A jury trial to determine whether a former Little Rock police officer violated the constitutional rights of a 15-year-old boy he shot and killed in 2012, while investigating car break-ins outside an apartment complex, has been postponed until April 3.
Meanwhile, an attorney for the boy's mother has vowed to appeal Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Miller's Jan. 27 order dropping the city and Stuart Thomas, its police chief at the time, from the case.
Sylvia Perkins, the mother of Bobby Moore, is seeking compensatory and punitive damages for what she considers her son's wrongful death. Her June 1, 2015, lawsuit against former officer Josh Hastings, the city and Thomas was scheduled to begin last week in Miller's Little Rock courtroom. But on Feb. 8, less than two weeks after he dismissed the city and Stuart from the case, Miller rescheduled the trial that has been pared down to Hastings alone, in his individual capacity, unless the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis decides the other defendants should be reinstated.
Perkins filed the lawsuit two years after two Pulaski County Circuit Court juries hearing manslaughter allegations against Hastings became deadlocked. The first jury favored a conviction on a reduced charge of negligent homicide by a vote of 10-2; the second voted 11-1 in favor of an acquittal. A unanimous verdict was required in both instances. Prosecutors later cited the two hung juries in deciding to drop the manslaughter case rather than try Hastings a third time.
But Perkins is not giving up in her effort to hold Hastings, and possibly the city, legally responsible.
"Bobby was my youngest child, and I loved him dearly," she said at a news conference when she filed the lawsuit through attorney Mike Laux of San Francisco. "I can't bring my son back, but I can make sure that whoever is responsible for his death is held accountable."
In the civil case, Perkins must prove by the greater weight of evidence that Hastings should be held liable for her son's death, compared with the higher standard of proof -- beyond a reasonable doubt -- required for prosecutors to obtain a criminal conviction.
But without the city and Thomas as defendants, it isn't clear what kind of monetary damages Perkins could recover should she win. Hastings' previous attorney withdrew from the case in October, citing Hastings' failure to pay him.
The Police Department fired Hastings in October 2012, two months after the shooting, after an internal investigation determined that he violated department policy in the shooting. He now lives in Bauxite, according to court filings. But it's not clear if he is employed, or where.
In granting the city's request for summary judgment, Miller said Perkins hadn't presented any proof that either the city or Thomas was aware of, and deliberately indifferent to, a pattern of unconstitutional conduct by the department that was similar to Moore's shooting. He agreed that prevented either defendant from being held liable for failure to properly train, supervise or discipline Hastings.
The judge noted that Hastings had attended recruit school, and during his five years on the force had at least 1,304 hours of police training that included the use of firearms and deadly force.
While acknowledging that Hastings had triggered dozens of complaints during his time on the force, an attorney for the city argued that none of the incidents leading to the complaints involved the use of deadly force.
Laux filed a 214-page response, not counting exhibits, on Nov. 28. In it, he argued that while the department's internal investigation of the shooting was "intentionally deficient," it nevertheless demonstrated that the shooting was "not objectively reasonable and in violation of Bobby's Fourth Amendment rights."
Laux has said he believes Hastings was allowed to get by with unprofessional conduct in the past because he is the son of a now-retired veteran officer, Capt. Terry Hastings.
In Laux's narrative of the shooting, which is part of the response, he noted that Hastings and his partner were dispatched about 5:30 a.m. August 12, 2012, to Shadow Lake Apartments at 13111 W. Markham St. to investigate a report about car break-ins.
According to the narrative, Hastings abandoned a plan to enter the property with his partner, instead slipping through a hole in a fence and arriving in the parking lot alone, where, situated near a dumpster, he spotted three youths -- later identified as Moore and his friends, Keontay Walker and Jeremiah Johnson.
Hastings watched as the three teens got into a Honda Civic. Seconds later, as Moore attempted to drive out of the parking lot, he was shot twice and killed.
Hastings, who had minutes earlier radioed that neither his dashboard video camera nor his body microphone were working, said he fired in self-defense after the car moved toward him, leading him to think the driver was trying to run over him.
But in a statement Walker gave to police later that day, the transcript of which Laux attached to his response, he said Moore had just put the car in reverse when the officer fired into the car, killing Moore.
Walker said that just before the boys got into the car to leave, Moore broke out the window of a car in the parking lot, causing the alarm to sound and prompting him to ask Moore to take him home.
Walker said that he was in the front passenger seat and "The next thing I know I saw a light like this," apparently referring to a flashlight Hastings was holding as he emerged from a wooded area near the dumpster. "I told Weedy to stop. I'm like, 'Weedy stop, stop.' I say this the police. He stopped but the police like five feet away from us so Bobby had threw it in reverse and then the next thing I know all I heard was pow, pow, pow and then I heard Uuuuhhh."
At another point, Walker said, "Weedy got to reversing then that's when the police started opening up fire. And the next thing I know I seen my homeboy he was injured and I'm like, 'Weedy, wake up, wake up Weedy.'"
Laux wrote, "The thrust of Keontay's police statement was that the Honda never traveled at a high rate of speed, never accelerated toward Hastings, and certainly that Bobby never tried to run anyone over."
The attorney also noted that the third boy, who was in the back seat, told investigators the car never traveled fast, primarily because the three didn't even know the police were there when they started to leave the parking lot.
"Jeremiah [Johnson] stated that Hastings shined his flashlight at them, and then 'hopped in front of the car and said LRPD,'" Laux wrote. He said Johnson reported that Hastings "ran in front of the car" and that Moore "was stopping and then the police shot him."
Laux said a resident of the complex looked out her bedroom window as soon as she heard the gunshots and saw a car that was "slowly rolling backwards," as Walker and Johnson had also described.
"She said she saw an officer in uniform walking toward the car as it was drifting backwards," Laux said. The Honda continued going backward until it struck a parked car and stopped, Laux said, and both Walker and Johnson jumped out and ran off, believing Hastings might shoot them next.
Laux said that according to Hastings, the car accelerated toward him at 25-30 mph, forcing him backward onto a rocky embankment and even jumping the curb and ascending the embankment, "threatening to pin him in, and causing him to fear for his life."
Laux wrote that before other officers arrived, Hastings was "alone in that parking lot with Bobby's body and the Honda." He said the Honda's gearshift was later found to be in "neutral," even though Thomas and police detectives concluded it had been in reverse when Hastings opened fire.
Laux also noted that police investigators found no physical evidence that the car had traveled over the curb, on the dirt or on the embankment. He said the police investigation also found that the location of Hastings' shell casings was inconsistent with where he said he was when he fired the shots, and that Moore could not have shifted gears after he was shot.
Metro on 02/19/2017