Shooting suit on hold after decision
LAWSUIT ON OFFICER-INVOLVED SHOOTING HAS MERIT, JUDGE SAYS
Afederal magistrate judge has rejected a motion by Santa Fe city government to dismiss a wrongful-death lawsuit over a police officer’s shooting of an elderly neighborhood caretaker as both men were responding to a middle-of-the-night burglar alarm three years ago.
U.S. Magistrate Judge William P. Lynch said in his Feb. 8 order that there is a “material,” or substantial, dispute over whether the Santa Fe officer’s use of force was reasonable, enough to keep the judge from granting the request for a pre-trial “summary judgment” in the city’s favor.
Lynch also declined to give Officer Charles Laramie the qualified immunity that can shield officers from liability in deadly force cases if their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights.
Lynch’s decision could send the case toward a trial or a settlement. But the city last week filed notice that it will appeal the ruling to the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, putting progress in the case on hold for now.
The caretaker shot by Lara-
mie was Robert H. “Bobby” Dominguez, who had served as both a Santa Fe city policeman and a county sheriff’s deputy. He died at age 78 about 10 months after the March 4, 2013, shooting. His family said that he was shot three times and that he died from complications from the gunshot wounds after a long period of suffering.
Dominguez looked after neighbors’ houses when their owners were away and was known by residents of his east side neighborhood as “the mayor.” On the night he was shot, he arrived before Laramie, the responding Santa Fe Police Department officer, at a home on Johnson Lane where the burglar alarm went off about 3:30 a.m. No one told Laramie that Dominguez would be there.
The main factual dispute is whether Dominguez threatened Laramie with a gun after the officer arrived, not knowing who was in the house. Dominguez was said to have been searching for a light switch when confronted by Laramie, who was using a flashlight.
Laramie says he identified himself as a police officer and told Dominguez to keep his hands down, but Dominguez instead drew his gun and pointed it at the officer, prompting Laramie to fire five shots. The officer also says Dominguez raised his gun again after going down, prompting him to fire two more shots.
Dominguez’s family maintains that Dominguez had put his gun down when he tried to shut off the alarm and that what Laramie saw before the officer started firing was an empty holster and Dominguez beginning to put his hands up.
Judge Lynch essentially ruled that there is enough doubt about what happened to let a jury decide.
“Officer Laramie faced an uncertain and potentially dangerous situation” when he responded to the burglar alarm, the judge wrote. “If, as Laramie contends, Mr. Dominguez pointed his gun at him, Officer Laramie was constitutionally permitted to use deadly force to defend himself.
“But taking the facts and the reasonable inference from them in the light most favorable to Plaintiffs (Dominguez’s family), as I must when ruling on a motion for summary judgment, there is material dispute about whether Officer Laramie’s use of force was reasonable under the circumstances ... . ”
Under established law, the mere presence of a gun “is not sufficient to justify the use of force” and lethal force “may be used only when an officer or another person is threatened with the weapon,” Lynch wrote.
Lawyers for Laramie and the city have argued that, even if Dominguez didn’t point a gun at the officer, Laramie still qualifies for immunity from liability “because he reasonably believed” that Dominguez drew the weapon.
But Lynch ruled that because the gun was found after the shooting a few feet away from Dominguez on a chair — according to Laramie’s own account — a jury might reasonably decline to believe the officer really felt threatened. The judge also noted that this case was not like legal precedents derived from other officer-involved shootings in which the person shot by police had made threats.
Officer cleared
When Officer Laramie arrived at the house on Johnson Lane, according to Judge Lynch’s written order, he could hear someone inside and the alarm go off and on, and he saw a man in an open doorway.
Laramie was wearing a belt tape recorder. Its recording released after the shooting showed that Laramie fired seven shots at Dominguez after identifying himself as an officer and telling Dominguez to keep his hands down, while the high-pitched alarm still squealed.
When Laramie called for an ambulance, he told the dispatcher that Dominguez had pulled a gun on him. On the tape, he asked Dominguez why he pulled a gun and Dominguez said he didn’t mean to. “I was trying to get the alarm,” Dominguez said. “I heard a voice or something, then bang.”
Dominguez gave a statement to investigators later in which he said he had put his gun and holster on the ground prior to being shot.
Lynch’s opinion mentions recordings in which Dominguez made similar statements at other times, although the judge said the recorded statements are not admissible evidence. He noted that the city cites one instance in which, according to a nephew, Dominguez said he had raised his gun during the encounter with Laramie. But the judge pointed out that the same nephew also testified that on “multiple other occasions” Dominguez said the gun wasn’t in his hand or that he didn’t point it at Laramie.
Three weeks after the shooting, then-District Attorney Angela “Spence” Pacheco cleared Laramie of any wrongdoing, saying the late-night situation was “a recipe for disaster.” Pacheco told reporters that Dominguez’s gun was on the ground when police began investigating after the shooting, and that his holster was still on his belt.
Lynch’s ruling gives another version of the gun’s whereabouts that had not previously been disclosed. It says that Laramie has acknowledged he did not see where the gun went after Dominguez was shot and didn’t see it in Dominguez’s hand or on the floor. Laramie said the gun was on the chair a few feet away and that the didn’t know how it got there. Another officer claimed the gun was, in fact, near Dominguez’s left hand after the shooting, but Laramie — who was with Dominguez for several minutes before the second officer arrived — disputed that the gun was near Dominguez, says Lynch’s written decision.