Luis Carrillo

He served in the United States Marine Corps, started college at East Los Angeles College and finished at UCLA, taught history and English at the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. He entered the California bar in December 1976. He practices in South Pasadena with his son Michael.

Javier Ovando

On October 12, 1996, two officers of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division, Rafael Pérez and Nino Durden, shot nineteen-year-old Javier Ovando in a building west of downtown. The shots left him paralyzed from the waist down. The officers reported that he had burst into their observation post with a pistol and that they had fired in response. A jury convicted Ovando on February 20, 1997, of two counts of assault on a peace officer and one count of exhibiting a firearm in an officer’s presence, and the judge, who said Ovando had shown no remorse, sentenced him to twenty-three years and four months.

In September 1999 Pérez, cooperating with investigators after his own guilty plea on drug charges, told them that Ovando had been standing unarmed in a doorway when Durden fired, and that Durden had afterward planted the pistol, a Tec-22 with its serial numbers filed off. On September 16, 1999, the district attorney’s office filed a habeas corpus petition on Ovando’s behalf; the court vacated the conviction and dismissed the charges, and Ovando left prison after about two and a half years inside. Carrillo represented Ovando in his claim against the city. It settled on November 21, 2000, for $15 million.

Jesus G.

In December 2000 prosecutors trying Alfonso Aranda for a gang-related murder in Los Angeles Superior Court asked the court to lock up two teenage witnesses under Penal Code section 1332, the statute that lets a judge hold a material witness who will not post security for his appearance. One of them, Jesus G., was fifteen. He had gone to Mexico and been located in Calexico, and on December 11, 2000, the court declared him a material witness and set his bail at $100,000. Carrillo, who represented him, told the court that the boy had never been served with a subpoena, and petitioned for habeas corpus; the Consulate General of Mexico filed a brief supporting him.

On January 31, 2001, the Court of Appeal decided his petition together with a second boy’s in a published opinion, In re Francisco M., 86 Cal.App.4th 1061. The court held that a witness the state wants to detain must have a hearing with counsel at which he may contest the detention and present evidence; that the judge must weigh the seriousness of the charges, the witness’s materiality, the length of the detention, the evidence on whether he will appear, his age and maturity, the harm to him and his family, his family’s means, the reason for any continuance, and whether steps short of jail such as electronic monitoring or protective custody would secure his attendance; and that the detention of a minor requires greater scrutiny than that of an adult. The court sent both cases back with directions to hold the hearings forthwith.

A Command and Control Breakdown

On May 1, 2007, an immigrant-rights rally in MacArthur Park held a permit that ran until nine o’clock at night. At about 5:15 some demonstrators blocked a street. The police declared an unlawful assembly and ordered the crowd, many of whom spoke only Spanish, to disperse in English, from a helicopter and through megaphones; some six hundred officers then moved through the park with batons and fired 146 foam-rubber projectiles. Marchers and journalists were struck, and the department’s own report later counted 246 people who reported injuries. On May 7 Deputy Chief Cayler “Lee” Carter, the ranking officer at the scene, was demoted and sent home, and he resigned effective June 6. On May 30 Chief William Bratton attributed the day to “a command and control breakdown” that began in the planning stages. The department released its internal report on October 9, 2007, and on July 8, 2008, recommended discipline for seventeen officers and two sergeants of Metropolitan Division.

Carrillo represented forty of the demonstrators who sued the city. Their claims were resolved with the others on February 4, 2009, when the City Council approved $12.85 million to settle nine lawsuits, eight consolidated cases and a federal class action covering 297 people, together with clarifications of the department’s policy on demonstrations and training on those clarifications for its officers. The department changed its training on crowd control and baton strikes.

What the District Knew

Mark Berndt taught third grade at Miramonte Elementary School in the Los Angeles Unified School District. He was arrested on January 30, 2012, after a photo developer reported pictures of blindfolded children in his classroom. Carrillo represented twenty-five of Berndt’s former students and fifteen of their parents, and the families’ lawyers alleged that the district had received complaints about Berndt as early as 1983 and had kept him in his classroom. Berndt pleaded no contest in November 2013 to twenty-three counts of lewd acts on a child and was sentenced to twenty-five years. The district settled more than sixty of the children’s claims for about $30 million; the remaining cases, Carrillo’s among them, went toward trial, and jury selection began on November 17, 2014. On November 21 the district agreed to pay more than $139 million to resolve them for eighty-two claimants, with a judge to review each claim and set each child’s share.

Robert Pimentel taught fourth grade at George De La Torre Elementary School in Wilmington. The police began investigating him in March 2012 after parents reported that he had touched their children, and he was arrested in January 2013. Carrillo represented children from his classroom, and in March 2013 he disclosed that in October 2009 at least one parent had told district officials that Pimentel had touched her daughter and that the district had made no report to the police. The district’s general counsel, David Holmquist, confirmed a parent meeting in 2009 and said the district’s files, including the notes of that meeting, had been turned over to law enforcement. Pimentel was later sentenced to twelve years in prison. The firm’s cases for three of the children settled for $9.9 million.

Day Two of Summer School

Moises Murillo was eight years old, had Down syndrome, could not walk, and went to Sunset Elementary School in the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District in an adaptive stroller. On May 31, 2017, his second day of summer school, staff took him out of the stroller, secured him to an ordinary school chair with a physical-therapy gait belt, and turned away. Left alone, he pushed himself back, fell backward, and struck his head on the floor; the impact fractured his spine. He died on June 4, 2017. His individualized education program had set out how he was to be supported at school, and his family alleged that the staff had not followed it.

Carrillo’s firm and Steve Vartazarian brought the case for Roberta Murillo and her family in 2018. The district’s board approved a settlement in closed session on June 30, 2022, by a vote of five to nothing, and on August 17, 2022, the family announced its terms: $18 million.

4:28 a.m.

In the early morning of March 31, 2020, California Highway Patrol officers stopped Edward Bronstein, thirty-eight, on a freeway in Burbank on suspicion of driving under the influence and took him to the Altadena station for a blood draw under a warrant. He hesitated when told to extend his arm. Officers put him face down on a mat and held him there, pressing on his back and legs, while a nurse, Arbi Baghalian, drew blood. He said he would give the blood voluntarily; he said he could not breathe, by Michael Carrillo’s count twelve times; an officer told him it was too late. A sergeant filmed the eighteen minutes with a handheld camera. Bronstein went silent and limp, and a second vial was drawn after he had stopped moving. He was pronounced dead at 4:28 a.m. His blood alcohol content was 0.04 percent.

In December 2020 Luis Carrillo, with Annee Della Donna and Eric Dubin, filed I.M. v. Doe CHP Officers 1–10 in the United States District Court for the Central District of California for Bronstein’s children and parents, pleading Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment claims against the State of California, the Highway Patrol, ten officers, the nurse, and her employer. On March 15, 2022, after a federal judge ordered the video released, the family’s lawyers made it public; Carrillo called what it showed “reprehensible and shocking.” On March 29, 2023, District Attorney George Gascón charged seven of the officers and the nurse with involuntary manslaughter, the officers also with assault under color of authority. On May 9, 2023, the State of California agreed to pay the family $24 million. The Highway Patrol now bars restraint methods that carry a substantial risk of positional asphyxia and trains its officers on the risk.

The Passenger Seat

On September 27, 2021, Manuela "Mona" Rodriguez, eighteen years old and the mother of a five-month-old son, got into a fight with a fifteen-year-old girl in a parking lot near Millikan High School in Long Beach. She climbed into the passenger seat of a car to leave. As the car moved past him, Eddie Gonzalez, a Long Beach Unified School District safety officer hired the previous January 10, fired at least two shots into it. One struck her in the back of the head. Her family removed her from life support days later and donated her organs, which went to five people.

Carrillo represented the family from the first week. On October 1 he asked the state attorney general to take over the criminal investigation, and he said of Gonzalez, “This man has no business carrying a badge and a gun.” The district’s use-of-force policy provided that its officers shall not fire at a fleeing person, at a moving vehicle, or through a vehicle window unless circumstances clearly warrant firearm use as a final means of defense; the Board of Education fired Gonzalez within days, and prosecutors charged him with murder. On April 4, 2023, the family’s lawyers announced a $13 million settlement with the district.

Section 783

A girl born in May 2001 was molested by her fourth-grade teacher, Joseph Baldenebro, in 2009 and 2010, when she was eight, in the Mountain View School District. In her suit against the district, discovery turned up a second sexual incident, involving a teenage family friend, in 2013. The district wanted the jury to hear about it on the question of what had caused her distress. Judge Mary Ann Murphy of the Los Angeles Superior Court reasoned that California’s civil rape-shield statute, Evidence Code section 1106, did not reach conduct the plaintiff had been subjected to involuntarily, and admitted the evidence under sections 780 and 352; both sides referred to it in their opening statements. Her lawyers, Luis Carrillo, Michael Carrillo, and Laura Jimenez of the Carrillo firm with Esner, Chang & Boyer, petitioned for a writ. The Court of Appeal denied it; the Supreme Court stayed the trial and sent the case back for full briefing; the Court of Appeal then held in a published opinion that the evidence could come in. The Supreme Court took the case again.

On July 27, 2023, Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero wrote for a unanimous court in Doe v. Superior Court, 15 Cal.5th 40. The statute’s protection of a plaintiff’s sexual conduct extends to abuse she was involuntarily subjected to, the court held, and such evidence may be admitted only through the procedure of section 783, a written motion, a hearing, and an order specifying what may be asked, and after a section 352 review that requires special informed review and scrutiny. The trial court had held no such hearing and made no such order. The court reversed. Holly Boyer argued the case.

In 2024 Senator Anna Caballero carried Senate Bill 1386, co-sponsored by Consumer Attorneys of California and Equal Rights Advocates. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s analysis named Doe v. Superior Court as the ruling that had left the civil shield uncertain, and the bill amended section 1106 to bar evidence of a plaintiff’s other sexual conduct offered to prove consent or lack of harm or to attack her credibility on those points. A Sacramento Bee column of August 29, 2024, told the story of the fourth grader, called her Suzie, and gave the bill its name: “Suzie’s Law.” Governor Gavin Newsom signed it on September 29, 2024.

Five Citizens

On December 12, 2023, the Los Angeles City Council commended Carrillo in a resolution introduced by Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez. The commendation traced his work to the students of the East Los Angeles walkouts and counted forty-seven years of practice. He was then preparing to retire. He opened his reply with a grito and said “we got a lot of work to do in the future.”

On August 20, 2025, he and Michael Carrillo announced federal claims for five United States citizens and one lawful permanent resident detained by immigration agents during raids in Southern California. Javier Ramirez was arrested at his workplace in Montebello and held for four days; he is diabetic and said no one checked his blood sugar, and he said he had shown the agents his passport. Cary Lopez Alvarado was arrested while nine months pregnant. Andrea Velez said an agent threatened to arrest her for interfering when she asked for identification and a badge number. The claims alleged racial profiling and civil-rights violations and gave the government forty-five days to answer before the lawyers could file suit. “The ICE agents were brutal with our people. Not just immigrants, U.S. citizens,” Carrillo said. It was fifty-seven years since the walkouts.