MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. – Jurors delivered a verdict Friday in the battery and official misconduct trial of a former Miami Gardens police officer who was criminally charged following a 2020 rough arrest that was captured on camera, finding the officer guilty on two counts and not guilty on five other charges.
Jurors found Jordy Yanes Martel guilty of one misdemeanor count each of battery with a taser and trespassing, while finding him not guilty on two charges of official misconduct and three additional counts of battery.
The confrontation in January 2020 started when the alleged victim, Safiya Satchell, was in her car, attempting to leave the Tootsie’s Cabaret strip club.
The club had asked Martel, who was working an off-duty detail there, to warn her not to come back after she allegedly threw money at a waitress.
But Satchell allegedly refused to get out of her car to be issued a trespass warning.
That’s when the situation escalated.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement said that Yanes Martel had “no legal authority to detain the victim,” who he forcibly removed from her vehicle, and took to the ground before kneeling on her neck.
Yanes Martel wrote in a police report that Satchell “purposely and maliciously struck me on the right part of my lower lip with a closed fist ..(she) continued to fight officers by kicking and punching.”
The state, however, claims the officer lied in his report.
“She can’t punch him in the face, she can’t punch the other officer in the face, she can’t kick him because he’s on her side, she can’t kick the other person because he’s standing up,” Assistant State Attorney Kioceaia Stenson said.
The officer’s defense attorneys argued Thursday that the state had not met the threshold to consider that report criminal.
“They want you to just like cover your eyes and act like there is no other actions that are involved in this case. That this is all about his actions, but his actions are reactionary to someone else that is involved in this case that you all heard from,” attorney David Braun said.
Yanes Martel decided not to testify in the case. He faces up to about two years in jail and is set to be sentenced July 19.