial we were also able to further impeach Mr. Holloway with his own words. Another officer was wearing a body cam and you can clearly hear Mr. Holloway say "all I did was grab his foot." During cross examination he claimed he never grabbed his foot and never would have said that. William Escobar was found not guilty on all counts.
