Man shot by deputy wants help after court halted $22.4M award
A 25-year-old man who became a paraplegic after a deputy shot him has received $200,000 from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. Now, he plans to turn to state legislators with the hope of getting more money.
The amount recently given to Dontrell Stephens is nowhere near the $22.4 million a federal jury had awarded him in 2016 — an amount an appeals court threw out earlier this year.
In recent days, Stephens reached a settlement in his lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Office. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals had ordered a new trial, but Stephens’ attorneys decided it wasn’t in their best interest to move forward with one.
Any settlement against
astate agency for more than would require an act $200,000 from the Florida Legislature. Stephens’ attorney, Jack Scarola, sent a letter to Sheriff Ric Bradshaw’s lawyer, seeking support for a claims bill that could provide him lots more money.
But the Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday that there’s no way it would support that. The agency will oppose “any attempt” by Stephens to force the agency to pay more than the $200,000 cap, said sheriff’s spokeswoman Teri Barbera.
Still, Scarola said it’s too early to say — especially amid election season — whether Stephens triumphs with a claims bill for an upcoming legislative session.
“It is impossible to handicap what Dontrell’s chances are at this point in time,” Scarola said. “We don’t know what the composition of the Legislature is going to look like. We don’t know who the governor is going to be. And even if the Legislature were to pass a claims bill, it must be
signed by the governor, who [can] reject it.
“I can’t tell you what Dontrell’s chances are.”
Stephens was shot by Lin on Sept. 13, 2013. Lin stopped Stephens for riding his bicycle into traffic. Lin testified he saw Stephens flash a dark object at him with his left hand. Lin said he believed Stephens had a gun and opened fire. The object turned out to be a cellphone.
The encounter was captured on a dashboard camera in Lin’s car. The shooting left Stephens paralyzed from the waist down.
In 2016, the jury ruled Lin used excessive force in the shooting and awarded $23.1 million in damages. But the judge reduced the amount of the reward to $22.4 million.
From the beginning, Bradshaw called it a “clean shoot.” The attorneys for the Sheriff ’s Office appealed the part of the verdict pertaining to Lin because the judge didn’t educate the jury about “qualified immunity,” the legal concept that gives law enforcement officers latitude when performing their duties.
In their ruling released in early January, two of the three appeals judges agreed jury instructions in the 2016 civil trial were erroneous, so a new trial was ordered.
Scarola said Stephens’ medical expenses have topped $1 million.
“Permanent paralysis is a grossly disproportionate penalty for impeding the flow of traffic or riding a bicycle on the wrong side of the street — even if we assume that Dontrell attempted to run away after being stopped for those transgressions,” Scarola wrote in his letter to the Sheriff ’s Office.
Scarola said Stephens is living at the Lord’s Place shelter and must visit hospital emergency rooms when his medical needs come up.
Information from Sun Sentinel news partner WPEC-CBS12 was used to supplement this report.