The scheduled Nov. 12 jury trial of two Little Rock police officers accused of wrongfully causing the 2010 death of 67-year-old Eugene Ellison was put on hold Monday.
With about two weeks until the trial was scheduled to begin, Chief U.S. District Judge Brian S. Miller agreed to impose a stay on the proceedings, as the officers requested, until the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals can hear their appeal of Miller’s refusal to drop the allegations against them.
Miller issued an order Friday dismissing Little Rock and Police Chief Stuart Thomas as defendants, leaving only the officers, Donna Lesher and Tabitha McCrillis, and the owner of the Big Country Chateau apartments to stand trial.
Lesher and McCrillis were working at the apartment complex at 6200 Colonel Glenn Road, now known as the Chateau DeVille apartments, in an off-duty capacity the night of Dec. 9, 2010, when they encountered Ellison, 67, inside his second-floor apartment. Ellison scuffled with the officers inside the apartment before Lesher fatally shot him. The lawsuit contends the officers had no right to enter the apartment over his protests.
Ellison’s son, Troy, who is also a Little Rock police officer, filed a wrongful death lawsuit in 2011 as the personal representative of his father’s estate, alleging that the officers violated Eugene Ellison’s Fourth Amendment rights by refusing to leave as he requested after they found the door ajar, walked inside and noticed the home in disarray. The lawsuit also alleges that deadly force wasn’t necessary to restrain the man, who the officers said swung his cane at them during the struggle.
The lawsuit also accuses the apartment complex, and owner Carl Schultz, of negligent supervision of the uniformed officers, who Miller said were enforcing the complex’s rules despite a Police Department policy prohibiting off-duty officers from enforcing a secondary employer’s rules or policies.
In his order Friday refusing to grant “qualified immunity” to Lesher and McCrillis, Miller said the two officers later gave conflicting statements in depositions about the circumstances that night, leaving questions for a jury to sort out about whether they had an objectively reasonable basis to enter the apartment and whether Eugene Ellison posed a serious threat to their safety that necessitated the use of deadly force.
The Police Department’s internal investigation cleared the two officers of any wrongdoing, and both remain employed by the department.
In a brief order filed Monday, Miller removed the case from his trial docket, noting that it will be rescheduled, if necessary, once the 8th Circuit resolves the issue on appeal. The trial was once scheduled to begin last May but was rescheduled for November.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 10/29/2013