'Black Lives Don't Matter,' Lawyer Says After Jury Awards Family $4 in Police Killing
Source: CNN
A Florida family is "heartbroken" after a jury awarded $4 in damages for funeral expenses and pain and suffering in a case in which a St. Lucie County deputy fatally shot a father of three through his garage door, the family's attorney said Thursday.
Deputy Christopher Newman killed Gregory Hill Jr., 30, in 2014 after a mother picking up her child at a school across the street called in a noise complaint. Newman and another deputy responded to Hill's home, Hill partially opened the garage door, closed it and Newman fired four times, hitting Hill three times, including once in the head, according to court and police records.
No charges were filed against Newman, who said he shot Hill because he brandished a handgun. Hill's mother, Viola Bryant, filed a lawsuit against Newman and Sheriff Ken Mascara, alleging wrongful death, negligence, excessive force and violations of Hill's 14th and 15th Amendment rights. Bryant also accused a SWAT team that responded to the scene of firing so much tear gas and causing so much damage to Hill's one-story home that no one can live in it now.
Read Newman's response- After 10 hours of deliberation last week, a jury found that Newman was not liable in Hill's death and that Mascara was 1% liable. Hill was 99% responsible for his own death, the jury ruled, according to court documents. In deciding damages in the case, the jury awarded Bryant $1 for funeral expenses, and $1 for each child's "loss of parental companionship, instruction, and guidance and ... mental pain and suffering," verdict forms show. Hill's children are 7, 10 and 13.
Division of liability- Because the jury found that Mascara was only 1% responsible, the verdict was reduced to 4 cents, and then, because the jury found that Hill was drunk at the time, the final payout was nothing.
Read the verdict forms- Mascara applauded the verdict, saying, "Newman was placed in a very difficult situation and like so many fellow law enforcement officers must do every day, he made the best decision he could for the safety of his partner, himself and the public given the circumstances he faced."
Attorney John Phillips, who represents Hill's family, called the ruling "perplexing" and questioned why the jury would award $1 for $11,000 in funeral expenses and another dollar for each child's suffering when it could have simply awarded no damages. The jury consisted of one black man, two white men and five white women, he said.
Court rules forbid him from questioning jurors, so he can't get the answer to a question that's been dogging him: Were they trying to send him and the family a message? "That a black child's pain is only worth a dollar is exactly the problem with the plight of the African-American right now. This says, black lives don't matter," he said. Phillips plans to file a motion for a new trial in US District Court, and if that's denied, he will take it to the US 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
How it began- On January 14, 2014, around 3 p.m., a mother picking up her child at Frances K. Sweet Elementary School heard loud music blaring from Hill's home. Testimony showed Hill was playing Drake's "All Me," a song rife with F-bombs and N-words. The mother took offense and called police.
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/black-lives-dont-matter-lawyer-says-after-jury-awards-family-dollar4-in-police-killing/ar-AAy5lBk?li=BBnbcA1Black Live
MORE: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gregory-hill-case-attorney-4-verdict-in-police-shooting-meant-to-punish-family-for-bringing-case/
Ferrets are Cool
(21,057 posts)lark
(22,993 posts)If we don't win the mid-terms and flip at least one branch of congress if not both, we are dead as a country of laws and rights.
appalachiablue
(41,047 posts)Blood and bullet hole on the garage door at Gregory Hill's home.
Gregory Hill from a family photo.
Gregory Hill's children, Aryanna Hill, Gregory Hill III and Destiny Hill.
Photos from: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/us/gregory-hill-verdict-florida.html
Judi Lynn
(160,211 posts)Thanks for the photos. They really fill out one's grasp of what the heck happened.
Gregory Hill was stolen from his own life, and the life of a beautiful, precious family, in the twinkling of an eye, and utterly without provocation.
appalachiablue
(41,047 posts)Photo, GoFundMe page, 'Justice for Gregory Hill,' for the family of Gregory Vaughn Hill:
https://www.gofundme.com/justice-for-gregory-hill/
https://www.gofundme.com/justice-for-gregory-hill/
Attorney John Phillips points to bullet holes in the garage door of the Hill home on Wednesday, January 20, 2016. Gregory Hill Jr. was killed in January 2014 after a confrontation with St. Lucie County deputies at his home in the 1500 block of Avenue Q in Fort Pierce. Hill's family announced Wednesday they are filing a lawsuit against the deputy and the St. Lucie County Sheriffs Office.
- USA TODAY, "Family of Florida Man Shot By Cop Awarded $4 By Jury, Deputy Found Not Liable," May 31, 2018
*READ MORE, Report, Videos: https://www.demingheadlight.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/05/31/family-florida-man-shot-death-4-dollars/660379002/
appalachiablue
(41,047 posts)financial donations to the family's GFM site are increasing.
47of74
(18,470 posts)I'm at the point where I have no love left for this country and am just going through the motions now.
I have no intention of celebrating July 4 this year as the country whose independence we celebrate no longer exists and died back in 2016. All that's left is a hollow shell.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)no damages would be better than this. What were those people thinking?
Btw, never let someone be foreman just because he or she leaps to volunteer. Ask their qualifications and then ask others.' I smell a severe lack of even adequately principled guidance.
raccoon
(31,088 posts)bdtrppr6
(796 posts)our court system is being fucked with royally, so the future is no brighter. this is saddening.
Haggis for Breakfast
(6,831 posts)NEVER.
malchickiwick
(1,474 posts)Our justice system is becoming the laughingstock of the world. And it is getting MUCH worse. The dotard has filled more vacancies on the federal bench than Obama and shrub COMBINED!!
spicysista
(1,663 posts)I've been trying to put into words how this makes me feel.......It's impossible. My words completely fail me.
Four cents.
BigmanPigman
(51,430 posts)Chickensoup
(650 posts)TeamPooka
(24,155 posts)rockfordfile
(8,682 posts)marble falls
(56,353 posts)Last edited Thu May 31, 2018, 07:31 PM - Edit history (1)
City, Gainesville area for a move. This kind of thing makes us wonder.
cstanleytech
(26,080 posts)it was even worse in my opinion for the officer to blindly shoot through it.
McCamy Taylor
(19,240 posts)Teenagers listening to music? They would all be dead, too.
brush
(53,467 posts)And the racist jury concluded Hill was drunk and thus responsible for his own death.
Since when can't you be drunk in your own house?
The racism is getting more and more open and in your face in this trump era.
forgotmylogin
(7,496 posts)It seems it should be really hard to claim self-defense when firing blindly through a wall.
That is reckless endangerment if you ask me.
McCamy Taylor
(19,240 posts)and set off the genocide? She deserves to be mentioned too for over reaction.
McCamy Taylor
(19,240 posts)People need to be held liable for their decisions.
MichMan
(11,778 posts)Already hard finding people who will serve as it is
YOHABLO
(7,358 posts)McCamy Taylor
(19,240 posts)sound as if a couple of jurors may have gone in their determined to make a statement and the rest finally just gave up. With the press this one is going to get, I expect that reporters from all across the country will be hounding the jurors and it is only a matter of time before we find out if one or two of them had agendas--or even conflicts of interest that were not revealed during jury selection. In which case, the appeal will be automatic.
forgotmylogin
(7,496 posts)I know they sometimes get a list of charges they can line-item which gives them a bit of oblique influence over what sentences can be imposed but isn't any actual fine and sentencing/leniency with regard to sentencing up to the judge?
[EDIT]I read this again...and apparently, I have this backward. Is this the difference perhaps in a criminal and a civil suit?
PatrickforO
(14,514 posts)Just pain and anger at an obvious injustice.
sharedvalues
(6,916 posts)To stop this, we need to have police crimes investigated by INDEPENDENT investigators and prosecuted by independent prosecutors.
The reason its so hard to get a conviction for a cop crime is that cop crimes are investigated and prosecuted by cop colleagues. Investigations are done by other cops and prosecutions are done by the prosecutors that cops work with regularly.
Each state should have a small special team of investigators and a team of prosecutors that swoop in and investigate cop crimes immediately. No more investigations and prosecutions by friends and colleagues of accused cops.
This huge conflict of interest needs to end if we want to fix our system.
JI7
(89,172 posts)By a white person should not be a crime.
sharedvalues
(6,916 posts)A majority of white people are horrified by crimes like this.
Also, one of the Russian talking points on social media was exactly that white people dont care about crimes like this. Youre echoing that (false) talking point. Please dont. There are some racists, mostly Republicans, who dont care. But most of America cares. The problem is the conflicts of interest in the investigatory and prosecutorial systems for cops.
texasfiddler
(1,986 posts)Police are not being punished for overreaction and killing innocent people. This verdict is horrible. This $4 judgment is not justice, it is racial vindictiveness. It would have still been wrong, but they could have chosen no award.
sharedvalues
(6,916 posts)If prosecutors are sympathetic to the cop they are prosecuting, there are a million ways for them to sandbag the prosecution. And the prosecutors work with those cops on a daily basis.
I believe this might have been what happened in the Trayvon Martin trial. The prosecutors didnt want to prosecute Zimmerman - they were ordered to. Maybe they didnt use full zeal.
In civil cases like this, we have to wonder whether a more zealous investigation and evidence collection (here done by the cops coworkers and friends) would have make the evidence stronger.
MichMan
(11,778 posts)Attorney John Phillips, who represents Hill's family, called the ruling "perplexing" and questioned why the jury would award $1 for $11,000 in funeral expenses and another dollar for each child's suffering when it could have simply awarded no damages.
The jury consisted of one black man, two white men and five white women, he said.
Court rules forbid him from questioning jurors, so he can't get the answer to a question that's been dogging him: Were they trying to send him and the family a message?
AllaN01Bear
(17,346 posts)still_one
(91,937 posts)away by the sadistic award for damages, whose only justification could be an underlying current of racism in that jury room
The jury was composed of one black man, two white men and five white women
Those who argue that the presence one black man as a juror precludes any racial bias is a flawed conclusion. That is the same logic that some used after Barrack Obama became the first African American president, and they wrongly inferred that racism was a thing of the past
metroins
(2,550 posts)1 out of 8 is 20%.
70% of the county is white.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Lucie_County,_Florida
I don't know why race should even play a role in jury selection.
This judgement seems very odd. I do not understand it.
moriah
(8,311 posts)1/8th is 12.5%.
7/8ths is, therefore, 87.5%.
Perhaps race in jury selection shouldn't matter, when even black people have internalized the perception biases whites have of them, except the study also showed they *didn't* internalize the idea that black men were also more dangerous or deserving of force to subdue them.
I think the judgement reeks of UK "ha'penny" rulings -- a condemnation of filing the lawsuit at all.
SergeStorms
(18,880 posts)to describe the callousness that jury showed the Hill family. None.
Hav
(5,969 posts)It's one thing to make a decision against one side. But to say, here is one dollar for the funeral costs, and here kiddos, one dollar for each of you for your father's death, which then gets divided by 100, is adding insult to injury. This sounds like a delibrate decision out of spite and hatred. Even if I were the lawyer of the opposing side or the policeman, I'd feel bad about such an expression of inhumanity. There is just something inherently wrong with that.
Devil Child
(2,728 posts)They should be ashamed of themselves, but I doubt they are capable of such a feeling.
Uncle Joe
(58,107 posts)Thanks for the thread appalachiablue
NickB79
(19,109 posts)appalachiablue
(41,047 posts)Deputy Newman claimed he was and fired four shots. Three of the shots hit Hill, one in the head killing him instantly. A daughter of Hill who was across the street at the time said her father did not have a gun out. The deceased was found with a 9mm gun in his back pocket, unloaded. How he could put a gun back after being fatally struck in the head is questionable.
CBS,
"According to CBS affiliate WPEC, police came to Hill's home on the afternoon of Jan. 14, 2014 after receiving a complaint that he was playing loud music at his home. WPEC reports that Deputy Sheriff Christopher Newman and Deputy Edward Lopez pounded on Hill's front door at 3 p.m., according to court documents. After repeated banging, Hill manually pushed up the garage door where he was listening to music, then immediately put it back down.
Whether Hill was holding a gun at this point is in dispute. The deputies said he was, other witnesses, including Hill's 9-year-old daughter who was sitting on a bench across the street, said he was not.
As the garage door closed, Newman fired four shots, hitting Hill three times, including a shot to the head that killed him instantly. Investigators reportedly found an unloaded gun in Hill's back pocket."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gregory-hill-case-attorney-4-verdict-in-police-shooting-meant-to-punish-family-for-bringing-case/
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(107,063 posts)CanSocDem
(3,286 posts)BlueWI
(1,736 posts)A reality check too on how deeply trenches racist police action and jury behavior remains.