New trial sought in Young case
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BOSTON — Lawyer Barry C. Scheck yesterday argued that U.S. District Judge Mary M. Lisi was wrong to have tossed out the civil-rights case brought by the mother of slain Providence police Sgt. Cornel Young Jr. The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also heard from lawyers who argued that Lisi was wrong to have booted Scheck and another New York lawyer off the case halfway through the high-profile trial. But defense lawyers contended Lisi was right when she ruled, in November 2003, that Leisa E. Young’s lawyers had failed to present enough evidence to hold the City of Providence and police supervisors liable for her son’s death. A panel of three federal appellate judges will now weigh whether to send the case back to Providence for a trial. They gave no timetable for a decision. “The case has a lot of complicated issues,” Chief Circuit Judge Michael Boudin said. “We will do our best with the case.” He said the court recognizes that Sgt. Young’s death was a “terrible tragedy.” Sgt. Young, 29, was killed in January 2000 when he drew his gun while off-duty to help break up a brawl outside Fidas restaurant. Patrolmen Michael Solitro III and Carlos A. Saraiva mistook him for a suspect and shot him. Sgt. Young was the son of former Maj. Cornel Young Sr., then the highest ranking black officer in the Providence Police Department. Maj. Young did not take part in the $20-million civil-rights and wrongful-death suit that his former wife filed against the city. In court papers, Leisa Young’s lawyers stated that, “Although Young’s killing has repeatedly been referred to as a tragedy, that characterization is, in an important sense, inaccurate. A jury has already determined that the actions of one of the officers were unreasonable as a matter of constitutional law. And the District Court has been presented with compelling evidence establishing that Young’s killing was preventable.” On Oct. 31, 2003, a federal jury found that Solitro, a rookie who’d been on the job eight days, had violated Sgt. Young’s constitutional rights, but that Saraiva, a three-year veteran, had not violated Young’s rights. Five days after the jury made those preliminary findings, Lisi threw out the case. As a matter of law, the judge said that even if Young had proved everything her lawyers claimed, she’d still lose because the threshold is so high for holding the city and police officials liable. In court yesterday, Scheck argued that Providence had created “a recipe for disaster” with a policy that required police officers to be armed and to take action even when off duty. Scheck said Lisi wrongly disregarded a report by an expert — New York City Deputy Police Commissioner James J. Fyfe — who said such a policy was inherently dangerous and that protocols and training were necessary to prevent misidentifications and bloodshed. But Scheck said former Police Chief Urbano Prignano Jr. considered such protocols and training unnecessary because officers could rely on “common sense” in such situations. He said Prignano refused to reconsider the “always armed/always on-duty” policy, and the protocols only changed a year-and-a-half after Young’s death — when Prignano was no longer chief. Scheck said the Police Department’s hiring system had been “rudderless,” and he said the city never should have hired Solitro. In a prior job at the Rhode Island Training School, Solitro had been accused of grabbing a resident by the throat and throwing a phone at a cuffed resident, and he’d been ordered to see a counselor for anger management, Young’s lawyers said in court papers. Also, Scheck said a supervisor at the Training School called the Police Department, urging that Solitro not be hired. Senior Assistant City Solicitor Kevin F. McHugh emphasized that Solitro’s hiring was “a single lawful hiring decision” — and not proof of a systemic problem. He noted Solitro had never before been accused of misusing deadly force. “That bothers me about your argument,” Circuit Judge Sandra L. Lynch told McHugh. “Are you saying that unless he killed before that, excessive force couldn’t lead to deadly force?” McHugh said Solitro was recommended by his immediate supervisor at the Training School, and two-thirds of the complaints about him related to improper use of sick time. “Given all the information about Solitro’s background, it fell far short of the standard that it was highly likely he would commit the constitutional tort,” he said. McHugh emphasized that there had never before been a friendly-fire shooting in Providence. And in court papers, city lawyers said Young’s lawyers failed to prove that Sgt. Young was shot as a result of a policy of inadequate training or the decision to hire Solitro. Michael J. Colucci, a lawyer for police officials, said, “There was ample training in shoot/don’t shoot situations, and off-duty identification protocol.” He said, “Fyfe says he has a better program, but that’s not enough. The city of Providence has a constitutionally sound program.” The judges also heard appeals of the actions that Lisi took against Young’s lawyers — Scheck, Nick Brustin and Rhode Islander Robert B. Mann. Lisi said the three violated a federal rule prohibiting baseless court filings by falsely stating in a memo that she’d ordered them to reach an agreement about a shooting-scene diagram. Lisi removed Scheck and Brustin, leaving Mann to try the case alone. Afterward, she publicly censured Scheck, but not the others. In court papers, lawyers said Lisi had gone too far and that Leisa Young had been harmed by having her lead lawyer pulled off the case in midtrial. |