City faces sanctions in Hawkes death
Judge says ‘APD failures’ denied vital evidence to family in lawsuit
A judge on Thursday ordered sanctions against the city of Albuquerque in a lawsuit involving the death of Mary Hawkes, who was shot and killed by a police officer in 2014, finding that “numerous APD failures” left her family without access to the best evidence.
Judge Nan Nash granted the Hawkes family’s request that the city be sanctioned for failing to preserve vital evidence surrounding a fatal encounter between the 19-year-old Hawkes and then-officer Jeremy Dear.
Attorneys for the city said they disagree with the ruling and plan to ask the judge to reconsider.
In granting the request for sanctions, Nash wrote that at trial, the jury will be instructed that the shooting of Hawkes was unreasonable as a matter of law and that it proximately caused her death.
Attorneys representing the young woman’s family said the order means that the family’s trial
involving claims against the city will focus only on damages.
“The jury will be charged to decide not whether this was wrong, but rather the value of her life,” plaintiffs’ attorney Shannon Kennedy said.
Stephanie Griffin, deputy city attorney, said in a statement that the jury should decide “the important question of whether the officer’s actions were justified or not.”
The argument centers on a series of videos recorded the night of Hawkes’ death as she ran from police, along with a series of malfunctions that some Albuquerque Police Department officers said prevented their cameras from recording the shooting.
Dear has said that his camera was unplugged at the time of the shooting. According to Nash’s order, another officer’s camera battery was dead, another’s was not activated and another’s recorded improperly pixilated video images.
Attorneys argued that some videos the city turned over had been altered and that in the cases in which no footage was recorded, the faulty lapel cameras themselves should have been preserved.
“The lack of the recordings gives rise to our need to look at the cameras to make the determination of whether or not somehow … they failed to record en masse or if they actually destroyed evidence,” said Laura Schauer Ives, another attorney representing the plaintiffs.
The missing evidence, she said, could have helped plaintiffs prove their case.
Nash agreed and said the Police Department’s failures left plaintiffs with “no access to the best evidence.”
Nash wrote that failure to record the shooting, “while extremely disturbing and suspicious” did not rise to a level that would merit sanctions. But she said the city is at fault for failing to preserve the cameras.
The prejudice to the Hawkes family is hard to ascertain, she said, but is “arguably high” because people generally believe police officers, “especially in light of the fact that the only live witness that could testify for plaintiff regarding the facts was killed.”
She said the sanction was intended to “deter similar conduct in the future.”
Hawkes, who was suspected of stealing a truck, was shot and killed in April 2014. Police said she pointed a gun at Dear, but police reports from the shooting said her fingerprints were not found on the firearm.
Griffin said the ruling is based on inaccurate or disputed facts, and that the cameras are available and were offered to plaintiffs’ attorneys, who she said did not accept that offer. She said Dear’s camera was sent to the manufacturer for analysis and that plaintiffs have that report.