Gaming officer’s widow loses discovery bid
Wife fails to get more time to gather details in case of husband’s death in training mishap
The widow of a slain Mississippi Gaming Commission officer won’t get additional time to gather evidence on whether the training officer who fatally shot her husband is entitled to immunity from prosecution.
Summer Gorman, the widow of John Gorman, asked a federal district court in Oxford for 60 days of discovery to determine if Robert Sharp was entitled to qualified immunity. But the court, in a February decision, found that Summer Gorman had not demonstrated why discovery was needed.
“Because the court finds that further factual development does not appear necessary to determine the qualified immunity issue, the Court finds that Plaintiff’s motion for limited discovery should be denied,” Senior U.S. District Judge Glen H. Davidson ruled.
The ruling was the latest action in the lawsuit filed by Summer Gorman over her husband’s death during a 2015 training exercise in Tunica. Summer Gorman filed the lawsuit in September against Sharp, who conducted the training exercise in which John Gorman died. The lawsuit also names the state of Mississippi and the Gaming Commission. The suit accuses the defendants, and those conducting a subsequent investigation, of using excessive force, failing to protect a law enforcement officer in a controlled setting and exhibiting reckless indifference to medical needs.
Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood responded on behalf of the state and Sharp shortly after the lawsuit was filed. The response argued that even though the shooting death was tragic, Sharp and the state should be granted immunity from prosecution on the basis of law and precedent.
Hood’s office echoed those sentiments in its January response to Summer Gorman’s request for more time to gather information on Sharp’s immunity request.
“The death of John Gorman during the training exercise is a tragedy,” the state’s response read. “However, that tragedy does not create federal liability against Defendant Sharp in his individual capacity.”
The court, answering the state’s position in its February decision, agreed. The opinion addresses only Sharp’s individual liability, not the role of the state and other parties named in the ongoing suit.
The shooting occurred in January 2015 as Gorman was participating in a mandatory firearms training course at the Gaming Commission office in Robinsonville, near Tunica. Gorman, 45, had just been promoted to director of investigations for the Gaming Commission shortly before attending the training exercise on Jan. 20-21.
Investigators at the time offered few specifics of what happened, but Summer Gorman’s lawsuit described events that led to her husband’s fatal shooting by fellow officer Sharp.
According to the lawsuit, the first day of training was conducted at the Tunica County Firing and Qualification Range as intended, but Sharp moved the second day of training to the Gaming Commission office in a Robinsonville strip center as he tried to bring agents who missed the first day up to speed.
Agents participating in training removed their real firearms and replaced them with dummies, but Sharp did not, according to the suit.
“Early in this training exercise,” the suit says, “Robert Sharp ... became agitated with how one of the trainees/Special Agents was responding to the roleplaying, and stepped in to show ... how it should properly be performed. Robert Sharp then pulled his REAL firearm and shot John Gorman in the chest.”
After the shooting, the lawsuit says the Tunica County Sheriff’s Department took control of the scene but made a decision to not transfer Gorman to a hospital even though a trauma center was nearby at the Regional Medical Center in Memphis.
Exacerbating the situation, the suit alleges, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation failed to conduct a “standard and objective” investigation, resulting in no criminal charges against Sharp.
John Gorman was a resident of Madison County, near Jackson. His death was the first in the 22-year history of the Gaming Commission, which regulates activity at Mississippi casinos as well as other charitable gaming such as bingo.