Jose “Chille” DeCastro returned from a self-imposed week-long exile with a new court filing in his lawsuit against nearly everyone involved in his 2024 conviction and later acquittal of interference and obstruction charges in Las Vegas.
The charges, originally filed in 2023, stem from an incident where DeCastro approached an active traffic stop at a strip mall in Las Vegas and attempted to interview the driver who had been pulled over.
A Las Vegas Metro Police Officer asked him to step away from the vehicle, DeCastro took a small step back, and when DeCastro was again asked to step away from the vehicle he refused to do so. A scuffle broke out, backup was summoned and ultimately, DeCastro was charged with obstruction of an officer and interference in a traffic stop.
DeCastro later sued all of the officers involved in the arrest, claiming that his rights were violated, false arrest and that he was injured by the officers during the arrest. He was convicted of the crimes in March of 2024 and served a small amount of time in jail before having the conviction thrown out in July of 2024.
The acquittal of the charges impacted DeCastro’s civil case against the LVMPD officers as the appeals court’s ruling conflicted with previous rulings by Judge Andrew P. Gordon, who is presiding over the Federal civil rights lawsuit.
Gordon revisited some of his rulings in the case in September of last year including his previous ruling that the arresting officer had probable cause to arrest DeCastro. In his decision, he threw out a number of charges by DeCastro, while leaving in place some of DeCastro’s claims.
At no time did Gordon make a final judgment on DeCastro’s claims, nor did he find anyone had perjured themselves in his rulings. The case is currently set to go to trial in early 2026.
DeCastro had also sued nearly everyone involved in his conviction and acquittal of the charges. In his initial complaint, he was seeking between $40 and $60 million dollars in damages for first amendment retaliation, unlawful search, due process violations, denial of a public trial, equal protection claims and claims that Clark County, Nevada, improperly trained their police officers.
In the revised complaint, DeCastro no longer makes a specific case for millions in damages, instead, he says that he will leave the compensatory damages in amounts “to be proven at trial” and wants unspecified “enhanced punitive damages against individual defendants.”
DeCastro also rearranges his charges to include First Amendment retaliation, Prosecutorial Vindictiveness, Fourth Amendment violations, Substantive Due Process violations, Sixth Amendment violations, Equal Protection violations, Brady Violations and improper training.
Among his new claims are the allegations of Brady violations for the arresting officer and the prosecutor in the case. DeCastro states that the arresting officer perjured himself at trial by stating that DeCastro did not back up when asked to do so, when, in fact, the video showed DeCastro taking a small step back; the same video shows DeCastro refusing to step back further when ordered to do so by the arresting officer.
DeCastro then added the prosecutor in the case to the Brady violation as she did not correct the officer after he “perjured” himself on the stand. DeCastro now states that Judge Gordon, in his federal civil rights lawsuit, also found that the arresting officer perjured himself in that lawsuit, which is justification for inclusion in the state level lawsuit.
The amended complaint attempts to tie together a grand conspiracy by the police, prosecutor and court system to deny DeCastro his rights, to falsely imprison him at to retaliate against him. It also now includes his February 14, 2024, arrest for walking through a crime scene and confronting police as evidence in the conspiracy against him.
Besides damage to his business and personal reputation, in the new filing, DeCastro is claiming irreversible harm due to spending four months in jail, missing the funeral of a cousin, and his mother having to visit him in jail while he wore an orange jumpsuit.
DeCastro has yet to serve the parties in the case.
This is a breaking news item.
