The family of 15-year-old Bobby Joe Moore III, a suspected car burglar who was shot to death in 2012, filed a federal lawsuit Monday against Josh Hastings and the Little Rock Police Department, more than a year after state prosecutors dropped a manslaughter charge against Hastings, citing two deadlocked juries.
The 35-page lawsuit, randomly assigned to Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Miller, alleges that Hastings, then a Little Rock police officer, violated Moore's civil rights on Aug. 12, 2012, when he shot into a car that Moore was driving as the officer investigated a report of car break-ins at a west Little Rock apartment complex.
Hastings, then with the department for five years, said he shot into the car of suspects who were trying to flee and that the vehicle was about to run over him and he was in fear for his life. He was arrested on a manslaughter charge a month later after the results of a police inquiry contradicted his version of events. He was fired six weeks after his arrest.
He was tried in June 2013 and again in September 2013 in Pulaski County Circuit Court, with prosecutors later saying they employed "starkly different" strategies each time. The first jury favored a conviction on a reduced charge of negligent homicide by a vote of 10-2; the second jury voted 11-1 for an acquittal. A unanimous verdict was required.
Attorney Mike Laux of San Francisco, who along with law partner Michael Kelley represents plaintiff Sylvia Perkins of Little Rock, Moore's mother and the administrator of his estate, held a news conference Monday morning to announce the filing of the federal suit. The lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages.
Perkins told reporters: "Bobby was my youngest child and I loved him dearly. ... I can't bring my son back, but I can make sure that whoever is responsible for his death is held accountable."
Laux told reporters that in a civil trial, the plaintiffs have a lower burden of proof, "preponderance of the evidence," than prosecutors who must prove someone guilty of a criminal charge "beyond a reasonable doubt."
"We are going to do our best to achieve accountability here and assure this never happens again," Laux said.
He said the plaintiffs also "renew our call to amend the internal investigation process" at the Little Rock Police Department. Laux is representing plaintiffs in three other pending federal civil-rights lawsuits against the department and in all cases has criticized the internal investigations that follow uses of deadly force as biased in favor of the officer, although an internal probe of Hastings' actions led to his termination.
"Prior to Bobby Moore's shooting, the Little Rock Police Department had never determined that a police-involved shooting was unjustifiable," Laux told reporters. "There are officers on the force who have rap sheets that are very long, concerning police incidents, yet they are still on the force."
In all the lawsuits in which Laux alleges that Little Rock officers wrongly used deadly force, he also alleges that there is a "pattern and practice" of the department tolerating police misconduct and untruthfulness. In response to a reporter's question Monday, he said that despite a new chief, Kenton Buckner, he believes patterns of excessive force, untruthfulness and disengaging video recording devices at opportune moments are ingrained among officers and are "part of the culture."
City Attorney Tom Carpenter didn't immediately return a reporter's phone call Monday, but he has denied in the other cases that such patterns exist in the department.
Bill James, a Little Rock attorney who represented Hastings during both of his criminal trials, said Monday that a civil trial "will offer an opportunity" for more of the truth about the situation to be revealed to the public. He also noted that despite two criminal trials, "there wasn't even a jury willing to find that he was even negligent."
Hastings, who was last known to live in Benton, is the son of Capt. Terry Hastings, a 38-year veteran of the Little Rock department and its spokesman for about 20 years until his retirement early this year. Laux has alleged in the suit that, partly as a result of his father's position and friendship with then-Chief Stuart Thomas, who recently retired, the city hired Josh Hastings despite knowing he had attended a Ku Klux Klan meeting. Hastings has said he was "only curious" when he and a friend listened in at a meeting.
After the manslaughter charge was dropped, Hastings began the process of trying to get his job back, but James said in February that Hastings had decided to drop that effort and move on.
On Monday, Hastings filed a petition in Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen's court to seal records concerning his manslaughter case, and Griffen scheduled a hearing on the request for June 29.
Metro on 06/02/2015