Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Shooting case at critical juncture
Nearly two years after prosecutors charged former police officer Nouman Raja, in the fatal shooting of stranded motorist Corey Jones, the case is at a crossroads. Will the manslaughter and attempted murder counts be dismissed under the state’s “stand your ground” self-defense law?
Or will the matter proceed to a trial where a jury will decide whether Raja’s use of deadly force in Palm Beach Gardens was justified?
The path will be determined after much-anticipated court hearings Monday and Tuesday. Legal observers say it’s hard to be sure which way it’ll turn out.
“These claims are hard to call as far as an outcome,” said West Palm Beach defense attorney Jack Fleischman, who believes Raja faces an uphill battle. “But this case is different because the defendant was acting as a law enforcement officer at the time of the shooting.”
While much is in dispute, some facts are clear: At 3:15 a.m. Oct. 18, 2015, Raja drove an unmarked van up to Jones’ broken down SUV, hopped out in plainclothes, and seconds later fired six shots from his personal handgun, hitting the 31-year-old Jones three times.
The court could accept as credible Raja’s account that he an-
nounced he was a cop, but was immediately threatened at gunpoint by Jones. Or the judge could find Raja was careless when he approached the SUV along an Interstate 95 off-ramp, and moments later during the encounter fired at an unarmed Jones.
The hearings will be like a mini-trial without a jury, with a presentation of the evidence and testimony from experts and investigators. There’s much speculation about whether Raja will take the witness stand, but his lawyers are not revealing yet whether the 40-year-old father of two small children will do so.
Raja has testified in this case once before, in a failed effort last year to remove the house arrest conditions of his $250,000 bond.
Whatever Circuit Judge Samantha Schosberg Feuer decides to do about the charges is certain to be appealed. A higher court will have the final say in a case that has attracted significant interest from the public and the media.
Jones’ family is furious that Raja can even try a “stand your ground” claim since he was a cop. But they have leaned on their faith, and their memories of Jones as a peaceful, churchgoing man who played the drums in a reggae band, and also worked as a Delray Beach city housing inspector.
“Our prayer is that the real truth is revealed about what happened to Corey,” said Sheila Banks, Jones’ aunt from his mother’s side.
Raja’s legal team is allowed to pursue this defense strategy because of a 2017 Broward ruling that says cops, like ordinary citizens, may seek the benefit of the “stand your ground” law.
The law says an individual does not have to retreat and can legally use deadly force, if he or she reasonably believes doing so is necessary “to prevent imminent death.”
The ruling, concerning Broward Sheriff’s Deputy Peter Peraza, is being reviewed by the state Supreme Court, but it still applies to Raja.
“Everyone who becomes a defendant should be able to use the same laws,” said Eric Schwartzreich, one of Peraza’s police union lawyers. “The real issue is whether or not the officer believes his life was in danger — it’s what he perceived.”
Raja benefitted from yet another recent change in state law that says defendants bringing “stand your ground” claims don’t have the burden of proving to a judge they were acting in self-defense.
The onus is now on prosecutors to overcome the claim. So they must prove by “clear and convincing evidence” that Raja is not entitled to have the charges tossed.
It’s a challenge they fully embrace.
Chief Assistant State Attorney Adrienne Ellis says it’s clear from the evidence — a recording of Jones’ roadside assistance call, Raja’s 911 call, and the shooting investigation — that Raja “showed a flagrant, total disregard to Corey Jones’ life and for the life of the public.”
According to prosecutors, Jones was on the way home from a band gig when his Hyundai Santa Fe broke down, and he stopped along a southbound I-95 exit ramp at PGA Boulevard at 1:30 a.m.
Nearly two hours later, Raja was on a plainclothes car burglary patrol and heading to check out a reported hotel nightclub disturbance. He then noticed the SUV, drove the wrong way up the ramp, and parked his van perpendicular to what he said he believed was an abandoned vehicle.
Raja stepped out of the van, leaving his tactical vest, police radio and department-issued gun behind.
“The way in which he approached the vehicle that night set off a horrific chain of events that led to the unjustifiable shooting of Corey Jones,” Ellis said at a recent hearing.
In a statement to investigators about four hours after the shooting, Raja said he was startled when Jones emerged from the driver’s seat of the SUV and almost immediately pointed a handgun at him.
“I said, ‘Hey, man, police, can I help you?’ and that’s when he ... jumped back and pointed the gun at me,” Raja said, explaining he thought he saw a “red laser” from the muzzle of Jones’ gun. It turned out just to be a reflection from a traffic signal, records show.
Defense attorneys Richard Lubin, Scott Richardson and Rick King say this is the essence of the claim, that the shooting was “wholly justifiable,” and “no ordinary citizen would be prosecuted for Officer Raja’s conduct.”
“As a police officer, he is eligible to seek immunity under Florida’s Stand Your Ground law just as any person could,” the attorneys wrote on April 19.
Yet the key to the prosecution’s bid to preserve the charges is an allegation that Raja lied about declaring he was a cop as he encountered Jones.
Ellis contends the proof is the roadside assistance call recording, that unbeknownst to Raja, captured sounds of the confrontation and gunshots.
Raja “approached the victim in a manner consistent with expected violence,” Ellis wrote. “There is no credible evidence that the Defendant identified himself as a law enforcement officer and there was no other manner in which the victim could discern this.”
Investigators said they determined from the call that Raja fired an initial volley of three shots from his .40-caliber Glock pistol, waited 10 seconds, then fired three more times — even after he had to have realized that Jones had dropped his pistol in the grass.
Jones’ body was found 41 yards away from his unused, licensed .380-caliber handgun.
The defense counters that the roadside assistance call only “partially recorded” the interaction between Raja and Jones.
But prosecutors also have highlighted what they say are inconsistencies in Raja’s 911 call, which they say was placed 33 seconds after the final shot.
As the call begins, Raja yells an expletive and is heard screaming drop the “gun right now!”
“Raja begins his 911 call as if he was still actively engaging an armed suspect ... by that time, Corey Jones’ body was down and he was dead or within moments of dying from the massive internal trauma caused by the bullet wound to his chest,” Deputy Chief Investigator Mark Anderson wrote in a report, citing Jones’ roadside assistance call.
The charges against Raja — manslaughter by culpable negligence while armed, and attempted first-degree murder with a firearm — marked the first time since 1993 that a cop in Palm Beach County was charged in an on-duty killing.
Prosecutors argue Raja is now “attempting to avoid accountability through the use of the ‘stand your ground’ law.”
Chief Assistant State Attorney Adrienne Ellis says it’s clear from the evidence — a recording of Jones’ roadside assistance call, Nouman Raja’s 911 call, and the shooting investigation — that Raja “showed a flagrant, total disregard to Corey Jones’ life and for the life of the public.”