Jury rejects claims that ex-Sacramento police officer groped suspect during arrest

A jury has rejected a lawsuit seeking more than $2 million over allegations that a former Sacramento police officer groped and molested a woman he had arrested in 2016.

The unanimous jury verdict Wednesday afternoon in Sacramento federal court found that former Officer Patrick Mulligan did not violate Candida Johnson’s right against “unreasonable intrusion into her bodily integrity,” court documents say.

Mulligan, 56, who was accused in the 2018 lawsuit of fondling and molesting Johnson during an arrest over a missing cellphone, had adamantly denied the allegations and said Thursday in a telephone interview that he was relieved to have the matter resolved.

“I’m finally starting to get my appetite back,” said Mulligan, who retired in 2017 and first learned of the allegations when he was contacted by The Sacramento Bee.

“They were dragging my whole life through the mud, I was just sick to my stomach,” he said of the three-day trial. “Anger, depression. I tell you, I haven’t felt this much since the last time I got shot at.”

Mulligan said the jury deliberated for roughly an hour Wednesday before returning the verdict, and that “my heart was thumping.”

Senior Deputy City Attorney Sean Richmond had argued that there was no evidence of such behavior by Mulligan, and noted that video from Mulligan’s in-car camera show that “at no time either on video or microphone is Officer Mulligan demonstrating any inappropriate behavior whatsoever.”

“We had all the video that clearly demonstrated nothing close to this even occurred,” Mulligan said.