In Hastings case, add LR, chief, court is urged

A month after a federal jury found a former Little Rock police officer liable for the wrongful shooting death of 15-year-old Bobby Moore III in 2012, the boy’s mother is trying to get the city and a former police chief back into the case.

Austin Porter Jr., one of the attorneys who represented Moore’s mother, Sylvia Perkins, at trial, filed a notice Tuesday that Perkins is appealing Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Miller’s pretrial orders dismissing the city and retired chief Stuart Thomas as defendants.

On Jan. 27, Miller granted the city’s motion for summary judgment, dropping claims of failure to train, failure to discipline and failure to supervise against Thomas and the Little Rock Police Department. Thomas was chief when officer Josh Hastings killed Moore on Aug. 12, 2012, while investigating reports of car break-ins outside a Little Rock apartment complex.

On March 24, Miller issued an order refusing to reconsider his earlier order.

Both orders are being appealed to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, according to the notice.

The trial began April 3 and ended 10 days later, after a second day of deliberations that broke a jury deadlock at the end of the first day. The jury found Hastings liable and awarded Perkins and her family $415,000.

During the trial, Hastings said he fired three shots into the car Moore was trying to drive out of an apartment complex parking lot because the car was moving toward him. Two other teens who were passengers in the car testified that the car was in reverse and not headed toward Hastings when he fired.

The Police Department terminated Hastings as a result of the shooting, saying he didn’t conform with the department’s deadly-force policy. In 2013, he was tried twice on a manslaughter charge, with Pulaski County Circuit Court juries deadlocking both times. Prosecutors decided not to try him a third time in the criminal case.

Meanwhile, Porter and attorney Mike Laux have asked Miller to order Hastings to pay their legal fees and costs, totalling $430,000. Prevailing parties in civil cases are sometimes entitled under federal law to recoup the expenses from the losing party.