A June 12 trial date was set Wednesday in a civil-rights case in which a former Little Rock police officer is accused of using excessive force during an off-duty arrest outside a restaurant in the city's Hillcrest neighborhood in 2011.
Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge James M. Moody Jr. canceled a jury trial that had been set to begin Jan. 9, and ordered both sides to meet to discuss a possible settlement of the case.
The settlement hearing on Jan. 10 was unproductive, according to court documents, leading Moody to reschedule the case. Moody tried to set the trial for Feb. 24, but a defense attorney's conflict on that date forced the trial to be rescheduled to begin June 12.
In a lawsuit filed in 2012, Jon Christopher "Chris" Erwin and Travis Blake Mitchell sued Lt. David Hudson of the Little Rock Police Department, former Police Chief Stuart Thomas and the restaurant holding company, Ferneau LLC, over Hudson's arrest of them in late October 2011 outside the restaurant on Kavanaugh Boulevard.
Hudson, who has since retired, was working in an off-duty capacity at the restaurant when, he said, he tried to arrest Erwin for refusing to leave the premises, and then arrested Mitchell for intervening in the arrest. The misdemeanor charges against both men were eventually dropped.
A bystander filmed a two-minute video with a cellphone that shows Hudson confronting Erwin outside the restaurant, grabbing his coat and trying to turn him toward a wall before delivering seven blows to Erwin's face. The video was posted online, causing the case to receive a lot of notoriety.
The restaurant was sold less than a month later.
Metro on 01/19/2017