By Keith L. Martin
The Gazette
FREDERICK, Md. — The attorney representing Frederick County in a $145 million civil lawsuit over the Taser-related death of Jarrel Gray says there are some clear flaws in the complaints against his clients.
“The suit itself ... is in fact a shotgun approach, with a variety of claims that will inevitably fail even before a trial,” attorney Daniel Karp said.
Karp, a Baltimore-based attorney, has been retained by the county’s insurance company, National Casualty Company of Scottsdale, Ariz. Karp said he will be representing Frederick County, Sheriff Chuck Jenkins and Cpl. Rudy Torres, all listed as defendants in the lawsuit filed on behalf of Gray’s parents on May 28 in U.S. District Court.
John Mathias, the county’s attorney, said his office will “play a supervisory role in the matter ... coordinating litigation” with Karp. Mathias offered no comment on the case.
While critical of the filing against the county, Karp called talk of any kind of settlement “premature.” He said if the county determines there are any such violations of civil rights, they might make a settlement offer, but if not, the case will be “vigorously defended.”
“If the judgment is that there was no violation, [the Gray family] will not be offered one red cent,” Karp said. “That is the appropriate way to handle police litigation, in my opinion.”
At a press conference on May 29, Ted Williams, the attorney representing the Gray family, said the case seeks damages on seven counts, including deprivation of civil right, wrongful death, police brutality⁄excessive force, and negligent training and supervision.
“From everything we’ve been able to see ... there has been a cover-up from the beginning,” Williams said.
Greg Lattimer, Williams’ co-counsel, said the family did not name Taser International, the manufacturer of the less-lethal device, because it was not on the scene that night nor responsible for how the Taser was used.
“We have named the people we believe are directly responsible for the death of young Mr. Gray,” he said. “What [Torres] did was unconscionable. ... [Taser International] didn’t tell the man to use it wrongfully and on a helpless individual.”
On May 9, a Frederick County grand jury found that Torres was justified in his actions, following the presentation of an investigation by the Frederick Police Department into the circumstances surrounding Gray’s death.
Included in that presentation was an autopsy from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore, which could not determine the manner of Gray’s death.
The medical examiner said the cause of Gray’s death was a combination of the method of restraint, in this case the Taser, alcohol intoxication, and Gray’s unique anatomical makeup.
Jenkins (R) has said that an internal investigation by his office’s internal affairs division also found Torres justified in his use of force on the night of Nov. 18, 2007. Early that morning, Torres, a 13-year veteran of the Sheriff’s Office, responded to a call of a fight on Gresham Court East in Frederick.
According to the Sheriff’s Office, Torres ordered the men who were fighting to stop and show their hands; when Gray did not comply, Torres fired a pair of five-second jolts of electricity from his X26 Taser.
Jenkins has previously said that Gray walked away from Torres with his hands in his pants’ pockets while cursing at him. Gray then turned toward Torres with his hands in his pants’ pockets, causing Torres to feel threatened and fire his Taser.
Gray was taken to Frederick Memorial Hospital, where he died nearly two hours later.
Jenkins said since the internal investigation justified Torres’ use of force, he was clear to return to work, after six months of paid administrative leave.
At last week’s press conference, Williams challenged Jenkins’ account of the incident. He criticized the sheriff for first saying that Gray was hit once with the Taser, then revising that number the next day to twice, as well as his statement that Torres was the only deputy on the scene when he fired the Taser.
Karp noted that he has yet to see any “underlying material” for the case, but sees issues in Williams’ and Lattimer’s filing of the case, which has been assigned to a court in Baltimore.
Some of the issues Karp said he plans to seek dismissal of are the claims against “Frederick County,” since it is not an entity, the “negligent⁄intentional infliction of emotional distress” claims for $5 million, as “there is no such thing under Maryland law,” and that the sheriff, while assigned to the county, is a state entity.
Having tried “many, many, many use-of-force cases” in federal court, Karp said “juries tend ... to give law enforcement the benefit of the doubt. There is a heavy burden of proof on the Gray family,” Karp said.
Copyright 2008 The Gazette