Family: Police brutal in man’s death. Now, Supreme Court agrees to let jury decide

The U.S. Supreme Court will allow a 2013 wrongful death and police brutality case from Fort Worth to go to trial.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans had previously issued two rulings saying there were issues with the case of Jermaine Darden, 34, that should be decided by a jury. In a ruling issued Monday, the Supreme Court has decided to let those those rulings stand, preparing the case to go to trial in the U.S. District Court in Fort Worth.

“But instead of coming to the table and recognizing that there was a problem, the city of Fort Worth made a decision to spend thousands of dollars fighting this issue,” said Daryl Washington, who along with attorney Matthew Kita, is representing the Darden family.

“There were a number employees who testified that they did not have the proper training to execute a no-knock raid,” Washington said. “There were kids in the house and a woman who was pregnant. Those kids are scared for life having to witness that.”

In the ruling to dismiss the wrongful death lawsuit filed by Darden’s family in 2014, U.S. District Judge John McBryde had written that Darden, who weighed about 340 pounds, “had multiple risk factors for sudden cardiac death and the severity of his cardiac disease alone made him susceptible to sudden cardiac death at any time, with or without physical exertion.”

The ruling issued Monday indicates that the jurists on the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the judges in the 5th Circuit that the case should go forward to trial.

The New Orleans appeals court had previously ruled that there is evidence that suggests that Darden would not have died if the officers had not used a Taser on him and forced him onto his stomach.

Darden died of natural causes, with sudden cardiac death associated with high blood pressure and application of restraints, the Tarrant County medical examiner’s office ruled.

Darden also had liver disease and thyroid disease, according to court documents.

But a medical expert for Darden’s family testified that Darden’s death should not have been ruled “natural,” according to the 5th Circuit’s ruling.

Veteran police officers W.F. Snow and J. Romero were named in the lawsuit, and other unidentified officers were said to have participated in the raid and in restraining Darden.

The officers had executed a “no-knock” search warrant on May 16, 2013, bursting into a residence in the 3200 block of Thannisch Avenue without warning, according to court documents.

According to witnesses, several people, including Darden, were inside. They said that Darden was not attempting to flee, attack or resist when police officers choked him, kicked him several times, punched him and shocked him, according to court documents.

Several officers applied their weight to Darden’s back, making it difficult for him to breathe, the court documents said. Witnesses told officers that Darden had asthma and could not breathe.

Officers seized 2.4 grams of cocaine, 1.8 grams of heroin and 3.1 ounces of marijuana, according to court documents. They believed some of the drugs belonged to Darden, McBryde wrote in his opinion in 2014.

Darden was shocked twice by a Taser and did not get on the ground as ordered by officers after he was shocked with the stun gun, court documents said. As soon as officers were able to handcuff Darden, the use of force stopped, McBryde’s opinion said.

Lawyers for the city have contended that Darden held his arms under his body in an attempt to resist apprehension, court documents said.

But in its ruling, the 5th Circuit court wrote that Darden, according to video from the incident, “raised his hands when the officers entered the residence, and it appears that he rolled over onto his face at one point after the officers instructed him to do so.”

“Based on evidence in the record, a jury could conclude that no reasonable officer on the scene would have thought that Darden was resisting arrest,” the court’s ruling said.

The court’s ruling acknowledged that Darden, at one point, “seemed to pull his arm away from the officers when they were trying to handcuff him,” but that “all reasonable officers on the scene would have believed that Darden was merely trying to get into a position where he could breathe and was not resisting arrest.”

Judge Carolyn Dineen King wrote a brief concurring opinion, saying that McBryde’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit “was, at the very least, premature.”

The city appealed the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, which issued a decision Monday not to hear the city’s arguments and return the case to the U.S. District Court in Fort Worth.

This story was originally published October 1, 2018 at 10:11 AM with the headline "Family: Police brutal in man’s death. Now, Supreme Court agrees to let jury decide."