Investigators: Grand jury not shown autopsy report in Long Island police beating death

SUFFOLK COUNTY (WABC) -- A woman whose partner died after being beaten by Suffolk County police is begging for officers who were never indicted to be held accountable, and now, for the first time, an Eyewitness News investigation reveals that critical evidence was apparently never presented to a grand jury.

The secrecy of grand juries is a hot-button issue, brought to the forefront again by arguments Thursday to release grand jury proceedings in the Eric Garner case.

Jennifer Gonzalez is watching those developments carefully after her partner died in police custody in 2008, and she's been battling ever since to find out what really happened.

The case of Kenny Lazo has huge ramifications for others around the country because it highlights what happens when the cloak of secrecy surrounding a grand jury is lifted. Lazo's family believes the evidence is clear that the process was skewed to make sure there was no indictment of five police officers.

Gonzalez has been fighting for seven years to get answers about the death of Lazo, who was painted by cops as a drug dealer who resisted arrest during a traffic stop. What's not in dispute is that the 24-year-old father of a young son was beaten with flashlights, never taken to the hospital and died a few hours later on the floor of the 3rd precinct.

"This man was beaten to death with a flashlight," Lazo family attorney Fred Brewington said. "He was bitten on his buttocks and other places of his body. He was restrained. He had bruises from stem to stern."

Brewington, a civil rights attorney claims Lazo's police brutality case was set up to fail when it was presented to a grand jury by the Suffolk County District Attorney.

"They manipulated the entire process to favor the police officers," he said. "This process was doomed not to come back with an indictment."

Brewington says that it was only through filing a civil lawsuit that he discovered that certain critical evidence was never presented to the grand jury, including this autopsy report by the Medical Examiner.

"They didn't see it," Brewington said. "They didn't see it. They didn't see the autopsy report and they didn't see the finding."

It determined Lazo died of "sudden cardiac death following exertion associated with prolonged physical altercation with multiple blunt impacts...blunt impact to head...blunt impacts to torso, blunt impacts to upper extremities."

The report further states the manner of death was homicide.

"I strongly feel that way, that the actions that they took and everything that was presented was to clear the cops so they weren't charged," Gonzalez said.

Lazo's family still doesn't know what the five cops involved said in the grand jury, because a Judge only ordered the release of the Medical Examiner minutes and nothing else.

"We have sued the district attorney here for a number of reasons," Brewington said. "One which is participating in a cover-up."

Gonzalez now has a website to share information with other families of police brutality victims, and she's reached out to the relatives of Eric Garner on Staten Island.

"It's very painful knowing that another family is going to have to go through what I've been going through for seven years," she said. "I just feel like they do what they need to cover each other, to protect each other, and I don't feel like things are presented the way they should be presented."

Eyewitness News tried repeatedly to get a comment from the attorneys representing the police officers, the Suffolk County Police Department and the District Attorney's Office, but got no response.

The civil rights lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial in the next few months.