Jose “Chille” DeCastro made a late night deadline to file his response to the Las Vegas Metro Police Department’s Motion in Limine despite getting a one-day extension to the deadline while his response to a Motion to Dismiss by defendants Agnes Botelho and Clark County Nevada in another case was filed in PACER a month after he claimed to have filed it.
Starting with the LVMPD case. DeCastro had sought and was granted a single day extension of the deadline to file his response to the Motion in Limine by the LVMPD in the lawsuit where he is suing the officers involved in his March 2023 arrest in Las Vegas.
DeCastro’s response is important because the Motion in Limine was a request by the defense in the lawsuit to severely limit DeCastro’s ability to bring up certain subjects at trial. These include his acquittal of the charges spawned by the incident in state court and his ability to produce testimony as to the injuries he said he suffered during police custody.
The LVMPD made a case in their motion that DeCastro was presented with several deadlines to produce his evidence but either ignored them or simply chose not to reply. The only evidence he presented of his injuries, for which he’s asking $1,000,000.00 in damages, was a single receipt from an urgent care facility after the incident.
DeCastro offered no affidavits from doctors about his injuries, no receipts, no proof other than his own verbal claims that he suffered permanent damage to his Ulnar Nerve or to his groin during the incident.
In his filing, DeCastro’s attorney, Michael Mee, dodges accountability for not establishing his injuries, providing evidence or providing updated calculations for the damages he’s seeking:
“As to the claim that computations of damages have not been sufficiently been provided, DeCastro specifically plead the damages he was seeking at the time of the Complaint, as well as disclosed damages which are subject to mathematical calculation whenever they became available. Indeed a table of damages is identified by the Defendants in their motion as having previously been provided. In addition to the damages plead in Plaintiff’s Complaint and set forth numerically, the nature of certain categories of damages being difficult to objectively quantify is not grounds to prevent proof of those damages at the time of trial. Defendants has failed to demonstrate that they are entitled to relief.”
Attorneys for the LVMPD are also seeking to stop any mention of the state trial and appeals hearing, where DeCastro was found guilty of the charges against him, served minimal time in county jail, then was acquitted upon appeal.
The basis for the exclusion has been the on-going issue of differences between probable cause at a state level and probable cause on a federal level. While DeCastro was ultimately acquitted on a state level, the laws in Federal court differ and the subject may cause significant confusion that would prejudice the jury.
Mee states in response:
“As it relates to the District Court’s findings and holdings, it is simply incorrect to reduce them to a mere finding that the prosecution failed to establish proof beyond a reasonable doubt at the Justice Court trial, and that the Justice of the Peace lacked the legal authority, upon the evidentiary record, to convict DeCastro. The Order is not being offered for merely the inference that because the State failed to meet the beyond a reasonable doubt standard, probable cause is dispositively disproven. First, the District Court did not couch its factual findings in terms of what the state failed to prove or disprove beyond a reasonable doubt, but rather made affirmative factual findings as follows: (1) after being ordered to cease speaking to the driver by Ofc. Borque Mr. DeCastro complied; (2) Ofc. Borque claimed DeCastro did not back up but the Court found that DeCastro did back up when ordered to do so; (3) Ofc. Borque relied upon a twenty-one foot rule regarding the distance officers can be filed, and the Court found that as a matter of fact and law, no such rule exists. None of these findings has anything to do with deference to the defendant and the State’s failure to meet its burden of proof, to the contrary, they were affirmative factual findings without equivocation.
Likewise, the Court found that DeCastro’s conduct was “protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Again, this is not a finding that the State failed to prove that the conduct was not protected beyond a reasonable doubt, but rather was stated as an affirmative finding on a a mixed question of fact and law.
These findings do directly decide issues in this litigation which are “identical” to defenses the defendants are attempting to make in this case, and the weight of these findings is not diminished whatsoever by the fact that trial requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt as compared to probable cause. These findings by the District Court are just as logically controlling on a probable cause analysis as they are on an ultimate finding of guilt.“
On his Tuesday night live stream, DeCastro seemed to hedge his bets on the lawsuit, stating, “Just so you guys know, there’s a 95% chance I lose my federal case. Even though everything was on camera, I didn’t break any laws. I was just invoking my right to press. I’m probably going to lose February 9th. Just remember that. When I go to trial, I’m probably going to lose. I know that. I know that. I sued to show you that you can’t get justice in this country. The policies, procedures and protocols have to be changed. Not… I’m not going to get justice. We know that.”
DeCastro’s Monday filing (released to PACER on Tuesday) of his response to the motion to dismiss in the case of DeCastro v. Clark County was also a surprise. Originally due on December 28, the document itself is accompanied by a notice indicating that it served to Scott Davis, the Deputy District Attorney of Clark County, via the electronic filing system on December 30, 2025.
The accompanying documents all refer to the December 30 date, however, if electronically filed, they would have appeared in PACER instantaneously on the 30th and not the January 26, 2026, date indicated in the documents.
The charges against Deputy District Attorney Agnes Botelho revolve around DeCastro attempting to hold Botelho responsible for her decision to change her recommendation for sentencing between pre-trial and the sentencing phase of the trial for the March 2023 charges.
Botelho argued that she had total immunity for actions done as part of her role as a deputy district attorney. This would include immunity from lawsuits in her personal capacity, which DeCastro is the basis for DeCastro’s claims against her.
In his reply, DeCastro argued that it was too soon to dismiss Botelho from the lawsuit as “she remains necessary for limited discovery on Clark County’s policies and customs.”
He also states that Clark County, Nevada, must remain a defendant in its personal capacity despite the argument made by attorneys for the County that as a non-human entity it has no ability to be sued in “personal capacity.”
DeCastro argued that discovery is required before dismissal to the extent that Clark County is liable for “unconstitutional policies or customs” related to the case.
While originally seeking over $60,000,000.00 in damages in the lawsuit, DeCastro’s amended complaint reduced the damages to be determined at trial.
This is a breaking news story.
DeCastro v Clark County-019-Plaintiff's Opposition to Defendant Botelho and Clark County's Motion to Dismiss DeCastro-v-LVMPD-125-Stipulation-and-Order-to-Extend-Deadling-to-Respond-to-21“] DeCastro v LVMPD – 126 – Order on Stipulation DeCastro-v-LVMPD-127.0-Plaintiffs-Response-in-Opposition-to-Motion-in-Limine-21“]
