SALT LAKE CITY, Dec. 19, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- As Michael Brown's family considers whether to file
a civil rights lawsuit against Officer Darren Wilson and the Ferguson Police Department, two Salt Lake
statistical experts, attorney Scott
Young and economist Jeff
Young, took a by-the-numbers look at similar cases before
the U.S. District court most likely to hear the Browns'
case.
Excessive force claims, including claims for unconstitutional
use of deadly force, are typically litigated in federal court
because they involve federal questions. A statistical 15 year
analysis of deadly force claims before the United States District
Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, where Ferguson lies, reveals that the Browns may
face an uphill battle.
In civil lawsuits heard in federal courts, defendants typically
seek dismissal of the lawsuit before trial begins at two
junctures. First, a defendant can file a "motion to dismiss,"
which requests outright dismissal of the case because the lawsuit
fails to meet specific legal guidelines.
Second, the defendants may choose to file a "motion for summary
judgment," which asks the judge to evaluate the evidence (or lack
of it) housed in the legal claim, and determine whether or not the
case may or may not proceed to trial. In addition, police officers
have access to a defense called "qualified immunity," which is
often asserted in both the motion to dismiss and motion for summary
judgment. This defense immunizes the officer from legal claims
unless the plaintiff can prove a "clearly established"
constitutional violation that occurred during the incident.
The trial judge has the discretion to approve or deny any of
these motions.
From 2010 to the present, judges in the Eastern District of
Missouri have decided 38 motions
for dismissal and/or summary judgment cases regarding excessive
force claims against police officers. The substance of the
cases ranged from police dog bites to shootings. In each of these
cases, the police officers asked the court to dismiss the claims
before a jury trial, and in 47% of the cases the court ruled in
favor of the defendant police officers and dismissed the
claim. On the flip side, 53% of the excessive force cases
survived a motion to dismiss or motion for summary judgment, and
either proceeded to trial or were successfully resolved.
However, these percentages differ significantly in deadly
force cases. Since 1999, judges in the Eastern District of
Missouri have issued decisions in
11 motions requesting dismissal or summary judgment involving
deadly force. In 73% of those cases, the court dismissed the
claims against the police officers. Less than a third of the
deadly force cases proceeded to trial over the past 15 years.
Several factors could explain these percentages. The
defendant officers and their police forces may have chosen to
settle more viable deadly force claims out of court, leaving only
the most tenuous claims to litigation. Police departments and
their insurers often choose to settle disputed civil rights claims
before litigation begins or in the early stages of litigation,
perhaps because a victorious plaintiff is entitled to recover
attorneys' fees in a civil rights case. Early settlement eliminates
this risk. While legal experts would likely agree this could
be a contributing factor; data on such motivation for settlements
can be difficult to procure as most settlements are
confidential.
Another qualifier worth considering is the standard for deadly
force (threat of serious bodily injury to the officer or the
public) is more concrete than the standard for other forms of
excessive force, making claims for deadly force easier to legally
satisfy.
Statistically, race did not seem to play a significant factor in
the 11 deadly force cases the court has decided since 1999. We
obtained data about the ethnicity of the eleven victims in these
cases from case pleadings, news articles, obituaries, and lawyers
involved in the cases. The victims were almost evenly split
amongst Caucasians and minorities, with 5 Caucasian victims, 5
African-American victims, and 1 Latino victim. On motions to
dismiss or summary judgment brought by the police officers, judges
in the Eastern District of Missouri dismissed 80% of deadly force claims
where Caucasians were killed (4 of 5) and 67% where minorities were
killed (4 of 6). Judges also dismissed 67% of deadly force
claims involving police shootings with Caucasian victims (2 of 3)
and 50% with minority victims (2 of 4). These discrepancies
are not statistically significant because of the small sample
size.
As these statistics and others are interpreted by the two sides,
these and other statistics provide an important perspective on the
venue determined for trial. Those of us who thrive on the
compilation of statistics will be watching with calculators in
hand.
Scott Young is a lawyer who
provides statistical analysis of courts and judges for
clients. He is a graduate of Columbia Law School. He can
be reached at sy@scmlaw.com.
Jeff Young has a Masters
Degree in Economics from the University of
Utah and currently works as a statistical analyst in the
health care industry. He can be reached at
jeff.young@hsc.utah.edu.
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SOURCE Attorney Scott Young