County pays $800,000 to settle police shooting case
Federal civil trial in man’s 2016 death now won’t take place
Shelby County’s government has agreed to pay $800,000 to settle a lawsuit involving Edmond “Eddie” Studdard, a man who was fatally shot in 2016 by sheriff’s deputies.
The settlement was approved by the Shelby County Commission on Monday, ending the case. A federal civil trial had been set to begin Monday, but it won’t take place.
Studdard was apparently suffering a mental health crisis and had cut his wrists with a blade shortly before deputies shot him in Cordova in July 2016. One bullet hit him in the neck and paralyzed him, and he died in September of that year.
His widow filed a lawsuit, arguing her slain husband was suicidal and posed a danger only to himself, not the deputies.
The Shelby County government sought to dismiss the case on the basis of a legal doctrine called
qualified immunity. The concept protects law enforcement officers from legal liability unless they clearly violate the law or someone’s constitutional rights.
U.S. District Judge Jon Mccalla rejected the county’s arguments in January 2019, citing prior cases that concluded police officers can’t shoot people who aren’t threatening anyone else.
Though Mccalla allowed the lawsuit against deputies Erin Shepherd and Terry Reed to go forward, he agreed to dismiss the county government from the lawsuit, concluding that the plaintiffs hadn’t proved their claims that the government’s training of the deputies was inadequate.
While the lawsuit was technically against only the individual deputies, not the county government, the government’s attorneys continued to represent the deputies.
In August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit likewise ruled against the county government and allowed the case to move forward. “May police officers shoot an uncooperative individual when he presents an immediate risk to himself but not to others? No, case law makes clear,” Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton wrote for the panel.
Then the county government asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case – but the court refused to take up the issue.
The notification of the settlement had been filed in court documents on Feb. 25,.
A big settlement
The $800,000 sum is larger than some legal settlements paid out by local governments in other notable cases.
In February 2018, the city of Memphis paid $10,000 to settle a lawsuit related to the 2016 fatal police shooting of Alexio Allen.
And the Memphis and Shelby County governments paid a combined $19,000 to settle a lawsuit by Manuel Duran, a Spanish-language news reporter who was arrested at an April 2018 protest and later transferred to immigration custody.
Daniel Seward, an attorney for Studdard’s widow, didn’t immediately return a phone call Tuesday afternoon. Assistant County Attorney Lee Whitwell declined to comment.
Katherine Burgess and Sam Hardiman contributed to this article.