A federal civil jury Wednesday awarded $2 million to the mother of a man found dead in former West Hollywood political donor and now-imprisoned felon Ed Buck\u2019s apartment nine years ago.<\/p>\n
The wrongful death lawsuit came to trial after Buck failed to finalize and sign a 2024 settlement agreement with Gemmel Moore\u2019s mother, LaTisha Nixon.<\/p>\n
Nixon argued that Buck engaged in unlawful and negligent conduct, wrongful death, sexual battery, assault, hate violence based on Moore\u2019s race, human trafficking and revenge porn, and sought damages on behalf of her late son.<\/p>\n
The 71-year-old Buck was convicted in Los Angeles federal court in 2021 of the overdose deaths of Moore and a second man, and is serving a 30-year prison sentence for providing fatal doses of methamphetamine to the victims.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel vindicated, I feel seen,\u201d Nixon said outside court. \u201cI feel relief. I feel happiness. I feel sadness. I\u2019m all over the place. It sends a signal to the predators that we know are out there that \u2026 we\u2019re going to come after you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Buck maintained that 26-year-old Moore was a long-time drug user and friend, and that they used methamphetamine and other drugs together. Buck claimed Moore willingly participated in the actions.<\/p>\n
\u201cTragically, Mr. Moore accidentally died during a consensual round of drug use with Mr. Buck,\u201d according to Buck\u2019s attorneys.<\/p>\n
The trial began Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Evidence in the criminal case showed Buck lured young Black men who were often experiencing homelessness, addiction and\/or poverty to his West Hollywood apartment for sexually charged so-called \u201cparty and play\u201d sessions in which he would inject them with methamphetamine and drug them with sedatives, with and without their consent.<\/p>\n
Moore and Timothy Dean died of methamphetamine overdoses 18 months apart \u2014 Moore in July 2017 and Dean in January 2019.<\/p>\n
After less than a day of deliberations on July 27, 2021 \u2014 the four-year anniversary of Moore\u2019s death \u2014 the federal jury in downtown Los Angeles found Buck guilty of all nine charged felony counts.<\/p>\n
Buck solicited his victims in various ways, including using social media platforms, dating and escort websites, or via referrals from prior victims, including individuals he hired to do other work for him, offering a finder\u2019s fee for referrals, evidence showed.<\/p>\n
Buck \u2014 who had donated more than $500,000 to mostly Democratic causes and served in 2016 as one of California\u2019s Electoral College members \u2014 was convicted of two counts of distribution of controlled substances resulting in death.<\/p>\n
He was also found guilty of enticing Moore, who had moved to Texas, to travel to Los Angeles to engage in prostitution; knowingly and intentionally distributing methamphetamine; and using his apartment for the purpose of distributing narcotics such as methamphetamine, and the sedatives gamma hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) and clonazepam.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said Buck caused the deaths as a result of his \u201cfetish\u201d for injecting men with increasing doses of methamphetamine until they became comatose. The defense countered that the victims suffered from serious medical conditions that ended their lives.<\/p>\n
Buck declined to testify in his own defense.<\/p>\n
Over the course of the two-week criminal trial, federal prosecutors called more than 20 witnesses, including four men who told of smoking methamphetamine that Buck provided and then being pressured to allow the defendant to inject them with the drug.<\/p>\n
Buck is facing an additional civil trial in Santa Monica on behalf of Dane Brown\u2019s estate. Brown, 43, survived several drug overdoses at Buck\u2019s home and testified at the criminal trial but was found dead in South Los Angeles in November 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal civil jury Wednesday awarded $2 million to the mother of a man found dead in former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[29662,40834,1436,339,48,52,51,47,50,49,6316,2601,95006],"class_list":["post-205572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-awarded","tag-buck","tag-case","tag-death","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-mother","tag-victim","tag-wrongful"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}